This is a story with dark themes: sex slavery, sci-fi tentacle monsters (and human monsters), captivity, mental conditioning, etc. Be warned! And, obviously, don't be like these characters.
* * *
DAY 1
"Holy shit."
"She's cute."
"She's...huh."
Rhune blinked away the pleasant haze of the fading stasis field. Curious faces peered down at her.
"Are you okay?"
It was a young man, about her own age. A face she didn't recognize, soft and round, tinted green by cholorphyll treatments, framed by long, midnight purple hair.
Her blood froze. Memories cut through her bones.
"Hey, hey," said one of them, gently, touching her arm. He must have seen the panic in her eyes.
He took her hand, gave her a soft tug, leading her out of the cushioned cubicle she had been stored in. He was tall, handsome and broad-shouldered, with tan skin and a long nose.
How long had she been unconscious?
"Who are you?" she said sharply. She had to maintain command of the situation.
The purple-haired boy introduced himself as Ziff. The taller one as Lym.
Behind them stood Nahia, a young, pale, mousy woman wearing a puff-blouse and what Rhune dimly recognized as a bio-specialist's feed interface clipped to her ear.
They told her they were off-world university students on break. Well, that checked out. At any given time, there were probably at least a million intoxicated college kids visiting Salorea.
She was in a hotel suite. On one of the beds sat a fourth student, a slim, well-cut dark-skinned boy with gold paint around his eyes, digging through a travel bag.
"I'm Pael," he said. He seemed embarrassed. "Look, I'm sorry about this. There must have been some sort of mix-up."
"You don't think your parents
meant
to order us sexual services?" grinned Ziff.
"I...wouldn't put it past my dad, honestly," Pael mused glumly. "But, no. I think he just ordered us the most expensive package they had, because he likes to intimidate my friends."
Lym had led Rhune to the other bed, even bigger than her own back home at the palace. She sat down. Her legs felt like jelly.
Sexual services.
The hotel bed seemed to sort of purr beneath her. A prompt to buy massage credits?
More memories begane to filter back into her mind. Her personal servitor, leading her to the private room at the rear of the palace where the stasis cubicle had been wheeled in.
Her stomach sank.
Wasn't she supposed to have received some kind of orientation? But her handlers had probably wanted to keep this as quiet as possible. She wished she'd thought to do some research.
"What's your name?" Ziff asked her. He might have been blushing, although it was hard to tell behind all the cholorphyll.
"You don't need to know that," Rhune hissed.
"Her name is Rhune," smirked Nahia. "It was on the cubicle display."
"
That's
why you seemed so familiar," Lym burst out. The tall, athletic young man, who had introduced himself as a Galactic History student, looked her up and down with a lingering grin that made her shudder.
He flicked on the wall-screen and pulled up an image of her from the newsfeed. Princess Rhune, at the opening ceremony for a new ski dome.
She groaned internally.
On the screen, she was wearing a long gown trimmed with spectacular living flowers whose roots grew from a matrix of fine fabrics and nutrient gel.
Here, in the hotel room, she was dressed for public brothel duty -- a flimsy, diaphanous sarong and slender matching breast-band.
The outfit came with some tacky, showy jewelry, a crystal diadem and a turquoise collar that encircled her throat and spilled out over her shoulders and upper chest. Some marketing hotshot's half-remembered parody of an ancient Earth concubine.
It probably really was better for business than a more tasteful look. Best not to unpack that any further.
She was acutely aware of how much of her body was on display to these strangers.
She was even more acutely aware of the creeping sensation of arousal, slithering through her, aided by who-knew-what chemical brew.
"
Princess
Rhune," Ziff breathed, looking between her and the image. "It
is
her. Unless...it's some kind of clone?"
"I am
not
a clone," she said, standing up sharply. "I am a Princess, and you will treat me with respect."
Cloning. She should have thought of that. Why hadn't she cloned herself for just this purpose? Okay, it wouldn't be very nice to the clone, but...
They were all staring at her now.
"I mean, I know this is a fucked up pleasure planet," said Nahia, "But why would the actual reigning Princess of Salorea be in a stasis cubicle in
our
hotel room?"
"We have a lottery here," Rhune said. "Everyone must do their part, even me."
Foolish girl,
rattled old Veritim's rasping voice in her memory.
The withered chamberlain had tried to persuade her to only
announce
that she would be eligible for the lottery like everyone else -- not actually allow her name to be in the running.
She had refused to cheat. On a planet of 2 billion, she hadn't thought she would actually be picked.
Aargh.
She was beginning to feel strangely cold, despite the throbbing heat between her legs and the comfortable temperature displayed on the nearby thermostat.
She straightened, trying to maintain a proud bearing.
"Salorea is a pleasure planet. We all have a duty to keep our visitors happy and our tourism industry strong."
To bring pleasure is our pleasure,
cheered the diverse array of Salorean workers in the ads they beamed across the cosmos. She managed not to echo the idiotic slogan, but she cringed internally at the way she sounded. Fake. Gross.
She plowed on.
"Before I ascended to the throne, impoverished brothel workers suffered under years-long indenture contracts. I freed those people, and instituted a fair and just system."
Lym sidled up to her, fingers brushing her waist. She shivered, leaning automatically into the warmth of his hand, then jerked away.
"That's not how I heard it," he said, touching her hair. "The newsfeeds say rich jerks are still weaseling their way out of service left and right. If they don't want to employ outright bribery, they can simply live on orbital platforms outside the legal boundary where the lottery applies."
He was touching her belly now, his fingertips lightly brushing the downy hairs just below her navel. She felt heat course through her. Her cunt clenched, hunger gnawing at her.
"You could have
actually
banned compulsory sex work," he said mockingly. "You just shuffled the existing system around, and patted yourself on the back about it. You're reprehensible."
"I..." she was doubly mortified now -- at her body, responding greedily to his touch, and at herself. "I wanted to ban it. You don't understand. Our economy is so dependent on..."
She trailed off.
She'd been cowed. By Veritim, by her sister, by a stream of industry titans and sleaze-peddlers. She had sworn when she took the throne she would end the practice, and now here she was, reciting the ugly excuses they had filled her with.
"My parents were from Salorea," Lym said. "They managed to escape, to make a better life for me. Most aren't so lucky."
Lym's eyes bored into her. His fingers slipped beneath her sarong, finding the dampness between her legs, slicking between her cunt-folds. She heard a pathetic mewl on her lips, and wriggled away, angry, trying to regain her poise.
She immediately felt colder, and her shiver returned.
"Don't touch me," she said, trying to muster her royal dignity.
" 'Everyone must participate,' you said," Lym rumbled in her ear, wrapping his arms around her. His hands brushed her nipples, cupped her ass. She wriggled helplessly, warming in his grip. "Even you."
Ziff had taken over the wall-screen and found the video of her announcing the new policy. Her own voice rang in her ears. She hated the way she sounded in recordings, reedy and unconvincing.
Weak
, Veritim's sneering croak echoed in her thoughts.
You think you can wave your royal scepter and make everything right, but you are royalty, girl. If you weaken yourself in your quest for justice, the strong will notice.
"C'mon, Lym," frowned Pael. "Let her go."
Lym pinched one of her nipples roughly. Pain, and warmth, shot through her.
Nahia approached, holding Rhune's gaze with a thoughtful look.
"She
is
supposed to be ours to enjoy for then next seven nights," she said slowly. "By her own policy, no less."
She grasped Rhune's chin between her fingers, turning her head this way and that.
"What do you think, Princess?" she said. "Don't you owe it to us -- to your planet --"
"To yourself!" Ziff filled in helpfully from the kitchenette, where he was fiddling with a coffee-maker.
"-- to honor that obligation?"
Lym, behind her, slipped a pair of fingers into Rhune's cunt. She bit down on her lip, willing herself not to cry out. He withdrew them, raised them, dripping with wetness that glinted in the lurid neon lights outside.
"Is this the real reason you didn't exempt yourself like the other rich assholes?" he laughed. "Because you wanted to get fucked by random tourists in a hotel room?"
"Certainly not," she shot back, controlling her breathing. "I will honor my obligation."
Lym pushed his fingers into her mouth, forcing her to taste herself. He manipulated her lips and tongue insolently. Sparks danced inside her head, warming her even as she reeled with outrage.
She staggered out from between the two students, sputtering.
