Punished by the Dictator's Daughter (The Initiation 3, Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

musculature. Max grips me fiercely, willing his strength to
flow into me. I am pressed to his body, facing him, while Greg
clasps me from behind in some odd semblance of three-way
copulation.
    The voices continue to argue. To be terse.
Someone raps on the side of the cart. My body is rigid, and I will
myself not to breathe. I clench my fists, feeling the beads of
sweat pool on my side – the side that is quashed to the bottom of
this hidden space. There’s a scream building inside my head that is
begging to be let out before it would volcanically explode.
    The male voices continue to argue. All kinds
of images course through my mind in painful cacophony. If I get out
of here, I swear I’m not going to be a sex slave again, no matter
how much someone is willing to pay me. There are better ways of
bartering my soul. I am going to be kind to everyone and be a good
partner to whoever is willing to have me. I can’t even think about
my possibilities with Max and Greg, even though they are
bodies-to-body with me. I daren’t allow myself to hope.
    I just hope the Guillotine blade will be
quick. And really, now that I come to think about it – it is a
merciful execution. Hanging, electrocution, lethal injection,
firing squad. They are all merciful.
    I am so caught up in my own doomsday reverie
that I scarcely register that the cart is once again moving –
unscathed – and the clomping of the horses’ hooves have resumed. Of
course, for all I know, the cart could have been compounded by the
municipal police in this land and taken to the . . . oh, I don’t
know . . . scrap metal heap or wherever it is they incinerate
carts.
    When we finally stop, the trapdoor opens once
again. I would have fallen out if Greg had not caught me by the
waist.
    We emerge into the sunshine, blinking back
the sudden brightness. Our limbs are stiff as stiff can be. We are
in the countryside. The air is fresh and crisp and sparkling with
morning, and the fields are abundant with freshly mown hay, which
has been rolled up in bales. Cows graze nearby, their tails
swishing.
    Mansk gazes at me, smiling. He stands beside
a woman in a white apron.
    “Gina, Max, Greg, this is my wife, Suri.”
    Wife!
    He didn’t tell me he had a wife when he was
boning me. And more, apparently, because two young boys below the
age of ten come running up.
    Suri beams from ear to ear. She is a
weather-beaten peasant woman with nut-brown skin, the kind who
probably spends most of her days toiling under the sun. She looks
older than Mansk, which surprises me. She speaks to Mansk in
Urskan, and he says something back. She nods.
    Then she holds out her arms to me.
    “Welcome,” she says warmly. “You am
hungry.”
    I have received so little kindness in this
world that I simply crumple and fall into her arms.

7
     
    Suri feeds and clothes all of us, and for
posterity, I do not tell her how her husband has fucked me. I do
not tell her about his crush on me. From the averted gazes and
shifty guilt of his expression every time he crosses my path, he
does not tell her either.
    The house is chaotic, and from what I gather,
it does not belong to Mansk. The people in Ursk own nothing.
Everything belongs to the state, and they are given money credits
for the work they have put in and an assigned property to stay in.
Mansk’s work – as a senior personal guard to Potchenko and his
household – takes him to the city for protracted periods of time.
But his wife and children are not allowed to join him because they
have been assigned to toil the fields.
    In short, I understand why Mansk feels the
need to have feminine company in the city, away from his wife. I
guess I am no different from a prostitute, only he doesn’t have to
pay for me. In dollars and cents.
    The house is filled with various family
members – all related to Mansk in some way or other, either by
blood or marriage. Figures. Mansk introduces us to his brother, an
angry-looking man who seems eternally pissed at the