Chapter 4: The Auction
Mira sat bound to her armchair in the dining chamber, watching Tiran guards lead Earth women away. Her nerve-endings buzzed. Today, after bathing her, Silerna had rubbed bandy oil over every inch of Mira's body, leaving her shiny and smooth, with the arousing scent of the oil rising, heated, from her skin. The guard had given Mira two glasses of bandy wine, so that her pussy ached intensely and her mind could no longer form words, but was focused on a single desire: To feel a cock inside her. She watched guards and Earth women rise and leave, rise and leave, until only a handful of Captives remained---glowing, naked bodies in a sea of empty chairs. Finally, a guard approached her chair, snapped open her cuffs and unwound her leash. "You will follow me."
"Yes, Master," she murmured, and she followed him dazedly up to the center of the stage, stepping into the circumference of a small, metal circle.
"Hold onto me," the guard instructed, and Mira wrapped her arms around him, feeling his hard torso against her chest, and the iron contours of his penis pressing into her belly. Instantly, the circle plunged downward, like an elevator with broken cables. On Earth, Mira would have been terrified, but the strangeness and the wine and the guard's stability all served to flood her body with pleasure, rather than stress, as the circle plummeted.
And then, suddenly, it was still. The guard unwrapped Mira from around his chest, and took firm hold of her wrists, forcing her arms behind her back and deftly roping them together. He stepped off the circle, tugging her leash, and she followed him, awkwardly off-balance with her arms bound. The bottoms of her toes met a groundcover thick with fallen flower petals, unbearably soft beneath her tender, scrubbed feet. The air was warm and humid, and clearly nighttime, but it was the bluest, brightest night Mira had ever seen. They stepped silently through an outdoor corridor lined with trees that rose high overhead. The trees grew in clumps of multiple trunks, like banyans, interwoven with thick vines, with the now-familiar oversized blue trumpet-flowers dangling downward, glowing and nodding. Up above, the sky was night-blue with swaths of sparkling stars. Mira walked and walked, her eyes trained on the muscular back of the guard in front of her, until the path opened up into a clearing.
Two round silver moons hung high among the stars. In the extra-bright moonlight, Mira saw that she was in a small, stone amphitheatre, open to the sky, with rows of empty seats rising up along one half of the structure and a stage in the center. In the other half of the structure stood the Captives, arranged on a series of round pedestals, spaced about a foot apart. The women's arms were bound behind their backs, and their leashes were spiraled tightly around metal rods that were anchored into the center of the pedestals. As the guard led Mira toward an empty rod, she recognized Katarina, Chitra, Magda, and other Captives from the ship. They stood still on their platforms like statues, all facing the center of the theatre, their skin glowing garishly in the strange light. Mira scanned the faces in search of Loraine, but didn't see her.
The guard positioned Mira with his strong hands, and then twisted her leash around the rod, firmly tethering her to her platform. Then he left and she stood alone in the silent, open air, watching the two moons of Tir slowly angle toward the horizon and the sky turn purplish orange. As the world changed color, Mira's guard returned, bringing another vessel of bandy wine and tipping it into her mouth, and she swallowed, tasting its bitter saltiness and feeling the heaviness of overdue orgasms weighing down her clitoris with each sip.
