Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
“All right. I find her pleasing. Are we supposed to exchange vows now?”
“Yes, of course.” The official nodded. “Kindly lift your bride’s breast net and take her breasts into your hands.”
“What?” His golden eyes widened in apparent surprise. “What did you ask me to do?”
“I said, you may lift her breast netting and hold her breasts in your hands,” the official repeated patiently.
The big Kindred still looked like he couldn’t understand what he was meant to do. To help him, Aleena reached up and twitched at the corner of her rented breast net, showing the bottom curve of her left breast. She kept her back turned to the crowd of spectators so it wouldn’t be obvious what she was doing.
She didn’t know why she was so willing to help the Ambassador with the part of the ceremony she had most been dreading. Maybe it was because of his refusal to beat her—though she still didn’t really believe it. Or perhaps it was the warmth she saw in his melted gold eyes. For whatever reason, she wanted to help him get through the ceremony, so she showed him what to do.
Slowly, as though he still wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing, the Ambassador reached for the bottom of her breast net and pulled it up. Because it was split in the middle, the two sides of the metal netting came up easily and he was able to lay them over her shoulders, baring her breasts completely.
“Good—very good,” the official said encouragingly. “And now you must take your bride’s breasts into your hands.”
He looked at Aleena again and she almost got the feeling that he was silently asking for permission. She gave a short, barely perceptible nod of her head and stood a little straighter, thrusting her bare breasts out at him. Of course she had no nipple bands yet—he would have to place them himself—so there was nothing but her naked breasts for him to look at and to hold.
The big Kindred reached out and cupped her breasts in his big warm hands—hands that were so big, in fact, that for once she didn’t feel like her chest was too large. She’d always been told she was too curvy and too top-heavy but though her breasts filled his hands, they didn’t overflow them.
There were approving murmurs from the crowd as people watched—the fact that her husband’s hands were big enough to contain her breasts was considered a lucky sign. It meant that he would be strong enough to contain and rule her as a man ought to rule his wife.
“Very good,” the official said. “Now, please repeat after me: I hold your body in my hands and claim you as my property.”
The big Kindred frowned, but looked down at Aleena and repeated the words.
“I hold your body in my hands and claim you as my property,” he rumbled in that impossibly deep voice of his.
“I hold your life in my hands to do with as I wish,” the official continued.
The big Kindred repeated the words, though the look on his face said they left a sour taste in his mouth for some reason. Was the ceremony making him mad, Aleena wondered anxiously?
But if it was, he didn’t show any other signs of his anger. He didn’t pinch or twist her nipples or grip her breasts harder in his big hands. In fact, if anything he seemed to be going out of his way to cup her gently and not hurt her.
But that’s only because we haven’t gotten to the placement of the nipple bands yet, she thought apprehensively. That was the part of the ceremony where a man could assert his dominance over his new wife—some men twisted their bride’s nipples until they shrieked in pain, just to show they could do anything they wanted to her now that she had been claimed.
“I will keep you by my side as long as you bring me pleasure,” the official went on. “If you cease to bring me pleasure or fail in your wifely duties in any way, I will disavow you and cast you aside to find another woman who pleases me more.”
The Kindred Ambassador’s face darkened into a scowl and Aleena had to fight the urge to back away from him. For some reason the official’s words had made him angry—surely now he would take his rage out on her!
But though his face looked like a thunderstorm about to break, the big hands holding her breasts didn’t squeeze or pinch or hurt her in any way. Instead her new husband rumbled in a voice so low she could barely hear it,
“I don’t want to say that.”
“Excuse me?” The official frowned up at the huge Kindred uncertainly.
“I said, I don’t want to say that. Surely there must be something else I can say instead.”