Slave by Cheryl Brooks Page A

to me that he might have been remembering the ring being put in—which couldn’t have been fun, and I seriously doubted that whoever did that to him had bothered to use a local anesthetic. “Are you okay?” I asked.
    He swallowed hard and sat down heavily in the nearest chair. “No,” he replied.
    So, of course, I just had to ask, “If you don’t mind my asking, how on Earth did they get you to hold still for that?”
    His glittering eyes avoided mine for once and he stared down at the floor as he spoke. “My master choked me with the collar until I passed out after I lunged at him when he informed me that he was not going to set me free as he had promised, but intended to sell me at auction. When I regained consciousness, I was strapped to a table with the other restraints already in place and they were getting ready to put in the ring. It was sharp and red hot to cauterize the wound. Then they melted it together with a torch. It was…” He paused, wincing and blinking rapidly at the memory of the pain. “…the worst thing that had ever been done to me.”
    I looked at all the scars that covered what should have been a truly superb body and started crying all over again. Up until that day, I thought my tear ducts didn’t
work anymore, but now I was pretty sure that they worked just fine.
    His hands started shaking then and he dropped the bolt cutters. Obviously, he was not going to be able to do it himself. I dashed the tears from my eyes and picked up the tool. Then I remembered that great stuff I’d found on Derivia.
    “Hold on a minute,” I told him. “I’ll be right back.”
    I went into the bathroom and found the tube of ointment without too much trouble—my bathroom was a little neater than the storeroom, though not by much— and returned quickly.
    “This is the best stuff ever! It prevents infection and relieves the pain just like that!” I said with a snap of my fingers. “It makes cuts and scrapes heal up almost overnight, too. Somebody gave me a tube of it when I got a little banged up on Derivia, and I liked it so well I bought several cases of it. It sells very well on other worlds, too.” Noticing his questioning look, I went on to explain, “I’m a trader, Kittycat. It’s what I do for a living—aside from chasing after my sister.”
    He nodded dumbly and just sat there. Obviously, I was going to have to do most of the dirty work here. I leaned over and applied a good-sized dollop of it to his penis. “We’ll just let that set for a minute, and then you should be able to get the ring out without any problem.”
    I waited for about five minutes and hoped he’d be able to relax enough to do it himself, but there were scars on this man that weren’t visible to the eye. He simply couldn’t do it. So I did. It wasn’t that hard to cut through the ring, but it did seem to be sort of stuck—though
whether from dried blood or cauterized tissue, I couldn’t be sure. I bent the ring open and slipped it out after lubricating it a bit with the ointment.
    “Thank you.” The words were clear, but his head was still lowered.
    “Hey,” I said gently, taking his chin in my hand and raising his face to look into his eyes. “You will never be abused like that again—at least not while you’re with me, Kittycat. I can promise you that.” I felt an overwhelming desire to kiss him just then, but I stifled it, just as I stifled most of my desires. They’d been on hold for so long already, a little longer wouldn’t make much difference. Besides, anytime I’d ever let my emotions rule me, my business dealings had suffered, and I couldn’t afford to let myself slip up now, not when I was so close to finding Ranata.
    So, instead of kissing him, I decided it might be best if I introduced myself. “My name is Jacinth Rutland,” I said, holding out my hand. “Welcome aboard the Jolly Roger.”
    Not being native to Earth, he probably hadn’t gotten the joke, but he probably didn’t feel