In a flash, Fox pulled the riding crop from a specially designed pocket of his bathrobe and slashed the kneeling woman across the face. “You bitch!” he screamed. “When you knew you weren’t conceiving, why didn’t you turn Wyndam back to stud?”
An angry red welt appeared on the woman’s left cheek, and beads of blood were beginning to well up through the reddened skin. “He didn’t want—”
“Don’t fuck with me!” the baron roared, striking her again with the crop, this time with a backhand stroke that put a matching red line on her right cheek.
She shook her head. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, similar tears of blood leaving red streaks down her cheeks. “He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with me. He—”
Fox raised his hand again. “Don’t even think of saying it.”
“—loves me,” she said, her face flush with anger. “He loves me and I love—”
Fox didn’t let her finish. He struck her again and again with the riding crop about the head, neck and shoulders, much harder than before. Her T-shirt shredded and fell from her shoulders, exposing her breasts. Fox slashed at them, too, putting a series of X-like gashes across her chest.
“I don’t want to hear talk like that…ever!” Fox bellowed. He was in the business of making and trading slaves, of selling babies and love wasn’t allowed. Love destroyed everything, as evidenced by this over-the-hill bitch’s romantic notion of living happily ever after. She’d figured that if she didn’t get heavy she’d be able to spend more nights with Wyndam. She was right, of course, but the arrangement could never last long. At her age, five months without getting heavy and her days as a breeder were over. Same for Wyndam. Five months without siring a child, and he’d be on the next slave convoy out of Fox Farm. Then it would be six months to a year working in some mill or refinery and by then it would be time to board the last train west. And all for some triple-stupe notion like love.
The woman lay in a crumpled heap at the baron’s feet. He turned to Bauer, who had stood by impassively while Fox had administered the beating. “Take her to the sec men’s lounge. Tell them they can do what they like with her until the next convoy moves out.”
Bauer nodded. “Any restrictions?”
Fox shook his head. “No, just that if anyone chills her they’ll have to answer to me.”
“And what about Wyndam?”
“Put him in the sec cell overlooking the lounge. Let him watch what happens to lovers on Fox Farm.”
Bauer gave a little smile. “And after she moves out?”
“Give him a beating, then put him back in circulation. But keep an eye on him. He might get difficult.”
Bauer went to the door and summoned a pair of sec men into the room. “Take her to the lounge. And don’t chill her.”
“All right.”
“And while you’re having fun with her, find Jon Wyndam and put him in a cell with a view of the lounge so he gets a good look of his sweetheart in action.”
“Lovers?” the first sec man asked.
Bauer nodded.
“Stupe bastards,” the sec man muttered as he dragged the former breeder out of the office.
When they’d left, Baron Fox adjusted his bathrobe, retied the sash around his waist and sat behind the large oak desk in the center of his office. To his right was a foot-high pile of predark hard-core skin mags that specialized in fetishes, everything from lingerie and leather to bondage and domination. He pulled a mag off the top of the pile and opened it to a familiar pictorial in which a dark-haired woman dressed in a black corselette and stockings had her wrists bound behind her back with a heavy-gauge rope. In some of the pictures she was being whipped by a cat-o’-ninetails. But while Fox found that exciting enough on its own, it was the spread’s final six photos that really aroused his curiosity. In each of the photos the woman was covered in blue-and-red wax, as if a burning candle had been held over her and allowed to leak hot wax onto her breasts, thighs and buttocks. Fox had wanted to duplicate the scene for months now, but quality candles were as difficult to find as working blasters, especially colored candles. He’d traded his human stock for a decent stockpile of weapons of all types, and was finally confident he had enough firepower to protect his operation from any outside attack. So maybe on the next trade mission to the east he might try to cut a deal for a few colored candles. If not, he could always use molten lead, which, as he thought about it, might even be more interesting than wax.