Reluctant Gladiator

RELUCTANT GLADIATOR - Part Thirty Eight A story by Pete Brown (petebrownuk @ yahoo.com)

Read all of Pete's stories at groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories

I knew they couldn't be serious about keeping me tied up for long. Well, at least I hoped they were not being serious. Lying there, writhing and struggling against the restraints holding me down I got angrier and angrier at the way they were treating me, and the sweat was pouring off me from the exertion. Jamie, Darren and Luke went and sat together on the couch and were huddled together whispering and talking quietly so I couldn't hear what they were saying, and when I called out to them to let me free before they got into even worse trouble, Jamie turned his head and snapped "If you want to be gagged again, Steve, you're going the right way about it. Stay silent, or take the consequences!"

"Listen, fucker, sooner or later you're going to have to let me go, and then....."

I never got to finish the sentence as Jamie came over, pinched my nose closed so I had to breathe through my mouth, and when it was open just a little squeezed his fingers in to my jaw on both side so I was forced to open my mouth with the pain, so he could stuff a sock in it again. He stood there looking down at me with an angry expression on his face, then reached across my body and started to stroke my dick. Well, in spite of everything - my anger, my tiredness, the sweat - what do you expect happened? I started to go erect, of course. There's no way that someone can play with my dick without my body responding quite automatically like that.

A new purposefulness flickered across Jamie's face then, and he gripped my hard dick really firmly and jerked away at me so hard that it almost hurt. My moaning and writhing was different now as I responded to this acute sexual stimulation, and soon I knew I was going to shoot my load - which I did a few moments later, feeling my cum streak across my belly. The bastard didn't stop then, though - I'm one of those guys whose dick is incredibly sensitive when I've shot, and Jamie knew this from the many times we'd had sex. But in spite of this he carried on jerking my dick really hard. I thrashed around and screamed into my gag, and this seemed to amuse Jamie, as much as anything! Finally he did stop, though, and as I lay there with the sweat pouring off me he leaned his face towards mine and half whispered "Sex is meant to be fun, Steve. But it can hurt, you know: what you did to Luke earlier hurt him, and this is a bit of payback."

He ran his hand over my belly, kind of "corralling" my cum into a small area, then he reached up and pulled the sock out of my mouth as he scooped up the cum and brought it up to me. "Open wide, Steve.... We're all tired of having to lick your cum up when you order us to, and now it's time for you to get a taste of your own!"

I clamped my mouth shut, but it was no use - Jamie reached down and grabbed my balls, and as his fingers closed around the top of my sac and he began to pull down, I knew he had me. I slowly opened my mouth, and Jamie let the drops of cum liberally mixed with my sweat drop in.

Who knows what he might have done then, but Darren came over looking concerned and put his arm around Jamie's shoulder very tenderly. "Leave it, Jamie...."

"No! He needs to learn a lesson...."

"Come on, leave it! Unless we're going to do something dreadful to Steve, you're going to have to stop sometime. We've fucked him, and now you've humiliated him.... That's enough. Come on back over with Luke and me and let's all sleep on it...."

"No! He needs to learn a lesson. He's been a bastard to us recently.... All this slave shit.... When we were gladiators together he always used us, and all the others, because he was a champion and he could. But he wasn't cruel... Not like he's been recently. Look at how he fucked Luke earlier: it's as if he wanted to hurt him - no, it's as if he needed to hurt him, needed Luke to cry so that he could get his kicks.... He deserves to see what it's like...."

"You're right, of course. But doing the same stuff back to him isn't going to help - you know that as well as I do. So come on, leave him..."

Jamie stood up rather reluctantly. I wanted to scream out "Yes, you young cunt. Leave me alone, before you make it any worse for yourself when I do get free". But sometimes discretion is a better strategy than open defiance, so with a huge effort I held my anger in check and simply lay there, although I was seething with anger inside.

Darren came and stood close to me now and said quietly "Jamie's right to be upset, Steve. We all are. And I think you know it. It was good when we were gladiators together, and then when you 'rescued' Luke and we were first here together as real buddies. But lately you've changed: it's as if you really believe we're your slaves - we may be, in terms of the law, but that's not what it's about, is it? You can't treat us like slaves when we were gladiators together, and real buddies...."

I lay there not saying anything, because actually I knew he was right. Then, lowering his voice so that the others couldn't hear him, he went on "I reckon you're jealous, Steve. Jealous of Jamie and me because we're together and you haven't really got anyone, jealous of all three of us because we're young and you feel yourself getting older, jealous of the fact that if we were fighting we're still be getting better whereas you're going off...." He paused, and went on "But there's no way you're going to change any of that by taking it out on us - you've got to find some way of living for yourself...."

"And you know all this because I suppose you did psychology 101 before you were enslaved and became a gladiator....?", I sneered.

"Oh Steve, there you go again. You don't want people to be nice to you, you don't want help... All you want is to be Steve, fighting against everything and everyone, even those who'd like to be your buddies.... You don't have to be an expert to see that, deep down, you're not happy, are you?"

I knew he was right, of course. I was unhappy. I was missing my old life, missing being a gladiator and all the comradeship, missing being Champion, and most of all, missing Mike.

Darren smiled at me, ruefully. "I'll take that silence as agreement. It's hard for tough guys like us to admit it out loud, I know. So look, lie there quietly now, and don't make any more trouble. I'll calm Jamie down tonight, then in the morning it will all seem different, and we'll decide what to do.... He's a bit of a hothead, as you know, but I'll talk some sense into him and he'll see that there's no future for any of us in keeping you a prisoner or whatever else he has in mind. The one advantage of guys like Jamie is that they get angry quickly, but they can calm down quickly, too - especially if there's something to take their mind off it, and I reckon some good fucking tonight will do that...." And with that, Luke turned and went back to the others.

So it was my decision, I suppose. I could have started shouting and thrashing again, but instead of that I just lay there and soon enough fell asleep.

It was Jamie who untied me the next morning. He looked wary at first as he freed one of my legs and then the other, but got bolder when he saw I wasn't lashing out at him. And by the time he was freeing my wrists he was looking somehow more confident - no, perhaps that's wrong: he wasn't confident in the arrogant sense that he knew he'd won, it was more that he was feeling confident that things were going as he'd been told they would. There was even the faintest suggestion of a smile on his face as if he was relieved that everything was going to be OK. Jamie's a really nice guy but not necessarily the sharpest needle in the pack - he acts a lot from instinct without thinking through all the consequences, and I guessed that it had taken Darren a lot of talking and persuading to get him to accept that something terrible wasn't going to happen if he let me go free. So when he saw my lack of reaction, I guess he knew that, as usual, Darren had told him

the right thing.

Luke was very wary as we ate breakfast, though: I mean, how do you deal with a guy who you've raped the night before, especially if you've not got a whole lot of experience of the way that men can treat each other? But as we slurped our juice and munched on cereals and fruits, the atmosphere did seem to lighten generally. They were all waiting for me to say or do something, though, even if it was only to shout at them to get ready to go out to work as they were all as usual leaving it to the last minute to do so. But I'd been thinking overnight, too, and as we were finishing I said calmly "You're not going to the site today, guys. Well, only so that I can go and collect the money they owe me for your labour this week. And we're leaving this crummy dump - so get your stuff together."

They at once all looked interested and alert, and I muttered "I think it's time for a change. And we need to go to Tennessee, so as soon as you're packed, well leave."

"Tennessee?", Luke blurted out.

"Yes. I've had news that Mike is there. And we're going to free him."

There was a a lot of discussion then, as Darren and Jamie guessed that Mike would be a slave down the mines - I think all of us gladiators knew that that was likely to be our fate at the end of our careers. And, equally, we all knew the reason for that: escape was impossible and it was considered the safest place for fighters who were past it. Everyone 'knew' that a slave sent down the mines never came to the surface again - why bother to bring a dead body to the surface for burial? And the threat of being condemned to work in perpetual darkness until you were worn out and died was another of those powerful incentives to all slaves to obey their owners at all times. It was almost a 'given' that mining slaves were never seen again.

"So if Mike is down one of the pits, how are you going to get him out?", Jamie finally challenged. "It sounds like a waste of time to me to go all that way. Why don't we head down to the Gulf coast and look for work? At least it would be warm there...."

"I don't know everything. But I do know that sitting here, or on the Gulf coast or wherever isn't likely to be able to help Mike. When we're on the spot something is sure to turn up."

"You're only thinking about yourself as usual, Steve. Darren and Luke and me deserve a bit of a break - some sun on our backs...."

"Listen, Jamie, and listen well! If I have any more of this it won't be sun on your backs you'll be feeling, it will be a lash!" Even as I said this I could see that some of the gains I'd made by being 'all guys together' were rapidly evaporating. So I calmed myself and continued a lot more quietly "Come on, guys - Jamie and Darren, you know what a great guy Mike was when he was Champion. We can't leave him to rot down a mine, can we?"

"Actually, Steve, he was a bit of a bastard", Jamie started. "He was always hitting young guys like me and Darren...."

"...Only to discipline you. Can't you see that by giving you a few blows in the gladiators' quarters he was actually helping you? If you'd not learned discipline and control that bastard Straughan and the guards would have done far, far more with the cane, tawse, lash and whip! I reckon you were lucky to have a great guy like Mike in charge - you didn't like it, did you, when that big nigga you were telling me about, the one who nearly destroyed Darren, became Champion? Think of what it would have been like if the nigga had been Champion when you first arrived! We all know how 'uppity' that gang of niggas was anyway, and if that guy Shaikal or whatever he was called had been in charge, you and Darren would have had a perpetually sore ass, if you ask me - if you hadn't been torn and permanently damaged, that is... So I reckon you owe Mike a lot. But, in any case, it doesn't matter - we're all going together, we're sticking together as a team, and

we're going to beat the system and rescue Mike."

Darren put his arm around Jamie and said quietly "Steve's right, you know. Mike was a mean, tough bastard at times, but he was 'fair' - he never actually hit any of us just for fun, did he? And he didn't screw us young guys... And I reckon we owe - or, at least, I owe - Steve a big debt of gratitude for rescuing me. We wouldn't be here together if it wasn't for Steve, so I think you owe him, too. Do you want to do less for Mike than Steve did for me?"

Jamie looked thoughtful. "Well it's OK to say that, but all Steve did was to buy you from that dealer. Now we're all going off to do something that's probably not possible at all. And I reckon that even trying to help a slave escape from the mines, whether we succeed or not, is illegal... We'll all end up as slaves...."

I lost it again. "Jamie, will you listen to yourself? 'We'll all end up as slaves...' - you ARE a slave already, so it can't get worse for you. It's me that's risking everything, me that's putting my future at stake as it's me they'll enslave if we're caught..."

"...and then they'll send us all down the mines, I reckon"

"OK, Jamie, so you're scared! I understand. So I'll sell you to Jon and Anne and you can spend the rest of your life here doing a boring labouring job. And Darren and Luke and me will go off and rescue Mike..."

"Don't call me scared! I've never been scared of anything! I was a gladiator, just like you, Steve. I went into the arena, I fought, I even fought naked for the amusement of those rich folks...."

"So, Jamie, if you're not scared, why are you worried about this?"

I had him, I knew. As I've said, Jamie isn't always the sharpest needle in the pack and it's not hard to get the better of him in an argument like this, especially when he's excited. Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing Jamie down as he's a really great guy, just the kind of guy you want to be with in a bar, or working out with at the gym, or in bed... It's just that sometimes he likes to argue for argument's sake without any real foundation to it.

I could see Darren smiling a little and he gave me a wink as he turned to Jamie and added "No one thinks you're scared really, you know that. But you sound it - and sometimes people believe what you say, you know! And, anyway, I'm going, and you don't want us to be separated, do you? So why don't you shut the fuck up and let's start doing as Steve says and getting our things together?"

And that was that, although Jamie grumbled and moaned a bit as we threw some stuff into a couple of bags - one advantage of being used to being a gladiator and then a slave is that you get used to not having a lot of 'stuff', so it wasn't a big job. But I was amused to see Jamie 'encouraging' his brother as Luke dawdled a bit, as he was now eager to get started. Typical Jamie - he'd 'flipped' into action mode, and now wanted everyone to get going.

There was a public phone at the bus station - one of the few left in the city, I reckon - and I called Jon and told him we were leaving, but when I started to tell him what we planned he stopped me. "You never know who's monitoring phone calls these days, Steve. And if Anne and I need to come and 'rescue' you ever, we need to be squeaky clean, able to swear that we had no idea, no idea at all, or your plans.... That we never even suspected that you might even be contemplating anything contrary to the law."

I could almost hear the smile in his voice as he said this, so I knew he 'knew'. "Keep in touch, Steve", he added. "We'll want you to come back in about seven months, as there will be a celebration...", and with that we finished the call.

There was a problem when I came to buy tickets though, because of the price. I hadn't got a lot of savings from the guys' work, and it turned out that tickets for free men, in the top of the bus, were eight times more expensive than those for slaves travelling in the slave compartment underneath. And the clerk would not sell a 'slave class' ticket to a free man. So I riffled through the bag we had then ducked into the rest rooms and pulled off my shirt, boxers and jeans and came out in one of the skimpy thin slave Ts and slave shorts, then went to a different clerk at the ticket window and asked for four slave-class tickets, using 'proper' slave mode and calling him 'sir'. The clerk looked at me suspiciously and snapped "Where's your owner, boy? Why isn't he here to buy the tickets? You're not trying to get a cheap ride, are you?"

"No, sir." I really wanted to grab the guy and tell him to mind his own fucking business, but I deliberately kept my voice low and looked down as a slave would. "Our owner is sending us to his country place for the summer, and he and the mistress have left for a business trip this morning.... Please, sir, can I have the tickets - we'll all get whipped if we don't make the bus..."

"We get a lot of free men trying to cheat the company! You don't look like a slave - you don't have a collar...."

I pulled off my T and turned around so he could see my name in such big letters across my back.

"That's not totally convincing, boy! A lot of free men have tattoos, at least where they can't normally be seen in the street..."

I turned around to face him and pushed down my shorts. I hated having to expose myself like this, especially in public as the bus station was really very busy. But, after all, I'd done it before. "Sir, my owner also had this done to me, sir. I don't think any free man would have his dick tattooed.... And he had me 'skinned, too, as you can see..."

The clerk clearly enjoyed the view - or was he revelling in that feeling of power that you have when you've got something that someone else desperately wants?

"OK, boy. But keep those other slaves well under control! Slaves are usually accompanied by an owner to keep discipline, and I suppose that your owner believes that you are capable of acting properly - but there's a guard on the bus, in the free men section of course, but if he finds anything amiss when he opens the slave compartment when the bus stops at breaks, he had the authority to punish you - the purchase of a slave ticket explicitly gives the Company the right to discipline and control any slaves to any degree necessary to maintain public order and discipline." As he said that he pushed four tickets at me, and told me that under no circumstances were we to use the free people's waiting areas or rest rooms until our bus came.

I don't suppose any of you riding on a bus have ever really thought what it's like to be in the slave compartment underneath. In earlier times it was probably there to hold the baggage, but now free men chose to keep that with them and the space was more profitably used for the transport of slaves. So there's not a lot of headroom - none of us could stand upright, and we had to bend double to actually get in. And once inside they only provide a small foam pad on the floor to sit on. There are windows as I suppose that saves them having to provide lighting, but they are very small, and very low down, so you don't get any real sense of the scenery as you go along. We were lucky when the bus arrived as we were the only guys in the compartment and the bus driver and guard checked out tickets and herded us inside. I heard them saying to each other that it was lucky we were all male, as "putting in the separator panel to keep males and females apart was

a real bore". I didn't like it as they slammed the compartment door and locked it from outside, though - I couldn't help wonder what would happen if the bus were to crash as we'd have no chance of making our own way out from the wreckage - but, of course, that doesn't matter for slaves, I suppose.

It was really boring. The journey took three days in all, allowing for the fact that we had to change buses - twice - and wait for connections. There was not a lot to look at, as I've told you, and you also need to remember that we were all men of action, used to exercising our bodies, so being confined in a small space with no chance to use our muscles was particularly grim. There was time to work out a bit at the stops - the moment the compartment opened we climbed out and then all four of us went for a really fast sprint several times around the rest area, then did push-ups and star jumps to try to burn off some of our energy.

Our tickets included 'basic slave care' it seemed, as at most of the stops the driver gave us bottles of water and slabs of slave chow. We weren't allowed to use the facilities at most of the rest stops, and when the guard saw Jamie standing beside the bus to piss discretely at the first one, he snapped a cane across his butt (causing Jamie to lose control and spray piss all over his shorts!) - it was lucky that Darren was there to restrain Jamie as I reckon that otherwise we'd have been in real trouble as Jamie would have turned on the guard. He told us that when we needed to piss we should use the hole in the floor of our compartment and to "poke our dicks out so that there was no piss inside, or else we'd all be caned". We found out that when we needed to crap we were expected to go to a very basic facility generally 'hidden' somewhere out of sight in the rest area - it was always pretty crude, and only ever had a sort of 'half door' so that

although free men might not be affronted by the sight of a slave crapping should they stroll that way, there was no real privacy for the poor slave inside.

When we got to the nearest town to the mine the guard and driver were surprised that our owner was not there to receive us, and it took a lot of 'humble' talk from me to reassure them that we could be left, and that there was no need to call the local police to take us into custody as an overseer from our owner's estate would be bound to arrive soon. The moment the bus had driven off I snuck into the free men's rest room and changed back into 'proper' clothes - and even scraped the growth of beard from my face with a razor - so that I looked 'respectable'. The problem then was what to do next - the mine was ten or twelve miles away in a small place with no bus connection, and there was no way that three slaves and their owner could hitch a lift without causing suspicion. Locked in our compartment with nothing else to do we'd been talking, though, and Darren had told us about his early life before he'd been enslaved. His folks had been really poor

homesteaders out West somewhere with very little money, and Darren had taken to 'borrowing' stuff to try to keep up with his classmates at the local high school - with the predictable result. But in growing up he'd basically 'run wild' a lot when he wasn't required to do chores for his folks, and he said he knew a hell of a lot about living in the woods, and living off the country, and stuff like that.

Under his guidance I therefore went in to a 'country store' in the town and bought a hunting bow, a couple of big knives, a compass, and stuff like tarpaulins and haversacks to carry it all in, as well as a big bag of slave chow which, after all, would keep us going for food even though it's got a vile taste.

Darren seemed to be in his element. He strode off confidently with the three of us following him and we headed out into the woods. Those of you who have done it will know how hard it is to actually navigate through dense scrub and tall trees, but Darren seemed to have a knack for it - as he did for making a crude shelter from tarpaulin strung on a rope between trees, and for making a fire, and shooting squirrels to roast over it! Jamie and Luke thought the idea was terrible until the savoury smell of the meat changed their minds, and we all slept 'spooned up' together that night to keep warm. Actually, if there hadn't been a grim purpose to all of this it would have been a pretty fun time, but I couldn't help worrying about what we were going to do when we were at the mine.

The following day Darren led us up a small hill, sort of on the tree line, and as we looked down we saw the mine itself, on the outskirts of a very small town. I don't know what I was expecting - I'd seen pictures of those old fashioned places from the twentieth century of course with the big wheels of the winding gear towering up, slag heaps, railway yards for the coal trains, and all that sort of stuff. But this was just a plain square building looking a bit like a factory or office block or something - I guess they didn't need winding gear as a small elevator would suffice for the one-way traffic of slaves down. And I'd read that the coal was ground up underground and shipped out as a slurry by pipeline, so there weren't trucks and trains and stuff.

I told the three guys to stay hidden in the woods whilst I went into town to see the lie of the land, so to speak - it didn't seem that it would be credible for a guy like me to simply 'arrive' with three slaves that I owned without a lot of stuff like a truck and so on. I washed in a stream and shaved again to look respectable, then asked the first person I found where the entrance to the mine was as I was looking for a job. There was some suspicion at first, but I had a haversack with me and I said I'd hitched a ride there, and once I had got into the mine building it was pretty lucky as there was a job as a guard going - not for the slaves down the mine they hurried to assure me, but simply a 'security guard' at the main gate for the usual sort of stuff of checking passes and so on. The pay was terrible, and the HR guy just shrugged his shoulders. "You want to work around here, there isn't a lot of choice! And it's only grunt work that a slave

could do except that we can't employ slaves in security. So take it or leave it...."

So I had myself a job, and on the basis of that when I asked about accommodation the HR guy gave me a number of addresses and said I should enquire there. One of these was a rather rundown gas station, and the owner told me he had a pretty basic cabin for rent, whose only advantage was that it was cheap! Well, with the owner saying that I wasn't expecting much of course, but it was within walking distance of the mine, it was watertight, and had a fireplace, a table and chairs, a bed, and some other rudimentary stuff that would at least make life there half possible.

That night I called the guys down from the woods and we ate a squirrel stew, and discussed tactics. "Look, you can all sleep here at night, but it's a very small town - there's no way that the presence of three slaves won't be noticed, and then they'll wonder why a guy like me who's got a piss-poor job at the mine can afford to own three valuable salves like you guys... So you're going to have to spend most of your time in the woods whilst I figure something out."

I could see Jamie was thinking about arguing, but Darren said "Great, Steve! I can show these two how much fun it was when I was growing up. We'll have a fantastic time, and we'll only come back here after dusk."

"What about the rain, and lavatories and stuff like that...?" Luke asked.

"It will do you all good to live the life of outdoor slaves, I reckon. Or, if you don't like the thought of that, think of yourselves as marines on patrol - I served a couple of tours living rough in the jungle and it did me no harm, as you can see...."

So that was it, really, and the next day I went to the mine, was given a uniform, and spent the day checking the comings and goings into the place. After a couple of days though I was getting nowhere - I used the meal breaks to talk to other guys working there and the system appeared to be escape proof: when new slaves were to be deployed they arrived in a truck already naked, and went straight from the truck to the elevator that took them down the mine. The elevator also took food down daily - the amount being based on the mine's output, I was told, so if the slaves didn't work, they didn't get fed, and there were no guards or anyone down there. It was a very deep mine so the only way out was via the elevator, and the doors at the top were guarded and in a sort of 'airlock; arrangement so there was no chance of a slave creeping out.

I'd been there three days and was looking forward to the weekend - I planned to join the guys in the woods as I'd liked the patrols I did in the jungle when I was a marine and I wanted to hone my survival skills - but the other employees told me I was 'expected' to be at church on Sunday morning. I laughed and said I'd grown out of being superstitious when I was about six and had no intention of joining in mumbo-jumbo, when one of them took me quietly aside. "It's like this, Steve", he told me "The plant manager is also the pastor and he likes a good attendance when he's preaching, so if you value your job - and there aren't a lot of them in this town as you probably know - then you'll be there."

Sunday morning therefore saw me sitting there scrubbed and shaved in my 'best' clothes as I had to listen to a complete load of crap based on myth and fear as the plant manager / pastor preached hell and damnation and harangued us about sin and stuff for over an hour! All the sycophants on his staff wanted to introduce me to him afterwards, and he had that patronising attitude that asked me if I was 'free of sin', and when I said that of course I was, he began to rant and rave at me about how single men like me were at danger from 'self abuse' and stuff like that. I'd have been roaring with laughter at the absurdity of it all had I not needed to keep the job.

Over the next couple of weeks as I worked at the plant and wasted my Sundays at the church, I began to notice that the pastor seemed to be very concerned about young guys and their penchant for potential self abuse! Indeed, the younger the guy, the more he seemed to focus on them, and to emphasise his 'teaching' he appeared to need to put his arms around them as he stood there and talked about it.

In the middle of the following week when all four of us had finished eating I told them about my suspicions - that the 'pastor' was obsessed with your guys. "So the only way we're going to make progress on this is to get a young guy to spend some time with him...."

All three of them looked at me as I went on "So, Luke, you're the youngest we've got, so it's going to have to be you - especially as you're slimmer and not as muscular as Jamie and Darren. So we're going to have to work on you to make you look like a 'young guy', and then we can use you as a lure..."

"What do you mean?" Luke sounded immediately suspicious, and I though to myself that he must have been spending too much time with his brother"

"Well we'll bleach your skin so you look a lot less tanned and healthy and more like some nerd who never goes outdoors. Then we'll curl your hair a bit, so you're more 'cute' - it's grown over the past months, and I reckon we could wave it a bit. And then of course we'll shave you - I reckon that without any body hair you'd be able to pass for fourteen or so...."

"No way! Curl my hair, shave off all my body hair.... I'm not going to look like a fag...."

It was Darren who convinced him. "You'll do as Steve says, or none of us will ever get out of this place! Steve's not going to go without Mike. The only way to get at Mike seems to be via this plant manager come pastor, the only way to get to him is to give him a nice young boy to work on, and you're the only one of us who even vaguely resembles a 'nice young boy'. So you'll do as Steve suggests, as I for one am getting tired of playing marines on patrol in the woods!"

"Yes, me too", Jamie growled. "And, anyway, it's not up to you. Darren and me will make sure you do what Steve wants."

I was amused by Jamie's attitude, considering how much grief he could give me sometimes about stuff he needed to do, but he and Darren were becoming so close that it now seemed almost natural for him to go along with whatever Darren wanted.

There wasn't a lot of call for skin whitener in the town and as a single man I could hardly be seen in the beauty shop trying to buy hair curling stuff! So as a diversion from their usual routine I sent the three of them back to the larger town where the bus had dropped us. And even then, as slaves, it might have looked suspicious for them to be buying stuff like this, so I gave them orders to go into the public library and use the free 'net terminals there to order on-line. It was a nice break for them, I reckon, as I also gave them a couple of new bucks so that they could buy themselves a meal at the slave cafe in town, and a couple more so they could bring us back some meat and stuff as a change from squirrel, rabbit and whatever else they could shoot in the woods.

End Of Part Thirty Eight