The sound of the water stops, and I look up as Brennan steps out of the tent.
He’s now clad in only light shorts. Water still drips from Brennan’s magnificent body, making his muscles glisten in the faint light. Barely giving me a glance, he lays down in the sleeping bag next to me – and only then clips the other end of my handcuffs around his wrist.
“You’re not going anywhere tonight.”
I’m linked to the alien beast, now. I can’t get more than a few feet away without the chain connecting the cuffs getting pulled taut.
As I lie in the sleeping bag, feeling the cold steel around my wrist, I hear the sound of heavy footsteps above us. They make my heart pound – but Brennan doesn’t even seem to hear them.
I soon realize why. As the footsteps increase in volume, I turn my head to see Otho striding down the metal stairs, covered in blood and dirt.
“I threw the bodies in a compactor a click away,” the Aurelian grunts. “There are probably more of the fuckers hiding around outside. I say we put up a watch.”
“Do it,” Brennan nods, still lying on the sleeping bag. “You take first watch. Lazar can take over when he returns. I’ll take first watch tomorrow night.”
Just like that. No emotion. No guilt that they just killed those men – that they’d taken people’s lives. The Aurelians are clearly hardened warriors – without a trace of humanity left in them…
…and I’m handcuffed to their leader.
Brennan’s breathing slows. Somehow, he’s found sleep easily – even in this abandoned factory, after a brief and bloody battle. My heart, meanwhile, is still racing.
It’s racing from my desperate escape into the rubble and ruins outside. It’s racing because of gouging my thigh open, and having Brennan repair my injury; his hands hot and firm on my thigh as he held me steady.
It’s racing because I saw the bloody aftermath of Otho and Brennan slaughtering those scavengers.
It’s racing because I know he’s going to punish me tomorrow.
I squirm in my sleeping bag. Brenna’s arm is stretched out of his own bag, reaching across the floor towards me, the cuff that links his wrist to mine glinting in the pale light.
As I cower in my sleeping bag, I look at that huge, muscular forearm. I can see every vein in his bulging muscles. My mind can’t even fathom the inhuman strength he must have in that powerful limb. My tender backside twitches just at the memory of him spanking me earlier.
I know he went light on me in the hotel room – even though I can still feel the heat of his palm on my cheeks. I have the feeling that tomorrow, Brennan will not be showing me any mercy.
That’s just one of the many reasons why I know sleep will elude me tonight, despite my exhaustion. In fact, it’s almost morning already. I can’t even calculate how many hours I’ve remained awake – terrified, trembling, and filled with a cocktail of swirling impulses.
I know I need to catch some hours of sleep before dawn – or my mind will be slow tomorrow; and my mind is the only weapon I have to escape my captivity.
Yet my mind wanders. Even right now – even as I’m chained to a fearsome warrior, in a dank and abandoned basement, all I can think about is Aurelian harems.
Harems! At a time like this!
But the sight of Brennan’s glistening, freshly showered body… The memory of Otho crushing me to the bed – cuffing me and shoving that ball gag into my mouth…
I’m flooded with shameful feelings of excitement at being so helpless in the captivity of this towering, intimidating aliens. I can’t help but tingle as I think about how powerful they are – how they could literally bend my will and body. These three warriors could do anything they wanted to me – and I’d be powerless to stop them.
I’ve seen how they look at me – how they shudder with barely restrained desire for me.
If they decided to act on those desires…
My pulse throbs between my thighs. I’m not sure if such a thing is my most abject fear, or my darkest and most shameful desire.
Is that what it feels like to be part of an Aurelian harem? Their species is famous for the dozens or hundreds of women that Aurelian Warriors ‘collect’ in their huge estates, back on Colossus.
I know similar harems exist elsewhere in the universe – hell, on Old-Earth, the ancient societies of Egypt, the Ottomans, the Chinese dynasties, and more were famous for having harems as part of the power structure of the ruling elite…
…but they were nothing like an Aurelian harem.
You didn’t have women flocking to volunteer to become the plaything of an inbred Pharaoh, or a white-haired, ancient Chinese Emperor – and yet women from all over the universe travel to Colossus, willing to trade poverty and uncertainty for a live of decadence and luxury in the care of a gorgeous, sex-obsessed Aurelian triad.
We don’t have anything like harems on Marn. Sex is sold here as a commodity, and most of the women who trade in that commodity value their independence and freedom more than luxury.
Becoming part of a businessman’s harem, or the plaything of a crime boss, isn’t appealing to them. It doesn’t matter how rich a man is. Here on Marn, no man can offer a woman the same security or luxury that an Aurelian triad could; so why sacrifice your independence for anything less.
Aurelians themselves don’t come to Marn often – and when they do, they’re generally just passing through. On the planets where Aurelians do settle, they’re famous for building up the same huge harems of willing women as others of their species do on their home world of Colossus.
I’ve read all about Aurelian harems in On Aurelians – but I’m not sure how accurate the information is. The book was written by a human author, and Aurelians literally
