Chapter 8
When Drako comes around, he’s still tied up, but he’s at our camp.
“Are you just going to carry me around with you?” He asks the question in a very snide tone.
“Drag you,” I say.
We reset the trap. I am hoping that we catch something we can actually eat this time. Drako is watching of course, and he has something to say. Something manipulative.
“You two look hungry. Untie me and I will help you find some edible roots. I’ll even help you cook them so they don’t leach poison into your bodies and kill you slowly.”
Thor and I look at one another, considering the offer.
“We cannot trust him,” I say.
“We have to,” Thor says. I don’t know why the fuck he thinks we ‘have’ to do anything when it comes to Jarl Drako.
“But we really don’t,” I respond.
“You must be hungry. Haven’t eaten in coming up on a day.
Boiling water to try to deal with the cravings won’t last long.
As you start to get weak, the predators of this place will come and pick you off.
There are all kinds of scavengers on this world.
There are three edible plants in range of you right now, and two that will see you die shitting yourselves. ”
“He’s lying,” I say.
“You two are like babies in these woods. We lost a dozen men in the first week here just to mushrooms. The odds of you surviving without my hope are miniscule. You don’t know what this planet is capable of. The horrors that it gives rise to at every dawn and every dusk…”
“Seems fine so far,” I say. “You’re the only horror I’ve met.”
“You can tell us what to eat without being untied,” Thor says. “And we can feed you what we want to eat first, so you have a reason to be honest.”
I feel a creeping inkling of respect for him returning. That is actually smart.
“Start digging around the roots of the big tree with the violet bark. You’ll find some little blue round shrooms there,” Drako says.
I do as he suggests, and sure enough, I find what feels like a little cache of gems, but they’re edible. The notion of surviving the evening is starting to become more concrete.
“Cook it well,” Drako says. “Any trace of raw flesh leads to very unpleasant results.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “You’ll get the first taste.”
When we think we’ve cooked it all properly, we load it onto a plate that Thor salvaged and I carry it over to Drako. I scoop up a spoonful and direct it toward his face. He’s sat up a bit now, so he can eat without choking. A very merciful accommodation, I think.
“Open up,” I say. “The airplane wants to land.”
His eyes flash with fury. I laugh at him as he smolders in his bindings.
“Eat the mushroom,” Thor insists. “Or I’ll force it down your throat.”
See, this is working. Bad cop. Worse cop.
Drako reluctantly lets me feed him the mushroom, well, mush.
“One of these days I’ll feed you my cock,” he promises me.
“Talk to me like that again and I’ll cut it off and feed it to you first,” I reply.
Drako laughs, a slight manic tone to his voice. “You were born to the wrong society,” he says. “You are as feral as they come.”
I do not smile, because I am not joking. I know what was going to happen to me before Thor rescued me. I know what would be happening to me right fucking now if I had not been saved. He would be violating me repeatedly, using me as a captive fuck slave.
“Come over here,” Thor says. “I don’t want you next to him.”
We sit down and we wait to see if anything terrible happens to Drako.
I don’t know how long we are planning to wait.
Really, it should be twenty-four hours, but we are too hungry for that.
We have to count on the fact that he ate them at all, and maybe give it a little longer to see if he looks a bit sick.
“How long did you two fuck for?” Drako asks the question casually.
“Quiet,” Thor growls at him.
“Not long enough for your liking,” Drako says. “And now she doesn’t want you. Even after you saved her from a fate worse than death. Interesting, isn’t it. You must have really fucked up, Golden Boy.”
“Keep talking, and I’ll gag you,” Thor says.
My stomach growls. My patience is waning. The same instincts that make for a terrible dinner guest are exactly why humans are good at surviving in the wild, I discover.
“I’m going to eat,” I say. “If I die, I die.”
I grab one of the mushrooms and shove it into my mouth. It tastes like charred dirt, but it is food.
Thor gives me an irritated look. “There is a chain of command,” he says.
“No, there’s not. We crashed, and I wasn’t meant to be there anyway. Prisoners don’t follow chain of command.”
And that’s how I end up getting my bare ass spanked in front of Drako.
Thor grabs me and upends me over his lap, handling me like I don’t weigh anything at all. I am starting to get sick of being light as a feather to these massive meaty men and their somehow even bigger hands.
He yanks my pants down and starts to spank me.
“I am sorry you were handled harshly,” he says. “I was, anyway. Now I am not so sure there is any point in showing you mercy. He’s right that you’re feral. I don’t know how. You come from a good family. You have good siblings…”
All the while he is lecturing me, his hand is landing on my ass over and over, harsh slaps turning my skin bright red and super sensitive.
I try not to cry out, not to react. I don’t want to give Thor the satisfaction of knowing this is getting to me.
And I definitely don’t want Drako to enjoy any bit of this.
I can’t believe Thor is doing it in front of him.
“Let me fucking go!”
“No. You’re mine. I don’t care if you weren’t on the crew manifest…”
“Oh, really? Because it seemed like you cared a whole fucking lot. Seemed like you were willing to have me beaten by the captain and sent to the fucking brig for the duration. And now you’re… let me fucking go!”
He doesn’t let me go. He slaps my ass even harder, until I shriek out in pain and fury.
“Say sorry,” he says.
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry for the disobedience,” he says. “I want you to do as you are told. I need you to follow orders. It’s the only way we are all going to get the hell out of here alive.”
“Get fucked,” I throw back over my shoulder.
“The branches from that tree over there lend themselves to a thorough thrashing,” Drako says casually. “As does my belt, if you’d care to take it off.”
“Shut up! Nobody is asking you!”
I hope Thor also tells him to be quiet. Maybe gags him. And blindfolds him.
“You should gag and blindfold him,” I say, playing exactly the same game Drako is playing, trying to use Thor to torture the other one. “He’s enjoying getting to see you do this to me.”
What Thor says next fucking floors me.
“Go over there and take his belt,” Thor says. “Then bring it to me. He’s right. You need to be taken properly in hand.”
“What the fuck? No! You go take it off if you want it so badly.”
Thor releases me and gives me a hard smack on the bare ass before I can drag my pants back up. I want to run into the forest and escape this domination, but I am too well aware of the dangers around me.
“You could untie me,” Drako suggests. “Then I could take off my own belt.”
“Why would I release you?” Thor says.
“Because you are going to anyway. You’ve already decided to keep me alive and I am more use to you when I am able to move. Having a disobedient female around is going to cause us both problems,” Drako says. “Untie me, brother. She knows to fear me.”
“And she will know to fear me too,” Thor replies. “Go and get his belt, little one, or I will untie him, and he will use it on you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
My eyes go wide, as I realize he’s actually serious.
“If you untie him, he won’t punish me. He’ll kill us both. Or he’ll kill you, then do a bunch of terrible things to me, or he’ll do them first, then…”
“She does have quite the imagination, doesn’t she,” Drako chuckles dryly.
“It’s not imagination. You wanted to torture someone to death.”
“Go and get his belt,” Thor repeats.
“You want me to touch him? You want me that close to him? What if he bites me and tears into my jugular with his bare teeth?”
“By the gods, girl,” Thor sighs. “You refuse to obey under any circumstances.”
“He killed your entire crew,” I remind him. “He gave the order to shoot our ship down. Am I that annoying that you’d let a mass murderer have freedom just to punish me?”
Thor gives me a long look. “You’re right,” he says finally. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You should kill him. He killed everyone else,” I say.
“Letting him live is letting their deaths be in vain. We have no guarantee that we will be rescued. We could all die tomorrow. But you’re letting him have an extra day of life, and a chance to talk his way out.
He could escape his bonds in the night and kill us both… ”
“That’s enough,” Thor says firmly. “I don’t want to hear a dozen arguments for killing a bound man. It’s cowardly, and I won’t do it, no matter how much he might deserve it. We have honor. That is what distinguishes us from them.”
He lets me go, thank fuck, and we share the mushrooms. They’re still not good. But they are food. Thor sits down for a bit afterward and closes his eyes. He says he’s not going to sleep, but I know he’s exhausted as I am, and he’s bigger, so he needs more rest.
When he starts to breathe slow and deep, I know he’s asleep. I plan to do something terrible then, but the need for a nap overtakes me. I wake up late in the evening, with dusk gathering quickly. Thor is still asleep.
I sneak over to Drako, kneel down, and whisper in his ear. “Get fucked, loser,” I say. “You’re going to die like this, tied up like a helpless little animal.”
“You keep taunting me,” he growls back. “But we both know you want your pussy wrapped around my cock. You’re not trying to get me killed. You’re trying to provoke me into escaping these ropes and punishing your pussy. Don’t worry, girl. You’ll get the rough use that you crave.”