THERE WAS a single knock on the door before it opened.
Ryan had been sitting on the edge of the bed and only had time to dive to the floor between the bed and the wall. His SIG-Sauer was in his hand and ready to fire, but he resisted the temptation to rise up with his blaster blazing. He’d be able to take out the first sec men, but there would be more coming through the door without another way out of the cabin.
“What is it?” Maurice asked. “You’ve already been through here twice today.”
Ryan slid under the bed and looked out from beneath it through a slit in the overhanging sheets.
The sec man had ignored Maurice’s comment and was looking at Debby, who was still lying on the bed. “You,” he said to her. “Let’s go!”
“Go where?” she asked, dutifully getting up from the bed and putting on a bathrobe. “What have I done?”
“Nothing wrong,” said the sec man. “You’re going to see the baron.”
Debby looked over at Maurice with a pained expression, then at the bed where Ryan had been only second before. “Is it a celebration? Did they find the one-eye?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why is the baron calling for me?”
“Not the baron, sec chief Grundwold,” the sec man said. “He wants the baron kept busy while we continue the search.”
“Oh, my pleasure,” Debby cooed, in what Ryan knew were words solely for the sec man’s benefit. She was in love with Maurice and he was in love with her, but they could never admit it. Not yet, anyway.
“Let’s go.”
At the door she stopped, turned back to face Maurice and said, “If you get busy tonight, please don’t forget about me. Don’t leave me behind.”
“Never,” Maurice said.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Baron Fox was lying back on his round, oversize bed, looking through another stack of predark hard-core skin mags. This one was called Dominas and featured naked and provocatively dressed breeders subjugating men in a variety of different ways.
The baron turned the page and there were two women, one dressed in red, the other dressed in black, standing on a naked man. Each of the women wore spike-heeled shoes and the heels were pressing into the man’s flesh, threatening to break the skin at any moment. In photo after photo they moved slightly so that their deadly shoes pressed against the man’s arms, throat and face. In the last photo, the woman in black had taken her shoes off and was smothering the man with her stocking-covered feet. The man seemed to be turning red from lack of oxygen, but like in all the other photos, he had an enormous erection.
Here were breeders acting as he would, as the baron. The men in the photos were the slaves, happy to be humiliated, punished, physically injured, by the wickedly evil breeders.
The baron wondered if he might be able to experience such a thrill. It was unlikely, since he was the baron and if he let himself be dominated by any of his breeders, it would be looked upon as a sign of weakness. He’d been able to keep Grundwold in line, but if the man detected a weakness, he could use it to his advantage.
Perhaps, the baron thought, he could subject himself to such breeders, and then chill them, so that they would take what they knew of the baron to the grave with them. It was certainly a possibility, one that would prevent Grundwold from learning that his baron could be controlled under the right circumstances. Just then there was a knock on the door. “Enter,” the baron said. He’d been expecting Norman Bauer, but was surprised to see a sec man enter. “What is it?”
“Breeders, Baron,” the sec man said nervously.
“I never asked for any breeders,” the baron said, putting the skin mag aside for now and rising from his bed.
The sec man let the two breeders enter the baron’s quarters. They were attractive, perhaps on the heavy side, but good breeders. Good rutters, too, the baron admitted, as the larger one had visited him before. “Sec chief Grundwold sent them, sir.”