A Vampire's Courtesan

[Veroe]

((Closed for Myself and the _Gladiator))​

IC: Severa Duhaveline

Lot number 42 stepped onto the platform of the Central Avenue Auction house. He was billed as a hard labor slave, so he was allowed to wear a t-shirt and shorts. If he was the usual kind of slave Severa purchased from this house he'd have been without them, but they hadn't gotten to the point in the auction where they'd be selling the loveslaves she usually bought from them. This one was a man, handsome, with a strong broad-shouldered physique. When he lifted his shirt up he revealed a muscular torso. He turned around showing a broad back with scars from a lash peppering it as well as a removed tattoo in the shape of the eagle and shield of the Imperial Legion. He was a caught deserter, or someone so dishonorably discharged that they were sold into slavery. Poor man, he'd die not in honor fighting his country's enemies on the battlefield but in some farm field or mine being worked to death.

Lycretia Validar, Countess of Goldpeak, walked into the auction hall. Severa's eyes narrowed. She operated a business of supplying highly trained courtesans for the upper echelons of Vampire society. Severa rather disliked the Countess. Not only was she her chief competitor in the business, and had always looked down her nose at Severa for her origins being much closer to that of Lot number 42's than a pampered member of the nobility born to all the perks of being a Vampire in the empire like her. Also, Sadly, it was an attitude that was common among the majority of her customers, and she suspected Lycretia had used that bias ruthlessly to muscle her out on many a business oppurtunites despite her girls being far superior to any owned by the Countess.

They engaged in conversation...well...more like the conversation between a snake and mongoose. No one irritated her more than Lycretia Validar and in pitch of pique she decided she'd do something she thought possible but history and Lycretia thought impossible.

--------------------------------X

By the next night it was raining, and it fell in sheets on the old paint factory she'd bought and completely refurbished into her home and training compound, for her and her girls and now the former soldier now the new slave she'd bought from the Central Avenue auction house. The Auction house staff brought the former soldier inside her home in shackles.

She stood facing him arms crossed and looking him over as if he was a piece of meat on the butcher's table. "Remove his chains."

Three of her girls, all ravishingly beautiful, approached him and began freeing him. He outsized all of her girls but her training had taught them all how to turn his strengths against him through, pressure points, leverage, and generally just defending themselves. If he tried anything with any of her girls he'd find himself pinned on the floor and screaming for mercy as an arm or leg was pinioned behind his back to the breaking point.

Now free of his bindings her girls left him and Severa stared into his eyes. "I am your new owner. My name is Madam Severa Duhaveline. You will call me Madam Severa. Do you understand?"

She continued with a smile flashing her fangs to his gaze. "I am a trainer and manager for the best Courtesans serving the upper level of this Empire." She gestured to her girls.

"What could I want with you," She surmised with a shrug, "I purchased you instead of letting you be condemned to work until the day you die in some farm field or mine somewhere to prove a point to a woman I detest greatly. We made a bet for a considerably amount of money, and also if I win she will be very humiliated. I greatly want that, understand?"

"This bet," She continued, "Is on whether you can learn to be a courtesan of the same caliber as any of my girls here or not. My rival thinks men are too basic and unruly to ever take to the self-discipline that is required to be a true Imperial courtesan. I believe she is wrong. I believe anyone man or woman can rise to the occasion if he or she puts their will to it. In nine weeks is the Princess Elayda's eighteenth birthday. There will be a great party and I will give her you as a gift for that night. You please her demanding standards I shall win the bet and you will prove men can be just as good as any courtesan in the Empire."

"That is why I purchased you," She told him, "Once that is accomplished and my competitor has eaten crow for supper. I swear I will free you and you can go on about your life doing whatever you want."

"So, we have weeks to teach you skills and disciplines that normally take years to master to the degree you will have to master them," She stressed, "To do this in that short a time you will have to endure a non-stop and unrelenting pace of training and mastering each and every skill that can be expected of a courtesan. I will push and push and push you to the breaking point. And the only way that could possibly work is if you fully commit to it. If you fight me or the training in any way...well tell me now. I'd rather not waste my time with you, if you're not at least willing to try. I can always return you to the auction block and let you work yourself to death in some field or mine or wherever."

She came up to him then and offered her hand for him to take. "So what's it going to be. Dying a slave or working hard for your freedom?"

 

[The_gladiator]

It wasn’t the lash that struck him but the fist of one of the slavers. His mouth had gotten him in trouble again. You would think he would have learned. However, Drake had a problem, he just could not stand to see others he saw as under his protection wronged, and when he had broken the nose of a slave that had stolen a female slaves meager ration it had earned him a beating. He was certain it would have earned him a proper whipping, but no, there wasn’t time for that because it was time for the auction. This meant all the guard could do was continue to jab punches into the small of his back. He tried to pretend that he was getting a massage from some fancy location he’d heard of.

What was to be his fate, he wondered. Farming wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Better than mining surely it would be. What about some kind of skilled trade. Of course, the skills he was trained for like field stripping a rifle probably wouldn’t be needed anymore.

He was lead through the gates and out onto the stage where he would be displayed. He contemplated making a grab for the guards with their automatic weapons, he could probably get one, but could he mow down enough of these before one of the vamps got him.

As a soldier Drake had once dreamed of being one of the mentalists immune to the psychic gifts of vampires, from their mesmerizing gazes. Alas, that wasn’t the case, much to his chagrin. No, his only way was to obey and fight back where he could, like stand up for injustice, work behind the scenes, bide his time. However, that temper and desire for justice had brought him here.

The rest of the auction went as a blur to the former soldier. He was short on sleep, food, and the dose of psychic bliss he’d been given as payment for the blood the vampire slaver had took had left him muddled. He had to have been more out of it than he thought, he could have sworn some rich lady had bought him.

However, it was no dream. Drake learned this fact as he stood before Madam Severa. He tried to make a move when he was being released, but even as he raised an arm one of the women casually pressed delicate fingers against a pressure point in his side that doubled the soldier over. She then had his arm behind his back and had him in a lock that he recognized from his own training, should he struggle further, this petite girl would break his thumb, and that wasn’t a pain he particularly relished.

Drake Stilled and the woman eased off her grip, allowing Drake to settle back to his flat feet, rather than on his toes. He found quickly if he did not resist, he was not harmed.

Somewhere in the middle of Severa’s offer, he had settled down enough so that he was completely free of the three courtesans. Now he could focus on what she was saying.

She laid out everything for him and then offered a well-manicured hand to him as if to shake on their agreement. “Let me get this straight,” he finally spoke, his voice surprisingly deep despite the lack of a barrel chest the voice suggested. “I dedicate myself to your training for 9 weeks, show this spoiled princess a good time, and then you let me go free?” he looked skeptical. “It can’t be that easy lady. What about my black mark, the price on my head. You release me and every 2-bit bounty hunter that can’t afford to rub two credits together will want to collect the reward, which seemingly would be even higher, after you’ve gone to the trouble of training me, right?” He tried to sound polite, to keep the skepticism to a minimum, as well as reframing from asking her if she was barking mad, surely, she had to be, right?

 

[Veroe]

IC: Severa Duhaveline

Severa had watched paying attention to every motion and he took. He initially struggled against him, but she had taught her ladies well how to defend themselves. This slave, this man, soon learned the futility of trying to resist. She could've used her power to compel him to obedience, but she detested that ability, and it would ultimately useless. She couldn't place him under her compulsion twenty-four seven. For her to even have a chance to win the wager and rub it in that insufferably smug Countess Goldpeak's face she needed his voluntary effort to accomplish it.

She came up to him then and offered her hand for him to take. "So what's it going to be. Dying a slave or working hard for your freedom?"

"Let me get this straight," He asked in a voice that was deep and sexy enough to be sure to moisten any woman's panties with every syllable listening to him. She could use that. Much of seduction was conveyed through the ears as much as the eyes. With some training she could hammer away at the raw ore and forge a mighty blade that would conquer even the most jaded bastion of a woman's heart.

"Yes," She said in a leading tone.

"I dedicate myself to your training for nine weeks, show this spoiled princess a good time, and then you let me go free?" Every word positively dripped with his skepticism.

"That's right," She nodded with a small smile.

"It can't be that easy lady," He was trying to hide just how incredulous he was finding her proposition behind a curtain of forced-politeness in his tone, but Severa was much too practiced at slicing past such cloaks to pierce through to other's true intentions to fall for that. "What about my black mark, the price on my head. You release me and every 2-bit bounty hunter that can’t afford to rub two credits together will want to collect the reward, which seemingly would be even higher, after you’ve gone to the trouble of training me, right?”

"Well if that's what concerns you," She said dismissively, "As a free man you can choose to continue working for me like my girls here do. With the novelty of you being the only man in this business with the training I provide and the reputation you'll get by wooing the Imperial Princess...well...I would venture you'd earn enough credits to completely pay off any debt you have within a year, a few months even should you be very frugal in that time."

"And really just what options do you think you have here? If you do have such a black mark over your head."-She made a mental note to look into this slave's history herself-"Do you think you'll be safer working a farm or mine surrounded by other desperate men willing to do anything for a chance at enough credits to earn their own freedom. Not to mention how many of the slavedrivers that could easily arrange an 'unfortunate accident" upon you for the reward money. No, my offer today, is your best way forward. Here in my compound no one else is allowed inside. You won't even be allowed outside until the night of Princess' party."

Her hand hadn't lowered and still was there between them waiting for him to take it. "I detest wasting time, especially time I cannot afford to waste. I will have your answer, now."