The Food Girl

Cel's heart pounded in her chest. Fright and excitement and self-recrimination spun in circles in her head.

She really ought to go home. She should never have come out alone in the first place. Father had ordered her never to go out alone, many times, and very firmly, in his special lord voice, and that should have been enough.

Instead, here she was, cowering in the back of a tavern where anyone could walk by, putting herself in terrible danger — and it was all because she was such an incorrigible snoop.

She couldn't help it. Cel was terribly curious about the outside world, as any young woman who'd almost never left her home might be. Until now, she'd always indulged her curiosity through the acceptable anonymity of the net.

She spent hours every day in chat hubs with her friends, discussing books and movies — and especially fashion, which had grown to consume her dreams and her copious free time.

Her indulgent parents showered her with materials and equipment, and she had even begun to sell some of her clothing to clients she met on those hubs. She knew she could never become a famous designer, but it filled her heart to be able to contribute something back to her household's meager finances.

By age 20, a normal prolet girl would have been earning her keep for years. She tossed that thought in the wastebasket where it belonged. Cel was not normal. She never would be. Anyone could see that, if they looked into her eyes.

She tried to pull her hood down even further over her face. It didn't really work.

Anyway, Cel had never wanted to be a prolet girl. Not once she learned what they went through on their menstrual cycle every month. Yuck!

Where was Ruszh? He was over half an hour late, now. Maybe he wasn't coming. Maybe this had all been a prank.

If he's not coming, you can go, she thought. You really, really ought to go.

So why couldn't she make herself get up? Because Ruszh was a high lord. One of the highest, in fact. Heir to a house that ruled half a continent. And she was a shifon, lowest of the low, genetically programmed for absolute loyalty to his caste. Among other things.

And, like an idiot, she'd let her curiosity — her, to be frank, nasty penchant for cyberstalking her net friends — lead her into a trap of her own making.

Ruszh hadn't been the first friend who'd invited her to a real life meeting. It was common, she knew, for net friends to become something more. Not for her. She'd become adept at brushing off those temptations.

She should never have been able to find out his true identity — but she'd become adept at that, too, she thought with a hint of pride. She knew the real names and faces of many of her friends. She had spent hours fantasizing about their real, ordinary prolet lives, about seeing and touching them.

So lost she had become in the voyeuristic thrill of it, that she hadn't realized until too late that his amiable invitation to meet at this trashy high-caste dive had attained, in her brain, the leaden force of a high lordly command.

Cel could no more refuse his summons than stop her own heart in its frantic beating.

"My parents would never let me go out to meet a stranger I met on the net," she'd protested.

Fool. It had only made things worse.

"Then don't tell them, little modiste," he'd texted back, every word digging her hole deeper. "Let it be our secret."

Excitement had warred with dread ever since. Mostly dread. She had tried every trick she could think of to spill the beans to her parents. If she could just drop a hint, then maybe they could save her from herself.

Well, maybe High Lord Ruszh had saved her from himself.

He'd blown her off. That much was clear. Why would a high lord bother to keep an appointment with a rando he knew only from some chat server, anyway? A few flirtatious messages and a shared interest in the subtle language of fabric and seam could not take precedence over the constant duties of his position.

Every minute here only increased her peril. Seedy and tackily designed as it was, this was clearly, in its own way, a high-end establishment — the sort that catered to men who could afford to go slumming. Lords, any of whom who could destroy her with a word.

Cel forced herself to stand. She could leave. She needed to leave. He wasn't coming.

She made for the exit, wrapping herself tightly in her mantle. It was one of the shabby dark grey ones her mother wore when she needed to go out in the world. Like Cel, mom was a shifon. Like Cel, she never, ever went out without dad to protect her.

Stupid, stupid…

She glanced around at the huddled customers, mostly peti lord military officers on leave — compelled to confirm one last time that she hadn't missed her lord's arrival.

A hand fell on her shoulder.

"Looking for someone, honey?"

"Yes, my lord," she answered, not turning around, but compelled to honesty by the mere microtones of his noble accent, so much like her father's. "But he didn't show. I have to go, please."

"That's a shame," said another noble officer, a young fleet lieutenant, shaking his head with a sympathetic smile. "Rude, even, to stand up a pretty girl like that."

She attempted to shrug off the hand and walk on. It was essential that she get out of this bar, away from these dangerous men. She'd even spotted another shifon here — a blue-skinned boy about her age, wearing little but a tattoo shaped like the logo of the bar. He'd been sharing a table with some noble customer, but had since followed the man to a back room.

If they saw her…

The hand that had fallen from her shoulder grabbed her by the wrist.

"Hey! Your whole night doesn't have to be ruined just cause of one loser."

"Yeah," said the friendly fleet lieutenant. "Pull up a chair. Join us."

Cel froze. Get out. Get out! But there was indeed an extra chair by the men's table. Obediently, terrified, she sat.

There were four of them, all junior officers of various grades, all peti lords.

"She can't be that pretty if she's afraid to show her face," snorted a stubble-faced sub-commander with his military tunic half-unbuttoned, collar turned at a jaunty angle, showing off the cut of his fine silk undershirt.

"Take off your hood, darling, let's get a look at you."

"Yes, my lord," Cel breathed.

Nerves wailing in futile resistance, she let the cowl fall to her shoulders.

She had her long hair tied back, but a few stray strands loosed themselves, curling about her face like pastel rainbows. Her hair naturally grew in a shimmer of blue and green, yellow and pink and purple.

Cel was proud of her hair. It was, she knew, beautiful, like everything else about her exquisitely engineered body: her opalescent fingernails; her silvery, unblemished skin, which blushed sunset pink at the slightest provocation; her artfully curved form, large-breasted, soft-bellied, broad-hipped.

Around the table, eyebrows rose.

"Is she a—?"

A man plucked the large sunglasses from her face.

"Hah!" he huffed. "Yeah. A fuckin' purp."

Purp. A nasty word for her kind. Not all shifons had the stereotypical fuchsia irises, but Cel did. No one of any other caste would ever wear such a telltale mark of inferiority.

But her heart buoyed slightly. Was that a decline in their interest level? Maybe she could still escape.

"Please, lords, may I continue on my way?"

"Now, hang on, honey," said the lieutenant. "You are very pretty, and we did come here to get laid."

"Speak for yourself," said his companion. "I just wanted a drink."

"Prolet sluts are more fun," belched the man who'd called her a purp. "They can say no."

"That's your idea of fun, is it?"

Before long, Cel found herself sitting in one of the men's laps, his hand casually squeezing her breast, and what she guessed to be his half-hard prick pressing against her ass. She'd never touched a cock of any hardness level before, and there were a few layers of fabric in the way, so she knew it was not a very educated guess.

Please, let me remain uneducated.

They were arguing over how to pay for her services now.

"I told you, she's not listed on the bar net!"

"You're drunk, Fern."

Another of the men unzipped the fly of his trousers, and patted his lap, catching Cel's eye.

"C'mere, darling, and suck me off," he smirked. "I'm tired of waiting for these clowns."

Ought she to warn him that she was new to this?

Cel slipped from the lap of the man holding her. She could still escape. I want to go home!

But this man was a lord, and he had told her what he wanted of her, and that was that. The easiest way to get her mouth to his cock seemed to be to slide down and crawl under the table to him, which she did. She took his hardening instrument in her hand.

She was, Cel noted with some detachment as she wrapped her lips around this strange man's prick, acutely aroused. This didn't surprise her. All shifons were genetically programmed with an extremely active sex drive, and a tendency towards an arousal that could not be disturbed from its course by pain, revulsion, or stomach-knotting terror.

The briefest erotic thought or touch to her sensitive places usually sent her spiraling. At home, this meant frequent changes of underwear were a must, and Cel could feel hers sticking wetly to her cunt now.

All this was no great trouble for her mother, who had a loving husband eager to satisfy her, but it had been a source of much teenage angst for lonely Cel.

Dad had forbidden her, in his lord voice, to look at porn, and that was that. But there was more than enough titillation in the regular media she consumed to send her sex drive into high gear, and Cel spent a considerable portion of her free time masturbating.

Sometimes, her drawing and sewing could distract her. Other times, she had to clutch a pillow between her thighs while she worked, rubbing it slowly against her cunt for what relief it could provide.

The creators of the shifons had thought of that, too, however, and had engineered in them a need for a lord's permission to orgasm — the better, Cel supposed, to keep us from spending our bullets while our masters are away.

Usually, wracked with frustrated pleasure, she gave up. In moments of desperation, Cel had even considered asking her father for that lordly permission, but she didn't think it would go over well.

Then there had been the rare moments of pure bliss, when she had managed to conjure up a fantasy high lord, the one who existed only in the best romances, noble, beautiful, and kind — and so vivid, so real that she only needed his imaginary assent to explode into a thousand stars.

This officer was not much like her fantasy lord, but he was a lord, and she owed him her best effort. Dutifully, tentatively, she moved her mouth up and down on his cock, firming her tongue against him, glancing up for feedback, testing for what would bring him satisfaction.

The smell of him that filled her nostrils was only slightly stale, and it pricked her with a shivering electricity that earthed itself deep in her belly. Her ass was wedged up against the table leg, and she fought back the urge to press her soaking cunt against it.

Home. She had to get home. Maybe this was all it would be, and she could escape and wash the sour taste of this evening from her mind.

"Hey!" shouted the barman, striding over. He, too, was a petit lord, perhaps a retired officer — a younger son from a lesser family if he had to keep a mercantile profession. "You don't bring outside girls in here! Out! Out!"

There was a sharp pain, as the barman dragged Cel upright by her hair. Her scalp throbbed in agony, and her cunt pulsed in harmony with the hurt.

"Gutter purp," he wheezed, "Poaching my customers! Out!"

Tears stung her eyes, but Cel stumbled to her feet and allowed herself to be hustled to the door, followed by the four confused and indignant officers.

***

Cel wiped her mouth and her eyes on her sleeve, attempting to back away into a shadow.

They were in an alley behind a side street that led to the busy shopping strip where she sometimes went fabric shopping with her father. If she could slip away while the men argued…

"You idiot, she obviously didn't work there…"

"Who cares? This is better, right. She doesn't work there, that means she's free."

No use trying for subtlety. Not this close. She began to run.

"Wait up, honey!" one of the men called. "We're not done with you."

Cel skidded to a halt on the cobblestones, cursing herself. Too slow.

"Yes, my lord," she panted.

"What are you doing wearing this shit, anyway? Purps don't need all these clothes."

Striding up to her, the man ripped her mother's simple brooch from her chest, shredding the pinned corner of her mantle, which pooled on the ground around her feet.

"Some freak has got this purp dressed like a high-caste slut," mused one of the men, his lips curling.

Cel backed away slightly, but couldn't quite make herself run again. The men's lordly compulsion made her feel stiff, useless, unable to operate her own muscles, like in a bad dream. But if they wanted her, what right did she have to wish that it were not so?

"On your knees, purp."

She fell to her knees in the gutter. At least they were cushioned by the fallen mantle.

"Who put you in this getup, honey?"

"I did, my lord," Cel said proudly.

She had designed and sewn the dress all by herself. Her father didn't approve of the use of sheer fabric that showed off her breasts, but mom had told her she looked very sexy in it, and that was right, because whatever else Cel was, she was a shifon.

But in deference to her father's eccentric views about everyone being the same, no matter what caste they'd been born to, Cel had — daringly, she thought — incorporated stylistic elements from the fashion traditions of every caste.

The dress was cut in an avant-garde prolet style reminiscent of one worn by Cel's favorite singer, with a high waist and slit at the hip. But it was in subdued high lady colors, and featured peti lady–style embroidery around the hem. She had even stitched a house insignia into the collar, like servets in the great manors of the high lords wore on their jackets, except it was an imaginary house of her own devising.

"No, I mean, who's your master?"

Cel was freed from the obligation to answer that alarming question when the stubble-faced man stepped forward impatiently and pressed his prick to her lips.

"Suck it, purp," he ordered, but she had already taken his approach as an implicit command, and perforce opened her mouth to take him in. "There you go, honey."

"Hey!" whined his friend. "I was talking to her."

"That's not what a purp's mouth is for, now, is it, honey?"

She glanced up at the man, whose fingers were in her hair, controlling her rhythm.

Good, she thought. It'll be over sooner if he shows me how to do it the way he wants it.

It will be over. They'll finish, and they'll let me go. I hope.

The lieutenant was unzipping his trousers behind her, and he unceremoniously rucked her skirts up about her waist and drew down her sticky drawers. He lifted her hips to meet his cock, and slid inside her cunt with a satisfied sigh.

At least she wasn't really the wayward prolet girl they'd taken her for at first. Her shifon genes would protect her from disease or pregnancy.

Cel had always known that something like this might happen to her at any time. Even just being separated from her father in a street crowd could do it. It was a constant anxiety, and, at times, a secret fantasy that had ridden in the back of her mind all her life, ever since she'd been old enough to truly understand that she was different.

How many times had she lain in her bed, fingers on her clit, picturing this loss of control, the helpless terror, as her true purpose — a mere object for the gratification of noble men — asserted itself.

She ought to hate these men, for putting such terror in her. But it was their right to do with her whatever they liked, and what more proof was needed than the fact that she would agree to anything they asked of her?

It made more sense to hate herself, her weakness, how perfectly her body fit theirs, how arousal and pleasure surged in her as they abused her.

On the net, Cel had commiserated with prolet girls whose boyfriends didn't know or care to please them during sex, and she had reassured herself that she wasn't missing anything, all stuck in her empty bedroom every night.

But there was no such reassurance for her now. She was a shifon, a born slut, and the cock filling her cunt did things to her that her fingers never could.

Even the man fucking her mouth seemed to unlock something deep inside her. His fingers had tightened in her hair, forcing her down harder and deeper, battering her throat painfully and interrupting her breathing. But the ache seemed to shoot right through to her thrumming clit. She was pretty sure that didn't happen for those prolet girls.

She wasn't exactly sure why the creators of her kind had felt the need to make her service so physically pleasing to her. The men fucking her obviously weren't concerned about how she felt about it. Perhaps some lords felt otherwise. Or perhaps it was just deemed necessary to her loyalty programming.

Drool dripped down her chin and stretched in long sticky strands each time he drew back for a thrust, and she knew that her cunt was making just as much of a mess around the other man's prick.

And when the stubble faced man's eyes softened, and his lips parted in a moan, and he began to come inside her mouth, for a moment he looked to her like a true high lord, like in the cheesiest movies, and she would have sworn that she never tasted anything so fine.

Then he thrust into her mouth as far as he could go, releasing deep in her throat, and Cel was forced to shut her weeping eyes and try not to choke as her nose was pressed into his pubic hair.

She fell gasping onto her spread-out mantle when they left her, and the third man approached.

With his boot, her rolled her over onto her back, and he lay upon her and began to fuck her cunt in long strokes that ground her ass against the cobbles and her clit between their sawing bodies, forcing involuntary sounds of raw delight from her throat.

Cel tried to strategize. In a few minutes, she would have her chance. What could she say or do to get away, to get home?

If they realize I have no master, she thought queasily, One of them might decide to keep me. Or do… anything to me. Anything at all.

And then what? She thought of her mother, crying. Her father, rigid with rage and despair. The vision made her want to scream, to kill, to grab for the handy brick or tree branch that would have been just within reach in the movies.

But the girl in the movies who found the improvised weapon would have been a high lady fending off a gang of brutish prolet men. Not Cel.

She couldn't have done it. Not even if she had secret assassin training like the heroine from Sublimity. Because these men were lords, and she could not, would not ever even try to hurt them. If there was one thing her genes programmed her for above all else, it was that.

The man who'd been first to fuck her cunt — first ever, though she didn't intend to give him the satisfaction of knowing that fact — was poring idly through her handbag. He chuckled when he found a packet of breath mints.

"She's gonna need these after sucking you off," he said to his similarly satisfied friend, pouring the whole thing into Cel's mouth. "Eat up, purp slut."

She choked and coughed on the pungent, crunching mass. He held his hand over her mouth, snickering, as she obediently chewed and swallowed what she could, her raw throat in agony, tears welling.

The man enjoying sloppy seconds in her cunt puffed annoyance at his companion's humor.

By now the fourth officer, who had earlier protested his disinterest in getting laid, was getting impatient for his turn. Obligingly, his friend rolled Cel over so that she was on top of him as he continued to fuck her. The fourth man knelt behind her and pressed his prick into her ass.

All other thoughts were driven from her mind by the overwhelming sensation. There was pain, though fortunately the cum and slick leaking down between her thighs had eased his way in. But mostly, there was enormous, terrible, irresistible pleasure.

Nothing had prepared her for this double sensation of wild, tight, slippery fullness deep within her center, the pressure, the syncopated rhythm inside her.

Then there was her clit, stimulated and overstimulated, now wedged against the soft leather belt of the man beneath her. She couldn't help it. She shifted so slightly, until the angle was just so…

It was unfair how it good it felt, to be made such sport of. It was as good as her media always made it sound like it could only be with your one true love, and she seethed with hate for the writers of the world, cursing them as she could not quite bring herself to curse her tormentors.

She didn't want this pleasure, she didn't. But it didn't matter what she wanted, only what she was. In the depths of her anguish, she called out to the high lord of her fantasy, and he appeared in her mind's eye, kind and strong, and she was granted permission to come.

Then, spine stretching and legs jerking, she cried out a stream of wordless hatred and shame and pure bodily joy.

Footsteps approached.

"Cel?"

***

In person, High Lord Ruszh was indeed dazzlingly beautiful. That was no surprise. He was nearly half a meter taller than Cel, his skin a deep golden brown, hair of a nearby shade but shot through with strands of, not age-gray, but silvery blue, as if reflecting the light from his astonishingly bright eyes.

What surprised Cel was the effect he had upon the four peti lord officers, big men who fled from his rather mild wrath like cockroaches at the flicking of a light switch.

She remembered being lifted in his arms as easily as he might pick up an injured baby bird.

He smelled like mom's spice cabinet. She was pretty sure she giggled out loud, idiotically, at the thought as he bundled her into his fancy chauffeured aircar.

"You are a puzzle, aren't you?" Ruszh drawled as they took off. "Here I was, trying to figure out if you were a peti lady from a down-and-out family, or a sassy prolet with ideas far above her station. Wrong again, boy."

His voice ran over her like a rolling pin. This was who she had been born, or at least grown, to obey over all others — no matter what her father said.

Father!

"Home," she murmured. Her throat was a little sore, her mouth horribly dry from the stinging mints. "M'parents. Need to tell'em…"

"Parents?" he scoffed. "Surely not. I won't be returning a prize like you to some madam and her pimp."

"Not…m'dm…"

"A shifon with a mind of her own," Ruszh mused, cupping her chin in his fingers and then letting them trail down to her collarbone. "I am terribly sorry I was so late. One emergency after another, I'm afraid. Are you badly hurt?"

Cel shook her head mutely.

She was wrapped, she realized to her embarrassment, in his fine coat. Her fine coat, which he had commissioned from her, tailored to his generous measurements.

It was part of how she'd learned his true identity. He'd had it delivered under an assumed name, of course, to an anonymous mailbox in the capital district. But it had been enough to put her on the deadly trail.

She was very much afraid that its silk lining was now dappled with come.

He'd told her he would be wearing it. That was how she was supposed to recognize him. Of course, by that point she also knew that he was the High Lord Ruszh, whose picture she'd seen a hundred times. But…

"How'd y' rec'nize me, m'lord?" she mumbled into the fur-lined collar.

"Oh!" he tapped his chin, grinning boyishly. "You wouldn't know, I suppose. I have a net feed directly in my visual cortex. I can call up all sorts of things about a person just by looking at them."

Of course she did know that. All the high lord heroes in the movies used them to get one over on the bad guys. Cel cursed herself once again for her stupidity.

It was amazing how many high lord heroes there were in the movies, considering how rare they were in real life.

Just my luck.

There were no shifon heroes in the movies, of course. If they appeared at all, it was usually in order to show off how cruel and wasteful the villain was when he murdered them.

In real life, she wondered, Are there more high lords or shifons? Shifons, she was pretty sure, though her kind were rare and expensive. Most folks had to make do with ordinary whores. Or, Cel, supposed, lovers and spouses.

"I'm wondering," Ruszh said, dragging her woozy brain back to the moment, "How you recognized me?"

Cel's brows drew down.

"Y'told me what you'd be wearing, my lord."

"I mean, before. When you made me this coat — very dashing, very now, by the way, everyone says so. I listed off some colors, in a fairly non-specific way. But you made it in exactly the colors of my house."

"Oh," Cel said, lifting her heavy head and meeting his eyes. "Guess your security isn't as good as you think, hmm?"

He laughed.

"My blessed mother despairs of my taste in women, you know," he said. "I've made no end of trouble for her attempts to arrange a marriage for me. I'm trying to calculate whether she'll consider you an improvement or a further aggravation. I think we shall find out."

She shook her head.

"Home. Please, my lord," she begged, trying to make him understand. "I only want to go home to my parents."

"You realize I can't possibly allow that," Ruszh said seriously. "You cannot be safe anywhere but under my protection. It's quite evident that you can't even leave your tenement, or brothel, or whatever it is, without being ambushed and exploited by drunken louts."

"But…"

"Forget about returning to your old home. If you insist, we can contact your keepers and let them know you are safe. And I will keep you safe, little modiste."

It was only after a wash and a night's sleep that she was permitted to send a brief message to her mother and father, who must be frantic.

Mom, the renegade shifon, who had disappeared without a trace from a high lord's genetic engineering facility, along with a valuable infant plucked fresh from the womb banks.

Dad, the young peti lord scientist who had aided in her escape.

Cel hadn't even considered how much danger she was putting them in, by bringing them within a hair's breadth of the attention of such a powerful man. She shivered.

Ruszh was right. Better to forget, and hope everyone else would, too.

Ruszh's mother, the High Lady of the house, took to Cel about as poorly as she might have guessed.

"You're telling me you have befriended this creature? And you let her wear this… outrageous garment in my home — making a mockery of the very idea of caste, of our ways?"

"I happen to find her designs very forward-thinking," Ruszh parried, squeezing Cel's hand. "She will make a fine servant and ornament to our house."

"She is nothing. Her blitherings are nothing," the High Lady hissed. For a moment she almost glanced at Cel. "Caste, that is everything, son. Do you understand me? Undermine that — elevate the likes of her — and all else falls."

"You always did have a dramatic streak, mother."

"She is a renegade," said the High Lady coldly. "Masterless. You know the law. Punishment, in such lewd and public a fashion as befits her degraded station and purpose. Then, to be auctioned to whoever will take what's left of her."

"I will see to her lawful punishment," Ruszh said. "And I will take her."

He held his mother's gaze for a long time. Finally, the woman made an exasperated sound and stalked out.

"My… punishment, lord?" Cel whispered.

Cel had never been publicly flogged before. It really was very painful, especially as it went on and on and Ruszh kept hitting the same tender spots.

The stocks, too, began to rub her wrists and neck raw with each new jerk of her body.

And it was embarrassing to be stripped to the waist and watched by most of the manor staff. The watching more than the stripping. She had always been intensely conscious of being observed, any time she was out of the house. Having hundreds of eyes upon her, all at once, filled her with an indescribable terror.

Between blows, when he gave her a moment for her cries of pain to fall away and her breath to steady, Cel couldn't help but slip in a ragged, undervoiced critique of Ruszh's house servet uniforms. Analyzing fabric and pattern and cut through watery eyes seemed like her best distraction from the agony. And at least she managed to make him laugh before his next strike.

When he was finally done, he made a great show of running a finger along her cunt and licking off the free-flowing slickness of her arousal. Proving to all the watchers, she supposed, that this was right and proper treatment for one such as her.

"Now you thank me for justly punishing you," he whispered.

"Oh, um. Thanks," she said.

"No, I mean loudly," he said. "For the crowd."

She did, slightly bewildered, and maybe a bit loopy on endorphins.

Then he slapped her ass, hard, and invited the assembled servets up to have their part in the festivities.

"They're not all going to flog me, too, are they?" Cel breathed in sudden panic. "I think I would actually die."

"No," said Ruszh, leaning against an ornamental column. "They're going to fuck you. Think of it as an appetizer for your life in my bed."

Cel's panic eased, but her stomach sank.

She'd only just had real sex for the first time. Now, she was being asked to service a whole crowd of people.

And then, she was going to have to live in the same house as these people. The servets, as loyalty-bred as she herself was, were very nearly the lowest of the low. But a shifon was lower. And they would all know it, in a very personal way.

She shivered. The first man forward slicked the head of his prick around in her juices before plunging it into her cunt. She gritted her teeth, and tried not to wriggle in her chafing restraints.

She was sure, afterwards, that she must have passed out several times over the course of the morning. She remembered hands lifting her head by the hair, so that another cock could be forced down her throat.

She remembered thinking, giddily, that at this grand defilement would probably help allay any bizarre fears Ruszh's mother might harbor that her son might attempt to elevate Cel to be the next High Lady. Perhaps that had even been his intent.

As if such a thing could ever have been possible. Didn't she understand?

I could never aspire to be what you are. Does a cockroach aspire to be a boot?

Every inch of her was raw and aching long before it ended. She was fortunate, she knew, that some scientist had been kind enough to give shifons many of the same enhancements to their physical toughness and rate of healing enjoyed by the high lords.

She was getting some lord's money's worth out of those genes today.

Some of the servets fucked her for their own pleasure. Others seemed to do it merely because it was expected of them. A few enjoyed tormenting the purp slut, pulling her hair or slapping her ass, thighs, breasts, face. Some took pictures to send to their friends. One made off with whatever remained of the sodden, ruined dress she'd been so proud of.

The important thing was that Ruszh wanted her. She held onto that. He wanted her, and thus he would have her, and that was right. It wasn't what she'd wanted, but it simply was.

And for him to have her, she had to endure this, and so she did.

It was a part of the social contract, she knew, that the high lords occasionally provide their lessers with some trickle-down entertainment. And what had Cel been made for, at considerable expense, if not entertainment?

This was where she belonged. Serving her lord. Or serving his servants, and in doing so, serving him. It might hurt, but it pleased her to have such a purpose.

She's once dared to imagine that she could choose her own purpose. Father had always told her she could be anything she dreamed, as long as she kept quiet, and safe.

The rest of the day was a blur.

She remembered falling limply from the stocks when they were unlocked, and someone catching her before she hit the ground.

She remembered looking up into the clinical lights of what must have been the infirmary.

She remembered a bath that stung, and why would a bath sting?

She remembered Ruszh holding her in his arms. It hurt even worse than the stocks, hurt all over, but she didn't want him to stop.

***

Ruszh, to the chagrin of his mother and his chief of staff, liked to take it slow in the morning. That suited Cel just fine.

They would rouse together, gradually, in fits and starts, embracing, dozing, kissing. She would trace her fingers and lips muzzily through the fine hairs on his broad, firm chest. Eventually, wriggling her hips down the great bed, her mouth would find his prick, just like she knew he liked it, and that would start to really wake him up.

On this day, he didn't let her finish, instead rolling out of bed to brush his teeth. She understood this to be a signal that she should lie back on the bed and hang her head off the side for him.

When he returned, he slid his cock into her throat with a low moan of contentment. He would, Cel understood, be checking his messages on his personal display while he fucked her mouth. It was important for him to know if anything was on fire — literally or figuratively — that might require him to shorten his morning routine.

Gently but firmly, he wrapped his hand around her throat, almost encircling it with his long fingers, and began to pump deep into her, far deeper than any other cock she'd sucked in her short but surprisingly eventful career.

Well, he was a very large, very tall man, and his prick was fully in proportion to his elegantly wrought frame. There were, she was quite sure, parts of her that only he had ever or would ever touch.

The scent of Ruszh filled her nose, still that special sleep-rumpled smell.

The quiet bedchamber was alive with animal sounds: Ruszh's lordly moans of appreciation; her soft struggles, a chorus of gags and coughs and snorts and whimpers. Wetness ran down her face in rivulets that joined with the tears falling from her eyes.

Cel wished sometimes that he might prefer to use her cunt for this morning routine, leaving her to start the day not so hoarse and sore, but her wishes were of no account next to his.

She could only squeeze her damp thighs together helplessly, her nerves twanging with thwarted desire, as she swallowed him down.

Once he had finished in her throat, they showered in a palatial bathroom unlike anything she had ever imagined back home.

Home. Cel very firmly didn't break out into any more useless tears at the thought of her parents, what they must think, how desperately she wanted to hug them again, and tell them not to worry about her.

Shifons didn't have parents — maybe Cel was the only one of her kind who ever had — and that fact alone kept mom and dad safe.

In the warm spray, Ruszh was looking down at her with a quizzical expression. Quizzical was good. He was relaxed, unhurried, pleased with her. She gazed into the plasma-cannon sights of his eyes, and confirmed that nothing was on fire.

She allowed herself to relax.

On pleased, unhurried mornings like this, he would let her wash him all over, slowly, enjoying the feel of every part of his body under her fingers, and sometimes her tongue. He did so today. And when her efforts to wash his prick bore fruit, he lifted her up off her feet and fucked her cunt right there under the spray, allowing her to lock her arms and legs around his back and just fly — and forget.

With each stroke, he lifted her body and plunged it down deeper around his cock, every inch seeming to drive her body into some new level of frenzy.

His prick showed no ill effects from having reached completion in her throat only minutes before. Shifons weren't the only ones, it turned out, who had been engineered for enhanced sexual stamina. Keeping a high lord sated was a big job.

Cel, however, was not sated. When Ruszh came deep inside her, he simply set her down in the spray, red-faced, dripping with semen, fucked half to madness. But not allowed to come, not yet.

It would be so easy for her, if he would only give her permission. She was sure that she could come for him a dozen times a day. Two dozen, if it pleased him. But it pleased him to make her wait.

She had gone to bed unsated last night, too, crying on his shoulder and humping his leg and begging for release, but he had only stroked her hair and kissed her and told her to go to sleep.

While she helped him dress, finishing by polishing and kissing each of his boots, a servet brought them a simple breakfast of coffee and pastries. Occasionally, if he were feeling magnanimous or just bored, Ruszh would invite the servet to fuck Cel, but he made no such move this time.

There was no military crisis for him to attend to this morning, so it was not the crisp, standardized service uniform but the casual lord-of-the-manor jacket, shirt and tights, which had been Cel's first sartorial project upon moving in.

The jacket included a little private joke, shared with him: a secret inner pocket, fastened with two little fuschia buttons, like her eyes. It had won her a laugh, and a long, toe-curling kiss.

He looked amazing in it — as he would in practically anything you threw on him, of course — but she took pride in the fact that he didn't wear just anything. He wore Cel's best work.

Cel's second project, for which Ruszh had provided her an erotic engineer for the technical work, had been her day restraints — which included a collar, wrist and ankle cuffs, a gag, and a harness with some clever ports for remote operable toys.

She spent the rest of the morning at the little desk Ruszh had installed for her in his study, busying herself at her new designs for the servets, and occasionally messaging her old anonymous net friends.

Like Cel, Ruszh still occasionally posted on the fashion chat hubs, sometimes while she knew he was at high level meetings.

Lunch, Ruszh said, was a time to meet with powerful men without any of what he called delicious distractions. So, as on most days, Cel ate her lunch with the servets. She didn't mind the opportunity to grill the household staff for gossip.

The occasional whisper and smirk, she let pass.

Today, though, he had left her wearing a ball-gag. She sent a few pleading messages, but received no reply as her stomach growled, drool dripped down her bare chest, and her slice of pizza congealed.

Had he been too distracted to read her messages? Or was this just another of his torments? It wouldn't be the first time she'd been left to go hungry.

Then, at last, Ruszh relented. The gag folded itself back from between her lips, giving her a few minutes to wolf her tepid meal before he stoppered her mouth once again.

He must have been annoyed at her badgering, because he also set the vibrating plug locked to her cunt at a brutishly high level of stimulation, and left it there through the following hour of not very productive design work.

Later that afternoon, there was a concert, and Ruszh freed her to get dressed up for the evening. She cuddled up to him in his box, and he felt how wet his torments had made her. She chastised him gently for interfering with her progress on the servet uniforms, and he retaliated by giving her a thorough and painful spanking — impeccably timed to the band's backbeat.

He was so moved by her big, watery eyes afterwards that he allowed her to apologize by throating his cock. He didn't force her down with his hands this time, letting her set her own depth and pace. But she knew well that he expected her to go just as far as he would have pushed her.

The concert was followed by a cocktail hour and a fancy dinner. She didn't have time to wash up first — which was unfortunate, because she was still in much disarray from the concert, but he marched her along mercilessly.

Shifons were not, as a rule, invited to such events, but sometimes, like today, Ruszh relished the opportunity to parade Cel around provocatively in inappropriate circumstances. He encouraged her to scandalize the fine lords and ladies with her most daring ensembles.

Today, she wore a dress partly inspired by peti lady evening wear, except that it bared her left breast.

"Is your mother trying to match you up with any of these high ladies, milord?" she asked him as he swirled brandy in his glass.

"One or two, I suspect. I'm not sure who. She likes to shoot from cover."

"Would these potential wives of yours be offended by me?"

"Offended that you are in my bed?" he grinned. "No, not if they're playing the game at this level. Offended by having to socialize with you at a fine party? One can only hope."

She poked him, though in a carefully neutral location. He laughed. That was important. Cel amused him. She had better not stop amusing him.

In truth, Cel hated having to mingle with crowds of highborn people. She still wasn't comfortable being watched, and they were not often friendly eyes.

It was at these parties that she most missed her old sheltered life with her family — never seeing, or at least, being noticed by, more than 3 or 4 people at a time.

Most of them weren't particularly bad to talk to. They would be civil enough, but she could tell they regarded her as something like a slightly tasteless joke — and they always seemed shocked when she was able to string two sentences together on any topic other than cock.

Were typical shifons really kept so ignorant?

She found that the high lords and ladies felt entirely free to take out upon her any annoyances they had, with her, with her master, or with life itself. She would be slapped, pinched, tripped up, and had a suspicious number of drinks spilled on her.

It was not as bad when she was at Ruszh's side, but he always seemed to get pulled into some private conversation, no matter how she pleaded with him not to leave her alone.

Today, while Ruszh was off chatting with one of his father's generals, a sneering high lady with an enormous cloud of dark curls (was she the prospective wife?) poured her entire glass of wine on the floor and ordered Cel to strip and use her beautiful new dress to wipe it up.

Cel would much rather have licked the floor clean, like last week.

A few chuckling onlookers gathered around to watch the show, and another lady ordered Cel to rub her cunt against a nearby chair leg.

"That's right, little doggy," the high lady sang venomously. "Show us all what you're really for. No — don't stop, now."

And Cel didn't stop, because no one gave her permission to do so.

Occasionally, a passing lord would laugh at her anguished, overstimulated whimpers, and maybe flick a bit of cigarette ash onto her, or remark upon the apparently still-livid stinging hand marks on her ass. All of her efforts to attract Ruszh's attention were futile.

Only after half an hour or so, when the dinner bell rang, did he finally come by to rescue her.

"Alas, it's the price I pay for parading you around like this," he murmured, wiping a tear from her cheek and touching it to her sore and throbbing clit.

"Please, my lord," she begged, "Don't invite me next time."

"I know it hurts, little modiste. But I know how strong you are. You'll see. You'll break out of your cocoon and be the social butterfly of the capital, and it will all roll off of you."

Cel didn't believe she would ever be the social butterfly of anything, but she didn't contradict him, especially because her mouth was shortly filled by his warm kiss.

The meal was so good that Cel was afraid she might be sent down to the kitchen to deliver Ruszh's compliments to the chef with her tongue — but apparently today's effort rated only a little above average in the eyes of the lordly guests.

That night, they relaxed in Ruszh's private quarters.

Or, on this occasion, he relaxed, while Cel was made to stand in a fiendishly awkward, painful position until she thought her muscles would explode.

She would have liked to read a book, as Ruszh was now doing, but there was nothing she could do in this position but think, and quiver against the soft buzz of the vibrating plug.

Finally, he unlocked her cunt, letting the plug and harness fall the floor around her feet. He came to her, but he didn't let her move. Instead, he began to torment her anew, with his fingers, teasing her clit, fucking her cunt, making her legs shake and her face grow bright red and her arms want to leap out of their sockets.

His fingers were swimming in her juices, which by now must certainly have rolled all the way down her thighs, down her calves, and pooled on the ground around her.

Suddenly, Ruszh threw her to the floor. Her head spun, her limbs splayed, and he fell upon her and fucked her, taking her ankles and wrenching them back over her head, his cock hitting her so hard and so deep that she wondered again through the haze if it would ever stop surprising her.

It was during these brutal night-time fuckings that Ruszh sometimes permitted her to come, but it had been days now. Days of nerve-wracking, knee-wobbling arousal and stimulation, stretching every atom of her overdriven sexuality. Probably no living creature but a shifon could even experience such torture. Did he know what he was doing to her? Did he care?

Cel begged him with all her humility, the cute puppy dog eyes, every trick she could think. She called him lord, and master. She begged, and pleaded, and wheedled, and cried real, big, ugly sobs (though on her, perhaps even those were beautiful).

She even, rebelliously, called upon the imaginary high lord of her fantasies, who seemed a part of her old life now. Rusczh would punish her if she came without his word, but that was a problem for later.

It didn't matter. Cel couldn't summon that phantom anymore, not since coming to this manor. He was dim and distant and false, now that she knew the real thing. She belonged to Ruszh, even in the innermost depths of her own mind, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She wasn't sure how much more she could take. Could you die of this torture?

If he asked her to find out, she would.

Cel sobbed again as she felt him shudder inside her, filling her with liquid heat, and his lips parted.

"Come for me, little modiste."