Anya's Intro

--Arthur--

Arthur Murdock was sitting there, completely still and silent, trying to process the sheer obscenity of his luck.

He was, at this very moment, sitting in the back of a limousine with seats so expensive, comfy and well-made that he'd probably get a better night's sleep grabbing a blanket and lying down in the limo than if he slept in a hotel. And sitting across from him was an absolutely gorgeous woman with wavy chestnut hair, a scandalous gold-sequined dress, and a body that an artist would struggle to improve on. She was sitting there, cross-legged and smiling at him, smelling of cherries and expensive perfume. She was 30 years old, ten years Arthur's senior, and every inch of her body simply exuded glamor and prestige. And amazingly, incredibly, despite every last thing about it feeling almost impossibly wrong for the last two years... this woman was Arthur's wife.

“Excited?” she asked with a smile as she shifted her legs. Her accent was flawlessly Californian, without the slightest hint of Bliservian creeping through.

“Excited” wasn't exactly the right word. What he was feeling was a level of exhilaration that almost flipped straight back around to fear, as if his mind were instinctually searching for a catch that wasn't there. And despite having two whole years to get used to it, none of his situation ever felt any more real.

This woman was Anya Safflower. One of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous women in the world. A genius even by Bliservian standards, this woman had graduated college at 13 years old and proceeded to set the entire medical field on fire. The sheer brilliance of her intimate understanding of how chemicals interacted with the body saw her crafting medicines and drugs with effects that bordered on witchcraft. By the time she was 24, her efforts, combined with the incredibly unrestrained testing policies of the fatherland she coordinated with, had filled the pharmacies and hospitals of the world with drugs that many once thought impossible. Diet pills that accelerated a body's caloric burn rate to triple speed with no ill side effects. Sedatives and tranquilizers and painkillers with no overdose effects. And most valuably to her homeland... birth control pills for men that let them choose the sex of their children. And all of that meant that she had been able to retire at the age of 28, with ten billion dollars in the bank, and enough patents and trademarks and company stock to live like a queen for as long as she pleased without ever seeing that number lose a single digit.

And not only had Arthur spent the last two years living in this woman's outrageously posh house. Not only had Arthur seen this woman naked. Not only had Arthur had sex with this woman multiple times a week for the past two years. Not only had she descended upon him, like a goddess from the heavens, and swept him into the lap of unimaginable luxury mere days after he became legal, when just a week prior he had received his last college rejection letter and began pondering what to do with his pitiful life after high school. Not only all of that, but to top it all off, in all of that time, she had had him coached, tutored and groomed to travel with her to a tropical island nation that was filled to the brim with gorgeous women who worshipped men as gods.

“...Or are you nervous?” Anya probed when he gave no response, leaning forward in her seat, showing off even more of her incredible figure.

Arthur nodded weakly, unable to take his eyes off of her body. That package of pure perfection, wrapped up in shimmering gold. Scarcely able to process what she intended to do with it. Anya responded by climbing into his lap, and Arthur could feel his heart racing as her arms wrapped around his back and her breasts went right in his face.

“Now,” she said, looking down at him with a smile, “why on Earth... would you be nervous? Sasha tells me your Bliservian is perfect... you don't exactly have much you're leaving behind... and once you get on the ship... and everything I own becomes yours... including me...”

She took one hand from Arthur's back and began stroking the side of his face.

“...you'll hardly have to worry about anything ever again,” she cooed. “So, then... why so nervous? Whatever could you be thinking about in that head of yours?”

Arthur felt a shiver down his spine as the other hand slipped away from his back, and she put her fingertips gently against her own neck.

“Could you be thinking about me?” she teased. “Are you trying to imagine what I'm going to look like... once I'm wearing a collar...” the fingertips slid down her neck, past her collarbone, and onto the skin between her breasts, left wide open by her scandalous dress. She gently pulled her hands outward, brushing her fingertips against the full hills of her breasts, brushing deliberately against the sequined fabric as if to pull it aside and show him everything, “...and precious little else?”

Before Arthur could react, Anya had snaked her arms behind his head and plunged it between her pillowy breasts.

“No,” she teased, “that can't be it... why on Earth... would that make you nervous?”

She gently stroked his head, running her fingers through his bright red hair, letting him breathe deeply of the expensive perfume that seemed to coat her whole body in a wonderful sweetness.

“Well,” she sighed, “I don't suppose there's any harm in being a little nervous. It is a big moment in your life, after all.”

Anya guided his head up to look at her.

“But it's a big day for me too,” she said. “My whole life has been leading up to this moment. All thirty years of it. And I've spent half of those years trying to make it absolutely perfect. Living the right life... picking the right day... picking the right man...”

Arthur turned at the faint sound of shouting and chanting coming from outside the limousine. Anya turned too, with a look of one amused by the antics of a small, stupid animal. He couldn't make anything out, but as he looked out the window he saw it was the embassy's usual group of anti-Bliservia protestors, trying to dissuade any who tried to enter from as close to the front gates as they were legally permitted to gather. Which was far enough away that at the actual parking lot and entrance, they couldn't be seen or heard at all. To date, he had been told, they had managed to convince exactly zero people.

“...And what made me the right man?” Arthur asked finally, his voice nervous and somewhat boyish. His face, for that matter, continued that impression. A young 20 year old redhead with youthful freckles and incredibly innocent-looking blue eyes, he looked as out of place where he was going as he felt.

Anya chuckled. She had always been incredibly tight-lipped about what made her single him out, when she could have had any man she wanted. And it seemed that today would not be an exception.

“Oh no,” laughed Anya, “let's not make a habit of questions like that, Sweetie. Not now. You don't need to trouble yourself with the complexities of a woman's heart. In a few hours... that won't matter to anyone. Not to you... and not to me. All you need to know is that Anya Safflower is going to step on that boat as the happiest woman on Earth. As for what's left of her when she comes out the other side, well...” she smiled mischievously.

Arthur stared at her. That was another thing. She still hadn't told him what was going to happen to her. He had read all the brochures, seen all the videos, and he knew full well that there were as many different fates for women who went on that boat as there were depths of human depravity. And yet this whole time, over two solid years, never once had she let slip what sort of slave she intended to let that ship make of her. It was a closely-guarded secret of hers, something she was determined to make a surprise.

“Buuut,” Anya conceded, slowly stepping out of Arthur's lap and returning to her seat, “I suppose there is... one part that you're going to find out on your own anyway. And I suppose I can tell you that now.”

She turned to her side to look down the long, bench-like limousine seat she sat on until her eyes landed on the other woman sitting in the limo with them, a woman who had been so completely silent and still while reading her book that Arthur had almost forgotten she was there.

The woman was dressed in such a serious, professional, no-nonsense manner that she could have been a member of the secret service. Her black suit was impeccable and crisp, and overlapped with itself such that there was only the merest glimpse of the white dress shirt underneath. She had black business pants with a black leather belt, black heels on her feet, and a black suitcase placed on the seat beside her. There was not a trace of jewelry. The only accessory this woman had on at all was a pair of sunglasses on her face that, combined with her stern demeanor, made her seem cold and distant. Her skin was fairly dark, but the European influence in her facial features was absolutely unmistakable. Her black hair was kept in an incredibly tight bun behind her head, and there wasn't even the tiniest trace of lipstick or nail polish. This was Sasha, and for the last two years she had been Arthur's Bliservian tutor, teaching him everything he needed to know about the ins and outs of the Bliservian language.

“Tell me, Darling,” said Anya, turning back to Arthur, “how do you suppose a Bliservian like Sasha came to... look the way she does? Or me, for that matter?” she added, fingering her chestnut hair. “I'm not quite the classic look myself.”

Arthur paused. It wasn't so much not knowing the answer as not knowing a polite way to phrase it.

“Blondes are wonderful and all,” Anya explained patiently, “but the fatherland has always been hungry for variety. And they have a long and proud history of bringing in foreign men to help... spice up the gene pool. The trouble, however, is that Bliservian genes are very assertive. Just one drop is all it takes to get most of the effects. The good looks, the long lives, the intelligence, and the... lifestyle choices. But the rest of the package, the blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes, those are all constantly trying to push their way back in too. So it's a constant struggle, and we're constantly needing to bring in fresh blood to do it.”

She gestured to Sasha again, who barely reacted.

“Take Sasha,” Anya continued. “She looks the way she does because back in the 1500s, when the rest of the western world was buying slaves from Africa, Bliservia used to send ships there, pretend to be British, and load up with male slaves. Imagine their shock when those men found out their new home wouldn't just set them free, but pay them handsomely to breed the white out of its women.”

How... nice of them, Arthur thought.

“Remember Abigail Prima,” Anya continued, “the reporter who went native? She had almost nothing to offer as a slave. No skills, no experience, minimum training, barely spoke the language, and by Bliservian standards, her body was... let's be polite and say it was a fixer-upper. But when she was put up on the auction block, men practically fought to the death over her. She sold for more than any other slave in history. Because they simply don't make Bliservians with skin as dark as hers. They've tried for 500 years,” she pointed to Sasha again, “but they can never quite... get the cream out of the coffee, if you'll pardon the expression.”

Sasha simply returned to her book, unphased by the subject matter.

“My point,” she concluded with a mischievous smile, “is that when we think about potential husbands... we tend to think an awful lot about the pretty new slaves they'll make for the fatherland. So when I saw a cute, sweet little thing like you walking down the street, with your red hair and your big blue eyes... let's just say I was awfully eager to learn more.”

Arthur sat there, staring at Anya, unable to decide what to think about this revelation. The entire thing was so utterly bizarre, he often found he didn't even have any instincts about them anymore. But at any rate, any potential awkwardness was interrupted when they all heard the voice of the driver up front.

“We'll be arriving in two minutes, Ms. Safflower,” he said.

“Excellent,” said Anya. But then she turned to Arthur in surprise, as if she had just remembered something. “Oh! One more thing we need to discuss, Darling, before we go inside. I have... something of a favor to ask you. Can you do that for me?” she smiled. “One last request for your wife... while she's still allowed to call herself that?”

Arthur was not in the habit of saying yes to things before he knew what they were, but for Anya, the idea of saying no to anything she said never even crossed his mind. So he nodded. Anya smiled at this, and then she gestured to Sasha again. Sasha put down her book and looked at Arthur, her expression still inscrutable behind those sunglasses, but clearly paying attention.

“Now, I know you still have your doubts about this whole 'slavery' business,” she said with a smile that bordered on condescension. “I know the main reason you heard me out in the first place was for the money. And I don't mind. I know your parents weren't in the best place financially. And I'm sure that, now that you've gotten to know me for so long... it must feel even stranger. But I promise you, if you just let yourself dive headfirst into it... I think being a master is going to come to you quite naturally. And so... while I'm still allowed to have any say on things... I'd like to know you're going to really give it a chance. So I'd like you to agree to a little challenge. Something that'll push you to see women... in the proper way.”

This sounded very ominous, but Arthur said nothing and let her continue.