War Prize Ch. 02

The pace of the vibrations changed, enough to make her attend, but not enough for her overstimulated nerves to reach the relief she craved. But when the General returned, she saw him. He stopped again by the table, and she could see that he was dressed only in the brown knitted undershirt and the camouflage pants. She registered that he was grinning, and that his feet were bare.

He moved the chair to the side of the table, sitting down with his legs outstretched, crossed at the ankle. She looked around, trying to reorient herself, as the device pulsed within her and another involuntary moan slipped from her. On the third or fourth try she made eye contact with him. He inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring and grin widening so that his teeth showed.

"It's an amazing device, isn't it?" he asked casually. He stretched an arm out on the table, scooting forward enough that his fingertips grazed her breast. She shuddered and tried to lean away from him.

"Pleasure and pain together. Such a heady combination. Such a powerful one." He moved the chair closer to her. "You know, you're only the fourth woman to get one of these. Our R&D people originally meant for them to be implanted at the base of the skull, near the brainstem. The idea was to be able to immobilize someone from a distance."

He leaned forward, conspiratorially. "I don't know which of those perverts decided to try placing on a clitoris, but I'm glad he did. They had to do a little experimenting to get the intensity right, but it seems to be perfected now."

She was trying to glare at him, but she shook too hard, and she couldn't concentrate well enough to maintain the expression on her face. She heard about a third of what he said. She laid her head back, her eyes rolling, looking away from him.

"Not that it matters to either of us. But they're attempting to adapt it for males, too. Something about putting it near the prostate."

She heard the chair scrape on the floor, and felt him touching her neck, felt him trace a line down her shoulder. Then his other hand reached between her legs, and his fingers slipped into her soaked depths. When he withdrew his hand, she managed to watch him as he licked the fingers. She shut her eyes and tucked her chin onto her chest. She was so close to begging him to do something, begging him to penetrate her. She ground her chin down, refusing to relinquish that one last piece of control. The device continued, rumbling and stimulating her, denying her relief.

Then his mouth was at her ear, and his voice was low but still casual. His hands found her breasts, squeezing and rolling her nipples between his thumbs.

He said, "The amazing thing about it is its longevity. It's so small, really the size of the end of my little finger. It's so small, and the technology is brilliant. They shoot it in three pieces, and those pieces grow connections to each other. That's how they can do it with just the large bore needle; no surgery. Did you know, Essie, that it actually uses the electrical impulses in your own body to recharge? They tell me that on the setting it's on now." He thumbed the control fob, and the vibrations ramped up for a second, then returned to that low rumble. "On this setting, it can run for a year, continuously, without needing to be replaced."

He leaned in and licked her neck as she groaned.

'A year like this?' she thought. 'I'd lose my fucking mind.'

Suddenly, he shut it off. She slumped in the chair, barely able to register what had just happened. She sat unmoving as he unhooked the chain and loosened the restraint that tied her to the chair. Then he hauled on the chain where it was attached to her collar, and she stood, shakily. He let her take one step, and then her ankle restraints locked together. Her arms remained folded behind her. Her abdomen ached and her thighs were coated in a mix of her urine, her sweat and her lubrication.

When she stumbled, she fell onto the table, and he used her momentum to push her onto it, and then flip her over onto her back. Her arms dug into her back, and her head hung a little off the edge. She was still disoriented. He adjusted the chain so that there was no slack between her collar and the metal hoop. He hooked the chain to her ankle cuffs, holding her legs up straight. He used the tail of the chain and wrapped it around her shins several times, which held her legs together.

Once she was positioned, the General let loose his erection and slipped himself between her legs. Once again, he didn't attempt to penetrate her. He wrapped an arm around her thighs, squeezing them together, and he rutted against her mound. His torso leaned on her suspended legs, his hips bashing into the backs of her thighs. He slid the length of his penis across her opening, and the head of his cock occasionally hit her clit. He rammed her furiously, making up for the awkward and less than ideal position with sheer intensity of movement.

When he was close to climax, he parted her legs enough to finish himself off by hand. His cum spurted onto her lower abdomen, joining the previous deposits he hadn't allowed her to wash off. He put himself away, leaving her as she lay on the table with her legs in the air. Leaving her frustrated and twitching without any release.

She sighed heavily. He walked away but came back quickly. He had a pair of nipple clamps on a chain. He put them on her and she barely noticed. He pulled the chain up and used a hook to attach it to the chain from her collar, so that her breasts were elevated, away from her chest wall. So that every time she moved, her breasts jiggled and tugged on the clamps, which then tightened. The he left her again.

She drifted in a haze of sexual frustration and sporadic bites of pain. She grew cold, and her arms and shoulders began to ache. Her legs and back ached. Her pussy ached with the unrelieved tension that morphed into boredom. She twisted her shoulders to tug on the clamps, but even they failed to alter the misery she found herself in. She'd been used, again, like a masturbatory aid, just an object, a mechanical assistant to a perfunctory release on the General's part.

She reeked; her own odor thick in her nose as the various fluids that had emanated from her dried. She shivered as the moisture cooled her body, and then because the clamps suddenly twitched tighter. She tried to relax into the discomfort, tried to remind herself of the skills she'd acquired over so many years with Him. She endured, because she had no other option. She would not ask for relief. She would not beg this enemy for mercy. She would not allow herself to be complicit in her own debasement by requesting that he alleviate her predicament.

Her bladder filled and her stomach growled. She didn't know how much more time had elapsed. But then the General stood next to her, combing his fingers through her hair as though she were his pet. He released the clamps, and she gazed at him placidly.

"Hmm," he grunted. "He did say you were tough."

The General undid and unwound the chain, allowing her to rise. He slipped the chest harness under her bound arms and secured it to her. He sat her back on the flooded chair, and the slick wet sound grated in her ears. He held up another bottle of nutrition and made her lean forward to drink it. Her hands remained behind her back, and while she drank, he casually fondled her breasts through the loops of the harness, massaging them and rolling her still distended and sensitive nipples between his fingers as though he was fascinated by them.

'You'd think he'd never seen a woman before,' she thought.

As soon as she was done drinking, he led her to the toilet where he watched her again. She kept her knees closed and her head down and didn't look up until she was done and the burst of air had dried her well enough. He jerked on the chain to make her stand, and led her back to the cot.

"Here," he said, "sit down."

She complied, worn out and wary of him. He fastened the chain at her collar to one of the posts of the cot. Her arm cuffs released from each other and she shook her limbs and hands. He waited for her to settle then told her to lay down. She flopped over and passively allowed him to arrange her extremities. Her feet were once again spread and fastened to the side supports of the cot. He brought up a chain from underneath and hooked each end to her arms. She would be able to move them some, but wouldn't be able to roll over or move her legs. He left slack in the chain at her collar, but affixed the other end to the hoop near the table.

He picked up the fob that controlled the restraints and that infernal implant. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, expecting the vibrations to start again. Instead she felt a blanket settle over her and heard his footsteps fading as he went to his own bed.

She laid on the cot, trying to find a position for her hands that was comfortable. She ran through the events of the previous few days. She thought for a long time about her decision to attempt escape, the planning she'd done and the impulsive implementation of the plan. After her second escape attempt, the first from this camp, they'd beaten her, caged her, abused her. She'd expected death, and was stunned when it didn't come. They thought they'd broken her, she knew. She barely ate, barely moved, barely acknowledged their presence or their violations of her.

'I was broken,' she remembered. 'But I mended myself. I healed, stronger than before.'

She cooperated. She no longer snarled at them. She kept her eyes down, forced herself to smile at them. She'd gotten onto a crew distributing supplies, and bided her time. She'd been so quiet, so docile, that she'd almost faded into the background. She'd heard some of the soldiers talking about having to go to a different depot, near the edge of the camp, for food rations. She'd joined up with the assigned prisoners and no one had questioned the extra person. She had planned to wait, to scout more, but saw an opportunity. She slipped in behind a couple of camp whores, sauntering to their next customer. Then she'd turned between two closely spaced tents, wended her way through a gap in the ring of sensors, where she thought a low hanging branch interfered with the signal. She ran.

She shook her head, musing, 'I really didn't have a chance to get away. What did I think was going to happen?'

She raised her head to look toward the front of the tent. 'Who is this General, really? What does he want from me? He has complete control. He hasn't even fucked me, not really.'

She let her head flop back. 'And those things he keeps saying. It's too many coincidences. They must have met. But why? Why would He tell that man anything about me?'

She blew air out of pursed lips, exasperated at the mystery. Before she realized it, she was asleep.

++~~++~~++~~++

The next day was largely the same. The General woke her up and freed her from the cot. She moved about her half of the tent while he worked. She faintly heard conversations and saw a man join him briefly. He left the tablet for her to use, and she eventually got bored enough to read. Around midday, he secured her to the chair and left.

This time he left the implanted device on a different setting. It stayed quiescent for long periods of time, then the vibrations ramped up quickly and dramatically until she panted and gasped, writhing in the chair and groaning. Then they would suddenly shut off, leaving her breathless and aroused. In no discernable pattern during the afternoon, the vibrations, and sometimes the electrical pulses, would attack her, teasing and promising an orgasm that remained elusive. The fourth or fifth time the vibrations started, she managed to control herself well enough to try to squeeze her legs together and bear down hard on the smooth surface of the chair seat. By dumb luck or divine intervention, the combination lasted long enough to deliver on the promise.

She slumped in the chair, knees flopped open, but her ankles still attached to the legs.

'What I would give for a dildo, right now,' she thought, half amused and half disgusted with herself.

The pattern continued for hours and she never managed to trip another climax. She shuddered and shook, her body coated in two days' worth of sweat, her cum and piss, and the remains of the General's ejaculate where it had landed on her stomach and back.

'I stink worse than a camp whore at the end of a long night,' she thought.

At some point the program in the device stopped, and by the time the General returned she'd had enough of a reprieve to compose herself. But he stopped at the other side of the table and inhaled sharply, his nose wrinkling, and amused disdain in his eyes.

He unfastened all her restraints from the chair and she stood.

"Let's get you washed," he said.

The General disengaged the chest harness and set it on the table. Then he gathered up the chain attached to her collar and led her to the shower area. He clipped it to an eyehook embedded in the plastic walls that created the space. He gestured for her to step in and then thumbed a sequence onto the control fob. The cuffs at her ankles and wrists loosened, then split almost completely open. They were held to her limbs by thin bands at the uppermost part of their attachment.

He reached for one of her arms, and showed her how the cuff would slide up or down, but not over her hand.

"So you can wash underneath. Once your skin is dry, they will automatically reform," he told her.

'Well, that's ingenious,' she thought. 'All this technology. No wonder we lost.'

The General gestured to the soap and the wash cloths, then turned on the water. She stood under the spray, her face turned up and her eyes closed, letting the water flow over her. He stepped back, into the doorway, making no move to join her.

When she opened her eyes and looked at him, she found herself nodding in thanks. He watched as she washed herself, his gaze roving over her, tracking her hands. He leaned casually into the space, just outside of the spray radius, with his arms crossed over his chest. She saw the gleam in eyes as she soaped her breasts and scrubbed under them, as she bent to wash her legs, and especially as her hands cleaned where her legs met.

Suddenly his gaze was too much for her, too intent, too reminiscent of His gaze, and the gleam in His eye. She turned her back to the General, her head down, feeling the water cascade down her back. She reached behind to wash the backs of her legs, but paused when she would have needed to bend.

She heard movement and rustling. 'So much for a solo shower,' she thought.

She felt him standing close behind her, and he reached over her shoulder to take the washcloth from her. She braced herself on the wall, readying herself for what she assumed would be a rough and perfunctory cleaning. It wasn't. The General stroked her skin softly. He washed her arms, which she'd raised over her head, moving the opened cuffs to attend to every piece of her.

Then he started on her back, scrubbing gently but thoroughly first between her shoulders and then lower, over the curve of her spine and the roundness of her backside. She felt his hands, and then the cloth, dive between her cheeks. Then he reached around to her front, and cleaned that delicate skin. As he lowered himself to attend to her legs, she realized how much she was enjoying this attention.

She shook her head. Her Mate never washed her; He watched her wash herself, almost every night. He watched her apply the lotions and oils that kept her skin soft and minimized His damage. He touched her often, but He had never performed an act like this.

The General seemed to be enjoying it. He was taking his time, exploring her in a way he had not done so far. His touch was light, and she closed her eyes, this time not in fear or anger, but from the simple pleasure of it. She felt the General's hands in her too short hair, smelled a new scent. His fingers massaged her scalp as he washed her hair and she leaned back into him. She almost allowed herself to smile.

The General spoke, "Those laser scissors ruined your hair. I'll have to get my barber in here to clean this up."

She frowned then, until she heard, "And when we get home, you'll grow it out again, if you want."

'Home?' she thought. 'What the hell does that mean?'

But she knew what that meant. She'd known all along, really, that at some point the campaign would be over. At some point these enemy soldiers would crawl back to their hovels. She just hadn't believed they would take her with them. She'd believed, these past few days, that the General would use her as he saw fit in the camp, and then kill her. She'd hoped it. She balked at the idea of being his chattel for any length of time. She pulled away from him, letting the water rinse her hair.

He reached out, handing the washcloth back to her. When she turned around, he had his back to her. He blocked the door out of the shower area. The implication was clear, but she stood unmoving, watching the water flow over his back. He had a large, photorealistic tattoo of a hawk covering his upper back. Its wings were spread in flight, and its talons extended toward some unseen prey. As he rolled his shoulders, the shading and the detail in the wings gave the illusion that they moved, and some specialty ink caused the bird's eyes to glitter. She stared, fascinated despite herself, her hand reaching up and almost touching him.

"Will you return the favor?" he said.

'You command in requests,' she thought. 'You prefer reward to punishment. But you will punish. You call me chattel. You've treated me like a sex toy. But you've also shown me some kindness. What an odd man. What a strange kind of soldier.'

He looked like a soldier, she decided. He was not as much taller than her as he'd seemed the other day. His frame was compact, his musculature obvious. He had some old scarring on the right side of his back, under his ribs, and down along his buttocks and flank. There was a deeper scar near his left shoulder.

She relented, adding more soap to the wash cloth and reaching up to scrub his back. She did return the favor, washing him as gently and thoroughly as he'd done for her. She allowed herself to explore his skin, to run her hands over the mound of his buttocks and the backs of his thighs. When she got down to his ankles, she saw another tattoo around the left calf. She snorted at the irony of this powerful man having a chain and shackle inked onto his leg. He turned around to face her and she stood. She stepped back, appraising him as openly as he'd looked at her.

'In other circumstances,' she thought, 'I might enjoy what I was looking at. If He allowed.'

She moved to hand the wash cloth back to the General, but he raised his arms and spread them wide. She looked from one to the other, and gasped. She shook, violently, dropping the cloth and covering her mouth.

'No,' she screamed in her head. The word almost hurtled out of her mouth. 'No. It's not. It's not possible.'

The General had a third tattoo, on the inside of his left bicep. It was a series of symbols in a rough oval, with a large ornate initial in the middle. The initial was different, an S, where His was a C. But the style of the initial was the same, and the symbols were the same, and the placement was the same. There was no doubt that this man's marking was intended as a pair to her Mate's.

She felt how wide her eyes were, and how despite that she couldn't see. She felt faint. Her stomach roiled. She recoiled from him, but at the same time reached out to touch the marking. When she shook her head so hard that she stumbled, the General clapped his hands to her cheeks, holding her under the chin, holding her up. Her hands snapped around his wrists, her fingers digging into the tendons.