My Wild Pet (Whispers from the Imperial Cage #2)

Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

Briar

The attendants leave us alone, just as Gabriel promised they would. I know it costs him UCs he’s earned through competitions and I feel slightly guilty for that, but he always tells me it’s money well spent. And I have to agree, if I had money, I would spend it on time alone too. What else is there to buy as a human pet on the Luminous Arc ?

We sit across from one another, close enough that his knees are touching mine.

And he’s looking at me like he’s trying to memorize every detail of my face. “I love you,” he says quietly. Then as if we were back on Earth and on a date, he leans forward, puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses my lips softly. “Tu es tout pour moi."

“You know I don’t speak French, right?”

He replies by kissing me again. This time his tongue enters my mouth, igniting my desire. I respond by drawing him closer to me. Soon his hard muscular body is covering mine.

“What if we’re caught?”

“We should have an hour and I’d spend days in solitary confinement to have you alone like this. With no one watching.”

“I’m sure the doctor is watching. He gets readouts from our collars. They will know if we orgasm. He probably has an alarm set to go off.”

“No. They’re at the evening meal and it’s an Imperial holiday. They’re all drunk. That’s why it was easy to pay off the attendants today. Now kiss me. Let me make love to you the way I dreamed about it.”

“I didn’t mind the way you did it last time,” I admit. We’ve never had a chance to talk about what happened in Aefre’s room.

“I wasn’t going to take you on anything that belonged to him. Tu es à moi, Briar."

“What does that mean?”

Gabriel leans back an inch so I can look into his amber eyes. “You’re mine, Briar.” Then he doesn’t wait for a reply before taking down his trousers and placing his erect penis at my entrance. “You’ve always been mine.” He thrusts into me. I put my hands around his large shoulders. “And when I escape the Luminous Arc and this pet life, I will take what’s mine with me.” He pushes into me again, stretching my vagina. The piercings scraping through my desire.

I feel so full both emotionally and physically, so much so, tears begin to stream down the sides of my face.

He wipes them off with his thumbs and tries to move off of me.

“No,” I hold his large shoulders. “I’m crying because I’m so overwhelmed with how good you make me feel. It’s so different to everything else. I don’t want this moment to ever end, and I’m crying because I know at the end of this hour, it will.”

He kisses away my tears. “I don’t understand, Briar.”

“I want you to claim me as yours. I want to be yours. Take me.”

Gabriel holds eye contact, no doubt trying to work out why I’m crying but am saying I still want to have sex with him. I lean in and kiss him. Then I begin to move my hips rhythmically against his.

He needs no more incentive. He begins slowly moving in and out of me again, but taking his time now and maintaining eye contact with me as I fight the urge to close my eyes and be lost in this moment.

“More,” I tell him desperately. “I need more, Gabriel.”

As he increases his speed, we now move as one, our hips in tandem as he finishes releasing into me. Then he slowly lowers himself to his side, gently taking me with him.

Kissing my shoulder he says, “I want to lick you between your legs, but…”

“But?” I’m thinking he doesn’t want to lick his own semen which might be understandable.

“My first real sexual experiences were here as a pet and directed by Imperial men. I don’t know if that’s what human women like and I want to get it right for you, Briar. This is about us being human together. I don’t want to love you like an Imperial man or even worse a human pet. Teach me how to love you like a human man.”

His words break my heart. I hold him close to me and run my hand through his wavy brown hair. “Gabriel, you’re an excellent human lover. If you were on Earth now, no one would ever guess that you hadn’t always lived there and made love like a man.”

Now it’s his turn to cry. I don’t stop caressing his hair. I still have nightmares from my own abduction so I understand. But my experience is nothing compared to his decade long imprisonment here. I can’t imagine how he must feel and I feel inadequate that all I can offer him is my body and my sympathy.

When his emotions run their course, he begins kissing my neck, my cheeks, then his lips brush mine with a quiet desperation, as though he’s afraid I’ll vanish the moment he blinks. I savor the warmth of his mouth, the press of his body, but I can sense his unease.

“Suis-je encore un homme? Ou est-ce que j’agis comme… eux?” His eyes shine with a suggestion of fear. I don’t know what he’s saying, but he sounds lost. I don’t want to ruin the moment by asking, ‘What?’ so I just hope he’ll realize he wasn’t speaking English.

I cradle his face, my thumb stroking the line of his jaw, my fingers caressing his well-groomed beard assuming that this is still about his insecurities of not being human enough. “You’re every bit as human as I am,” I murmur, my own heart pounding. “Nothing about you is alien. Not this.” I guide his hand to rest over my heartbeat. “You feel that? It’s real, and it beats for you Gabriel.”

“J’ai tellement peur d’avoir tout oublié… My life before captivity, before they trained me to act a certain way.” He bites his lip, shaking his head. “I worry I can’t remember how to be a man, not just a—pet.”

A pang of sorrow tugs at me. “Gabriel,” I say, drawing him close until our foreheads touch, “I’ve never seen you as a pet, only a man in a bad situation.”

“Merci, ma chérie,” he whispers, eyes closing in a rush of relief. Slowly, he begins to kiss me again.

It’s such a simple act, two humans reveling in a stolen moment of freedom, but for us, it’s everything.

“Je t’aime, Briar.” The French phrase is ironically one of the only sentences I know in French.

“I love you, too,” I whisper, holding him tight.

He replies by kissing my chin, my neck, then my shoulders and then takes my breast and sucks on my nipple, while his other hand cups my other breast, kneading it in his palm.

“I want to taste you; I don’t know if this is what human men want as well? But I can’t stop myself.”

“They do,” I assure him. “If they like a woman they do.”

“Good,” he says kissing his way down to my belly and then my abdomen. “I need this from you,” he says in between kisses. “I have to.”

I lean back with anticipation as he settles himself between my legs. Then he begins circling my clit with his hot tongue and I already feel my body begin to open to him in a way that’s different than sex. As if I’m allowing him this pleasure of tasting me, of bringing me to orgasm.

Gabriel is apt at cunnilingus more than any man on Earth I was ever with, but I would never tell him that. The last thing he wants to hear is that Aefre trained him well in this too. And for a moment, I feel guilty, as this lie is for my own pleasure.

But soon I can’t think about anything. Gabriel has my body on a thin wire, just holding me steady on the verge of an ultimate climax.

From between my legs he says, “Tell me you want me to make you orgasm like this.”

“Gabriel, please make me come by licking my pussy,” I breathe out the words, almost unable to speak.

“ Merci, ma chérie, ” he says quickly and then within seconds has my body writhing against his mouth and hands. Pulling the orgasm through my body with expertise until I have nothing left to give and am completely sated. Afterward, he kisses his way back up to my mouth, aftershocks still coursing through my body and he holds me close to him, caressing my hair.

I look over to make sure Gabriel’s still awake and then ask, “Tell me about this Gael the Returner. Fifi told you about him, right?”

He nods against my naked body. “After we won the Championships last year. She wanted to find him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was foolishly proud. Proud of what we’d done, of the UCs we’d won. Aefre lets me keep them. Not every trainer does that. I believed at the time that this pet life was fine. That it was enough.”

“What changed?”

Gabriel doesn’t answer right away. His hand goes to his collar, his fingers brushing over it lightly. “I haven’t told you the truth about what happened to Fifi,” he says, his voice strained. “There was a challenge called the Bond Breaker. We’d never done it before. We weren’t prepared. They… the judges made it seem like it was real in the same way the holographs we face in the language learning program are real. Like we were trapped, like she was in danger, but it was all holograms. At least, I thought it was. These things…” He taps the collar. “They make you feel and see things you’d never come up with on your own. It can be confusing.”

“What happened?” I whisper, not sure I want to know.

“I wasn’t prepared for the deceptions I’d face in the Bond Breaker,” he says, his voice cracking slightly. “I thought it was a trick. But it wasn’t. She died, Briar. And I left her to die. She begged me to save her in that arena and not only did I let her die, I was given both of our prize money, but I didn’t save her. I should have saved her.”

I stare at him, the weight of his words settling over me. “You left her to die?”

“I thought she was an illusion. I thought the real Fifi must be somewhere in the challenge fighting her way out just like I was. But it was the real Fifi in front of me. Do you believe me?” His amber eyes bore into mine seeking forgiveness. But I don’t know if I can give it.

Would he leave me to die for UCs? Am I here now with him only because Fifi died in that arena and it’s her money we are paying off the attendants with to have sex. That sounds terrible, when I think it. Suddenly, the weight of all of this bears down on me and I look away from him to gather my thoughts.

“I wouldn’t leave you, Briar. You have to believe me. I didn’t want Fifi to die. I was so confused. This place,” he motions his arms around wildly. “This fucking place. Nothing is real that Aefre doesn’t say is real.”

“Am I real?” I ask.

“You’re the only thing I know that is real, Briar. You’re so fucking real, and that’s why I want out,” Gabriel says, drawing me into a kiss. I taste the salt of his silent tears on my lips. “I swear, if you and I ever face the Bond Breaker, I’ll know it’s you. We have a connection—un lien—Fifi and I never shared. Maybe that’s why I failed her in the Bond Breaker. Maybe… maybe I should have known.”

I touch his cheek. “You feel real to me too.” Hesitating a moment, I ask, “If we win the Grand Championships and earn all those UCs, are you still willing to risk our future with this stranger, Gael?”

“ Oui, Briar. I want freedom—with you. We deserve more than this endless cycle of training, collars, and cages. We deserve to decide what is real and what is not.”

I pull back slightly, memories of my time with other aliens swirling in my head. “I’m afraid,” I admit. “Aefre is… predictable. Safe, in his own way. He’s never really hurt me. Out there, everything’s uncertain.”

“Nothing about what we’ve lived through is truly safe. It’s just… familiar. We can do better than familiar. We can have a life that’s our own. But I understand, I was where you are last year, so I’m asking you to be brave and trust me.”

I close my eyes. “I… I’ll try to be brave.”

His hands find mine. “Nous le ferons ensemble,” he promises. “We’ll do it together.”