I saw on Philip’s face the smile—the same assessing smile, but now… now with something else, something more. My heart sped up even further, and I had to swallow hard. The wink had maybe meant a very great deal, I realized suddenly.
“Oh, of course,” the prince said, but I couldn’t pay him much attention because Philip’s eyes suddenly shifted their focus upward and to the right and I knew he must be listening to something over a concealed comm device—an implant, almost certainly. A moment later, his gaze returned to me.
“George wants us in place for the walk to the horse,” he told me. “You’re going first.”
I swallowed again, even harder, as all the thoughts and feelings in my mind seemed to shift, and to travel to what seemed like the other side of the galaxy—my emotions and sensations seemed that vast to me, in that moment. My breathing sped up, to match my racing heart. Philip had turned a little, and he had pointed toward the doorway with the long, thin piece of bamboo in his right hand.
I looked at the cane and then back up into his face. He had grown solemn, his dark eyes regarding me with an unreadable but unmistakably dominant expression, telling me that he might like me very much… might even—I let my mind form the silent words, as unforgivable as my reason told me they were—loveme… or be on the way to loving me or… or something… but…
But. My face twisted into a fearful, pleading mask of need and woe. Tears sprang to my eyes.
But he’s going to whip me. For no reason. He’s going to whip an innocent young woman… an innocent young woman he’sfalling in love with… because… because…
With my breath coming in ragged gasps between my lips, all thought of what Philip had just said about how my comportment would make my world proud, or whatever the fuck he had just told the prince, I made my feet move toward the doorway.
I saw the horrible bench, the leather restraints, framed there illuminated by the bright lights of the camera setup. I saw the cameras, ready to document and to broadcast my ordeal. A sense of utter disbelief took hold of me, and let me keep walking. I couldn’t be here, in the president’s bedroom, naked except for the lacy lingerie that left nearly all of me bare and terribly exposed. I couldn’t be the girl they had chosen to show their dominance over her entire world, the one they had selected for a life of sexual bondage.
I saw the mark, there on the carpet, just inside the doorway soIwould be framed in medium shot, and then in close-up. I could practically hear the director talking to the cameraman:One, give me a long beat in medium, and get ready to go in tight. Two, stay on the horse, and track across it. I want to feel the suspense before we go back to her face.
That train of thought, the reflexive mental exercise of putting myself in the mind of the director, sent me into my safe, detached space. I found my body able to move more freely, as if I had taken some kind of external control, as I were an assistant director, micromanaging the terrified victim of this humiliation.
I walked forward to the tape they had put on the floor, the frontmost of the four marks on the carpet, and I read my name:Sara. I saw that Philip would stand right behind me, and the prince and Viola behind him. A little procession to the horse.
My face had returned to neutrality, and my arousal—both the fear and the desire—had quieted as I moved forward. The thought of the procession, with me in front, of the way it would look to the real director and to the galactic audience watching, sent a shiver of both kinds through me, and I felt my face crumple, the tears prick.
Only for a moment, though: I took a breath through my nose, and I thought of the tape on the carpet, keeping my eyes fixed there. I had almost reached Philip’s mark, and the sight of his name and his military rank,Major Harrow, made me think of what he had said to the prince, how he had defended me.
True, the defense had come from a terribly patronizing, frankly arrogant, perspective, but I didn’t see any point in denying it any longer: Philip’s arrogance had an effect on me that gave the lie to a great deal of my egalitarian upbringing. Another shiver came over me, another crease of my brow, and a rise in my heart rate—this one accompanied by a tingle between my legs as the governor made its presence known for the first time in the past few minutes.
I crossed Philip’s mark and I kept my feet moving until I reached mine, my toes atop the tape. Behind me I sensed my guardian a meter away, and suddenly I felt a wave of longing, a wish that he would close the distance and take me in his arms. I had the urgent impression that the governor had somehow created that yearning, or—I realized as my eyes opened in surprise at the thought—it hadclarifiedit for me, brought it into focus. By taking away the full force of my erotic need for this man’s dominance, it had let me experience the emotional need more fully.
“Two minutes,” one of the cameramen said.
I looked back over my shoulder to see Philip standing just where I had thought he would, just as precisely on his mark as I was on mine. Our eyes met, and before I could even wish he would read my mind, somehow, he had: he stepped toward me and my lips parted with an unuttered cry of surprise at the speed of his advance, and his arms were around me from behind, his woolen uniform scratchy against my bare skin but warm and welcome nevertheless.
Distantly I knew that in this moment of strange semi-privacy, a moment the audience wouldn’t see, the people of my planet were instead watching the edited footage from earlier in the day. My Magisterian masters had treated the galaxy to a view of me playing with myself in the lewdest possible fashion, a pink plug deeply inserted in my anus and my shameful need for such dark pleasure completely and humiliatingly evident.
Philip held me so possessively it took my breath away; one hand firmly between my thighs, the other across my chest pressing without real force but with such a dominant presence that I felt the governor tingle with my need.
“You’re doing so well, Sara,” he murmured in my ear.
I let out a little sob, relief and fear somehow combining in the sound.
“Shh,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”
My eyes widened, and time seemed to stand still. Part of me thought Philip must intend to say something completely mundane, maybe that my hair needed adjustment—or even something generically lewd, like how very hard he intended to fuck me.
Another part of my mind, though, had heard something more in my guardian’s voice.
“Are you listening?” he asked so softly, so close to my ear, that no camera could even see his lips move, I felt certain.
I nodded, feeling my eyes go even rounder.
“You’re going to be auctioned after your show tonight.”
My forehead creased and I closed my eyes, chewing on the inside of my lower lip. A camera undoubtedly caught that mortifying expression, even if it couldn’t see the governor curbing my need, but all my attention had focused itself on Philip’s voice.
I nodded: I had pretty much understood that part of my terrible fate.