Rhiain Higgins

“Rhiain Higgins, Dr. Marque, but please call me Rhiain.” The glib answer rolls easily from her trembling lips, and her hand rests gently on the man’s firm thigh as if for the comfort of human contact.

“In that case, call me Will.” He answers.

“I’m from a planet called Haven; I lived there with my family until the Black Ships came.” Tears spring from her eyes as she recounts (fabricates really) the heart wrenching tale of a young maid and her two sisters **** from a rural hamlet by slavers armed with energy weapons and capture nets. The scene in which her youngest sister of only fourteen summers is pulled from her mother’s arms, amidst the smoking ruins of a village dotted with the bodies of men who died fighting with axes and pitch forks in their hands is both evocative and chilling.

Once again Samantha finds herself pressed against Dr. Marque’s torso, but this time it is Rhiain that initiates the embrace deliberately pressing her breasts against his chest wiggling against him like a child seeking safety from a horrific memory. Dr. Marque is only human and his arms wrap protectively around her as she tries to catch her breath.

“It was awful Will.” She sobs softly “I’m sorry, it’s just that I finally feel safe.” Samantha is torn between her admiration of Rhiain’s manipulation of the doctor and her self-loathing for the way her alter-ego uses her body this way.

“Those men marched us in chains to the Black Ship and I saw hundreds of other pretty teenaged girls just like us in great holding pens that had been erected near the spaceship.” She pauses, nervously sitting upright and placing her hands timidly on her lap. “That’s where…” she stops to take a deep breath “That’s where I was … ****, and then **** again until I lost count.” Samantha didn’t even know that a person could make herself tremble at will until she felt her whole body shaking at the (imagined) memory. “That must be why I reacted so violently when your cleaning man was...”

“You don’t have…” Dr. Marque begins but Rhiain cuts him off.

“It’s OK, I wasn’t the only one. It took several weeks for the off-worlders to harvest the first fruits of the planet. That what they called us, ‘First Fruits’ like weren’t even people.” Rhiain’s voice is angrier now and bitter. “Almost all of us were used by those men whenever they felt like it; the worst was when men from my own planet were allowed access to our pens.” She is pressed tightly under the doctor’s arm and her hand rests on his lap only inches from the hard bulge that he is trying to hide.

“You have to understand Will, on Haven a woman’s body was her gift to her man, a fertile ground that only her husband could seed.” She wipes away the tears that run down her cheeks. “We expected no better from the strange mercenaries and slavers, but when we were given as toys to men from our own land in exchange for their treachery …” another of her deep breaths “That was even worse.” Rhiain is wasting her time as a thief; the woman should be an actress but Samantha allowed her to go on, it is much too late to try to stop this story now.

“I understand now that this was only the first part of our training, but at the time I felt so ashamed I would have killed myself if I had been given the chance.” Her tone changes again and she smiles up at the doctor’s worried face. “It wasn’t all bad. Some of the off-worlders were gentle and taught us how to be pleasing in all sorts of ways. I even started to like doing it by the time were loaded into the cryo-beds and sealed in for transport.” Rhiain blushes in embarrassment at her admission (Samantha is blushing too but for a totally different reason) “The last thing I remember before we were placed in the tiny tube was being told that I had been sold to a buyer on a different planet, and that I’d make him very happy.”

The two sit side by side on the doctor’s couch in silence for nearly a minute before she turns and kisses him gently on his clean-shaven cheek.

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to get home or find my sisters?”