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As she left Kat’s suite, she sent up a silent prayer.
Please, Goddess…I don’t know if you can hear me or if you’re even there. But if you are, please let this ceremony help my partner. Let Thrax be healed.
There was no answer but she felt calmer as she headed to her partner’s suite. Now she just had to convince Thrax to do the ceremony. She hoped he wouldn’t turn stubborn and refuse.
If he did, Andi didn’t know what she was going to do.
29
THRAX
Thrax sat on his couch and contemplated the muzzle of his blaster. It was shiny and silver and sleek—the perfect weapon. It had been made especially for his personal use and it fit perfectly in his big hand. But lately it was looking like more than just a weapon to him.
It was looking like an Exit door.
If he took that way out—if he ate his blaster—at least the dreams would stop. They came to him every night now…dreams of the past. Horrible images of things he had done…and things that had been done to him.
Over and over he had the dream where he strangled someone—some Yonnite Mistress, he suspected, because of the way she was dressed. He saw his hands squeezing her throat and heard her begging in wheezing gasps as the light slowly left her eyes.
Or he saw himself kneeling before the Mistress—watching as she pulled out a branding iron and said,
“Now it’s time to really make you mine. Once you have my mark on you, you’ll never be free, my beautiful boy.”
Even in his dreams, Thrax felt the burning kiss of the branding iron and heard his younger self screaming in agony as he writhed under the hot brand. He could smell his own flesh scorching and hear Mistress Stoneheart’s laughter as she watched him writhe.
But even worse than those dreams were the ones he had of his old Mistress “training” him with pleasure.
“It feels good, doesn’t it? You want it—you want me to touch you,” her voice whispered in his ear as she stroked his shaft, coating it with burning plum oil which made him stay hard for hours and caused an insatiable sexual hunger despite the painful stinging. “Do you want to come, my beautiful boy? Too bad—you haven’t been good enough to earn an orgasm. Maybe if you crawl across the floor for me on your hands and knees and beg to kiss my panties…”
But the worst dreams of all were the ones where he relived what he had done to Andi. He saw the fear in her big brown eyes and heard her begging him to stop…to wake up from the trance Mistress Stoneheart had put him in. And then he saw her giving up, realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to break the conditioning, and offering herself like a sacrifice to his lust.
He saw his partner on her hands and knees on the floor, her small, curvy body trembling with fear as he knelt behind her with his shaft out. He heard her panting cries as he drove himself inside her, watched her moan and writhe under him as he fucked her as hard as he could, with no thought for her pain. She was so small, so helpless, and he had hurt her, taking what she wasn’t willing to give, no matter what she said.
Worse, he had taken sexual pleasure from fucking her—from hurting her. How many times had he imagined making love to Andi—taking her slowly and gently until she moaned his name? And instead, their first and only time together had been rough and harsh—a rape. It was unforgivable.
Thrax hated himself for what he’d done—hated himself with a fierce, black loathing that filled his brain and body like poison. He was disgusted with himself for not being able to break his old Mistress’s hold over him—not even to save his partner. Not even to stop himself from taking her against her will.
The shame and pleasure and pain and guilt mixed inside him until Thrax felt like he might be going fucking crazy.
The dreams of his past wouldn’t leave him alone—he had them every single night. He’d tried staying up—taking stimulants to keep awake—but that only made the dreams more vivid and horribly intense when he finally crashed.
So then he tried going the other way—getting blackout drunk in the hope that the alcohol in his system would let him sleep without dreams. But that had been even worse—Thrax had found himself caught in a never-ending loop of nightmares he was completely unable to wake up from. It seemed like no matter what he tried, he simply couldn’t get away from the dreams of his past.
It had begun to seem like eating his blaster was his only option. After all, blowing his brains out would certainly stop the dreams.
Andi, however, thought she had a way to help him. His partner had come to his door earlier that day, talking about some kind of “Cleansing Ceremony” she wanted him to go to. She seemed to think that talking to a priestess in the Sacred Grove would help him.
There was just one problem with that plan—Thrax didn’t deserve to be cleansed. Just like he didn’t deserve to be forgiven for the awful things he’d done. The dreams were bad, but he deserved them. He deserved to be punished after the pain he had inflicted.
Thrax had sent her away with a few curt words. Then he’d locked his door to be sure she couldn’t come back and bother him again. A Cleansing Ceremony wouldn’t work for him…what he needed was a more permanent solution, he thought grimly, staring at his blaster.
He hefted the shiny silver weapon in his hand, feeling its familiar weight, and then brought it experimentally to his mouth. Opening his lips, he slid it in, tasting the cold, metallic tang against his tongue. Just one squeeze of the trigger and this could all be over. Just one little squeeze and all the pain and sorrow and hurt would be erased in a single blast of deadly light…
30
ANDI
“Daughter—I must speak to you!”
