Companion 3000

Chapter 9

Leita was in hell. Bargain basement hell. Not only was she being sold as a slave, she was being sold at half-price, just like the damn chocolate that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

She was chained to a small platform in the back of a large auditorium wearing a thick black leather slave collar and an outfit that not even For Her Pleasure would have sold. Or maybe they would have, but Leita wouldn’t have bought it.

The top consisted of thin scarlet straps attached to a pair of gold rings that fit around her nipples, keeping them in a constant state of arousal. That was it—no other coverage, not even a fringe to cover her breasts. But as bad as the top was, the bottom was worse. A thong-like contraption made of the same scarlet straps went right up her butt and was bad enough to make Leita vow to wear granny panties for the rest of her life. But the front of the thong was the ultimate indignity. Two scarlet straps ran from low on her hips down to her crotch where they held her pussy lips open, displaying her hot pink interior for any prospective buyer that cared to look. A small gold ring identical to the ones that held her nipples erect encircled her clit, keeping the small, sensitive bundle of nerves in a constant state of arousal as well.

Leita had been dressed in the revealing outfit shortly after awakening from the drugged sleep she’d fallen into after being force-fed the chocolates by the shifty-eyed clerk. She had no idea where she was or even if she was still in the Galleria. Her watch- me bracelet was gone along with the modest one-piece coverall she had been wearing when she first got to the huge shopping ship. For all she knew, she was in another part of it entirely, a darker part, where human flesh instead of goods and services were sold.

The outfit she was wearing wasn’t nearly as tasteful as the pale pink see-through nightie Pierce had practically ripped off her on their first meeting, she reflected grimly. Not that there was any point in thinking about Pierce anymore. He was long gone and it irritated her that even in this situation and under extreme duress, her mind kept returning to him. Even if he had known that she was here, wherever here was, and up for sale, Leita knew he wouldn’t rescue her. After all, she’d shocked him with a tazer and sent him from her door naked in the middle of the night. That kind of behavior didn’t usually induce a man to come after you when you got in a jam. It was time to forget him once and for all and concentrate on getting out of here. Except Leita was afraid the only way she was going to leave the slave gallery was at the end of a leash.

Every once in a while a greasy attendant with slicked-back hair and moist brown eyes would walk by and paint some kind of glistening body oil over her nipples and the inside of her pussy with a tiny little brush that tickled horribly. The first few times this had happened, Leita had tried to fight him. Then they had tied her hands behind her back so she had tried to bite him. In fact, she’d bitten nearly every attendant and prospective customer who came to look her over, which was why she found herself on her knees, strapped to a table-type platform at the back of the room being sold at half- price.

Leita supposed there was a cosmic kind of justice going on here if you looked at it the right way. She herself had ordered what was essentially a sex slave, albeit a mechanical, vat-grown one, only a few months ago. And now she was being sold as a sex slave—if anyone cared to buy her, that was. Most of the buyers weren’t attracted to the dimly lit corner she was occupying—they were focused on the front of the huge auditorium. There on a large stage the better behaved captives and future slaves pranced and showed themselves off in their tiny, revealing outfits.

Leita couldn’t believe that anyone could take being kidnapped and sold so calmly, but after lights-out the night before, one girl had actually told her she was looking forward to her new life. The girl, who had carrot-red hair and freckles and whose name was Midge, had been given as a bride to an older man in a mining colony. The miner’s first wife had died, leaving him with ten children to raise—children who ended up in Midge’s care while her new husband worked the mines. “Between raisin’ a passel of screamin’ brats that ain’t even mine and bein’ sold as an intergalactic love concubine, I’ll take the sex slave gig every time,” she told Leita as they were trying to get to sleep. Leita couldn’t agree with her, but she could definitely see her point.