Belok's Bride Page 10

  The idea of recruiting Petrok popped into her consciousness seemingly from nowhere. At once she fell in love with the idea, knowing she must pursue it or else the rest of her life would make no sense. She could be practical and somber tomorrow. Today, she would play. Giving the ecstatic little Piko a soft, warm kiss on the lips, she ran from the limo into the lobby of her hotel.

  “I need to speak with the bellhop, Petrok,” she said to the desk clerk without preamble, no longer feeling the least bit fatigued.

  The desk clerk eyed her curiously, judgment written all over his face. Merritt didn’t care. In fact, she welcomed it as an excellent warm-up to what would follow.

  “I want you to take me to the District of Pristiene,” she told Petrok as soon as she saw him. “I want you to treat me like a whore, the way you would your girlfriend if she’d let you.”

  Petrok frowned. “You’ve interrupted me at work. I will be in trouble with my manager.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” she offered sincerely.

  He took her arm, steering her toward her toward a storage closet. “Inside,” he thrust her forward, hand on her arse. By the time she was able to turn and face him he was locking the door behind him.

  Merritt’s natural sense of guilt began to mix with fear. “Petrok, I truly didn’t mean to cause you any difficulty.”

  “Take off your dress, Annie.”

  There was something new in his eyes. A sense of resolve. Had he been through some change since this morning, or had she merely become more obviously submissive?

  “You have no underwear,” he observed as she stood before him, the garment in her hand.

  “I had to change. At the Institute.”

  He stepped towards her. “You are wet,” he seized her nether opening.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “But you are still a virgin?”

  She nodded.

  “Turn and face the wall. Brace yourself with your palms.”

  The first she knew of her impending whipping, she was hearing the belt, sailing through the air. A long whimper escaped her throat as her nipples, belly and pussy pressed against the cinderblock. She was flowing now, copiously, even as he continued to tan her hide.

  It was only five blows, though it felt like a hundred. Afterwards, he ordered her to her knees. She serviced him, a naked, beaten woman, eagerly sucking the cock of her dominator.

  He held the back of her head as his orgasm approached. “Swallow it, Annie.”

  She took the sperm down, every last drop. Without another word, he zipped himself up. Merritt remained kneeling, not daring to rise without permission. Petrok’s cock had made her jaws ache and her arse stung badly, but she was happy, horny and ready for more.

  “I finish in an hour,” he told her. “Get dressed and wait for me. We will have to shop for you. You need a whore’s dress.”

  “Yes, Petrok,” she whispered.

  Five minutes later, pussy sopping, still in the Institute dress, she was at the entrance. A belly full of come and a smile on her face.

  Chapter Seven

  The dress barely covered her thighs. It was made of shiny latex with oval shaped openings in front and back. Merritt’s belly was revealed by it, as was the area between her shoulder blades and tender buttocks. Petrok picked out white leather boots to match.

  “White for a virgin,” he laughed, running his hands over her tightly contained hips.

  Merritt shuddered. She’d never worn such a thing in her life. A bra was out of the question given how the dress wanted to hug her breasts and how it betrayed their sanctity, the neck dipping well into her cleavage.

  “I feel like a prostitute,” she breathed, standing just outside the dressing room in front of the full-length mirrors.

  “You look like one, too,” he grinned, the capable hands moving to cup her buttocks.

  “People are watching,” she said weakly, her head resting upon his shoulder, unable to sustain its own weight.

  “So? You’re mine, Annie. What can anyone say?”

  The words turned her innards to jelly. “Petrok, please, take me somewhere and make love to me.”

  “No, I am buying you the dress to sell you in. I don’t want to waste my money.”

  “But, I want you, Petrok. Only you.”

  “And you shall have your wish. Your virginity I keep for now, but your mouth, on the I will use to recoup the Euros I am spending on this ridiculous little dress.”

  Her knees were weak. What had started as her own impulse was now turning into something out of her control. “You’re going to…make me?”

  He brushed his hand over her cheek. “You will suck cock, Annie. Just as you wanted.”

  The juice was like a flood between her legs. “What if I run away?”

  She was testing his resolve, for as much as she was scared to go forward in this relationship, she wanted and needed him to break her will, to take command of her completely. Even to the point of pain.

  Petrok clamped her sore arse. “Then you will be caught. And punished.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Yes, Petrok.”

  He took her hand, escorting her down the busy street. Merritt was anxious, a little afraid and very aroused.Just how far did Petrok intend to go to humiliate her? Had Vistya been down this road long ago? Had she known whoredom at Belok’s hand, under his reign, through his bizarre influences?

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an ice cream store. Suddenly, she felt like a child, with her daddy.

  “Ooh, Petrok, can we stop here?”

  “Too expensive,” he shook his head.

  “I have my own money,” she pointed out.

  He took her purse away. “Not any longer.”

  Merritt’s pulse raced. He had everything now, including her passport.

  Seeing her distress, he comforted her with a kiss, deep and hot. It left her burning, ready to lay for him right there on the sidewalk.

  “On second thought, I think we will have ice cream after all,” he announced.

  The woman behind the counter was quite wrinkled and seemed as though she hadn’t smiled in fifty years. “What flavor?” She demanded.

  “I’ll have chocolate,” said Petrok.

  “And you?”

  “She is a whore,” Petrok answered for her. “She’ll take what I give. A small lemon sorbet would be good to cleanse her palate. She will be sucking quite a large number of cocks today.”

  Merritt flushed red under the woman’s withering gaze.

  Unleashing a string of expletives, she threw them both out.

  Dragging her to the nearest alley, he got her good and worked up, his finger in and out of her hot, waiting hole. “Are you ready, my little whore?” He whispered in her ear.

  “I will do what you tell me to, Petrok. Anything.”

  Anything. Like the girls on their way to special detention. The modern equivalents of Belok’s playthings, his sexual toys.

  “So tell me,” he asked as they set off down the street once more. “Exactly what goes on in that Institute?”

  She stiffened. “What do you mean, Petrok?”

  “They say that young women disappear there, taken in trucks, late at night.”

  Merritt’s belly quaked at the mention of the trucks. The colonel’s, perhaps?

  “Sometimes screams are heard. There are old men who say the place is haunted,” Petrok added.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she laughed, and that was the end of the conversation. After that the only sound was the clicking of their shoes on the sidewalk.

  It was dark by the time they reached the Plaza Pristienya, center of the haphazard Pristiene District. Women were already gathering at the old fountain, the water shimmering under the pale blue street lights. The smell of cheap perfume, old liquor and tangy street food filled the air. The plaza was like the hub of a many-spoked, pulsing wheel. Seven streets converged here, the thoroughfares themselves being divided by wedge shaped buildings hundreds of years old. Most of these
were either abandoned now or converted to fly-by-night businesses and get rich quick schemes that had popped up all over with the birth of a free market economy. At this time of day the business men were home, the street lights were up and the neon was lighting the darkened sky, announcing bars and taverns, American style fast food and other, more nefarious establishments.

  In the shadows, meanwhile, beside statues of long dead rulers and generals, the wolves were gathering, the pimps and runners, the ones who owned the flesh of the girls for sale. They came in all sizes, these yistgazay, the dispossessed, as hookers were called in the picturesque Zuravian language. A few looked to be little more than children, slender, barely eighteen.

  Others were closer to forty, their thinly covered bodies showing the wear and tear of age. One woman had on a leather cap, hot pants and a pink, frilly blouse. She was busty and had a large, quivering arse. The woman next to her was slim and pretty, looking scared but eager.

  Then there were the customers. Men of every shape and size, hands thrust in pockets, casting furtive glances, making choices, weighing their options.

  “Hey, you need a date?” the grinning woman in the leather cap asked a bowler hatted business type with a handlebar mustache who was deciding between her and a bikini topped teenager with hair that hung to the waistband of her low slung, American jeans.

  “No, thanks.” The man had just seen Merritt and was making a beeline for her.

  Petrok, his hand hard on her arm steered her right, moving them out of range. They were cutting a diagonal across the square and as the crowd thickened about them, Merritt felt stray hands on her arse and hips.

  “They’re touching me,” she protested.

  “They’re supposed to. What else do you expect in a place like this?”

  “Are you going to find me a man now?” she asked, having to stumble to keep up with his gargantuan footsteps.

  “Of course I am. But I must be careful. You are a virgin, after all.”

  “He won’t find you anything. He’s a little boy,” countered the voice in her head. “Let him run home to mama.”

  “Leave me be,” she hissed.

  Of all times for Belok to show up.

  “He won’t go through with it,” said the disembodied prince. “He hasn’t the courage.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Annie, what is wrong?” Petrok put his arm on her shoulder, his eyes full of concern.

  His kindness only proved Belok’s point. “You see? He is soft. He will not make you suffer the way you need. He will fall in love, and that will be the end of his cruelty.”

  “No, I won’t listen,” she cried, breaking free.

  Merritt headed for the densest part of the crowd. Wading through a sea of people, she sought to find some refuge, some escape from the plaguing voice of the ghost.

  I am coming for you…soon.

  Faces blending, mocking, and limbs pressed. She smelled sweat, tasted the hopelessness and fear. Then, in the midst of it, she saw the girl. The Italian. What were the odds! Merritt followed, calling after her, eventually catching up with her in front of an American style bar.

  It was her, all right. Leaning against the plate glass window, her hands behind her back, the tight, low-cut red dress hiked up on her thighs. She was flexing her left calf, extending the leg as a tidbit, the ball of her bare foot on the concrete.

  “I remember you,” Merritt exclaimed excitedly in Italian. “We came in together, through customs. I was right behind you in line.”

  The girl regarded her uncertainly. “Oh, yes,” she nodded at last, her voice lackluster. “You were the one they took away. We saw the commotion and came back to see. But why aren’t you in jail?”

  “A misunderstanding. I need to talk to you, though. You’ve been on my mind almost constantly. Is there somewhere we can go?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. Marco told me to stand here.”

  “Marco—he’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  Merritt tried to curb her enthusiasm, lest the girl think her a lunatic. “I mean you no harm. It’s just that…I saw what happened in line between the two of you.”

  The girl smiled shyly, lowering her eyes. Merritt could see the glow in her cheeks, the obvious love and devotion. “Sometimes I am willful. Marco must put his foot down.”

  “You didn’t want to stay in the youth hostel,” Merritt reminded her, as though they were old friends catching up.

  “I wanted a hotel. Now I’ve got one, but Marco is making me earn the money to pay for it.”

  Merritt bit her lip. She could have guessed this, but still, it was quite another thing to hear it. “You mean you earn it here on the street?”

  “Si,” the girl said softly. “Marco is in the bar with some men he met. I must collect a hundred zuravs, or else I cannot go back in. If he finishes first and I am not ready, he has promised to drag me into the nearest alley.”

  “He will punish you?”

  She ran her toes over the concrete, half little girl, half seasoned pro. “He will use his belt on my arse. Then he will find the nearest wino and let him fuck me. After that, in the hotel, I will have to sleep on the floor. He’s bought handcuffs and a collar and a leash. He will chain me naked to the foot of the bed.”

  “How horrible. You must want to escape very badly.”

  The girl looked at her as if she were the most stupid woman on the face of the earth. “Americans,” she laughed.

  “Hey, little nieces, how’s it going?” The gravelly voice over Merritt’s shoulder belonged to a man in a fedora with a long pearl gray coat stretched like a cape over a wide shouldered purple suit. “You look lonely. I feel bad. Maybe your old uncle will take care of you, no?”

  “We aren’t alone,” Merritt lied to the pimp in Zuravian.

  “What is he saying?” the Italian girl whispered. “I can’t understand the language very well.”

  “He’s a peddler of women,” she whispered. “We have to get out of here. I think he means us harm.”

  “I should get Marco. It’s worth a beating for me to go in, don’t you think?”

  Merritt nodded nervously. Where was Petrok? She hadn’t run that far away. Had he given up so easily and gone home?

  “Hey,” the pimp blocked the girl’s escape. “Where are you going? We were just getting to know each other. Tell me your name.”

  “He wants to know your name,” Merritt translated, watching helplessly as the man confined the woman in his huge arms.

  “I am Mariana. Please tell him to let me go.”

  “She’s called Mariana, and she has a boyfriend inside. A big one.”

  “I’m not interested in any boyfriend,” he pulled the dress up over her bare arse. “Now tell Mariana to stop fighting me or she’s going to get hurt. Doesn’t she know who I am?”

  “She’s never seen you before. And she is telling you to let her go.”

  The big man turned long enough to slap Merritt across the face. “I don’t like you. You have a big mouth. Good for cock sucking, not for speaking.”

  “Where I come from, sir, a gentleman does not strike a lady outside the bedroom, and only then with consent.”

  “Simon!” Merritt exclaimed in joy. “How did you find me?”

  Rutledge cast her a chilling glance. “The less out of you, girl, the better. Go over to that lamp post and wait for me.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” the pimp thundered, pulling out a gleaming switchblade. “But you’ve just given me all the excuse I need to slit you open and eat your gizzards!”

  Simon disarmed the man with frightening ease, knocking him to the ground in the process. “I’d have that looked at if I were you.”

  The pimp looked up at him from his knees, the shock registering on his face as he held his broken wrist.

  “You,” said Simon to Mariana in passable Italian. “You have somewhere to be?”

  “My boyfriend, sir. He’s inside the
bar…but he said if I go in without a hundred zuravs, he’ll beat me.”

  Simon scowled, pulling a pair of hundreds from a billfold along with a business card. “Give him this, tell him if he ever wants a man’s job to look me up. He’s got decent taste in women, I’ll give him that much.”

  Mariana put her hands round his neck, offering herself. “Thank you, signore. You have bought me for the night.”

  “Sorry,” he shook his head. “My dance card’s filled with the little vixen here. Do give my remembrances to Rome, however. It’s been too long.”

  Chapter Eight

  He put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door before locking it.

  The small but significant gesture was more than a little unnerving for the already frazzled and horny Dr. Fisher.

  “Don’t make yourself comfortable. You’re not staying,” she informed the stone-faced agent.

  He was ignoring her just as he had been since loading her into his compact rental car and shuttling her back over here to her hotel. She was pretty nervous—not to mention titillated over what he might do to punish her for disobeying his orders—but she wasn’t going to let on.

  “I trust you know what is expected of you next?” Simon turned to her grimly, breaking his self-imposed vow of silence.

  Merritt crossed her arms defensively over her chest, hiding her erect nipples. He was going to have to fight her, because as much as the dress shamed her, she was not about to take it off.

  “You’re not going to do that to me tonight, Simon. I know you’re mad at me for leaving the hotel again without waiting for you, and I’m sure you’re all set to lecture me on how dangerous it was to go out dressed like this, but I won’t be bullied. Do you hear me? I won’t be treated like a child anymore!”

  Simon removed his trench coat and put it on a hanger. He could easily point out at this juncture how she’d certainly acted like one in the car ride over, first pleading and whining, then throwing a tantrum as he refused to listen to her half baked explanations as to why she’d done something so stupid in the first place.