She was still a virgin, sort of. They’d made wide and comprehensive use of her mouth and ass on the way.
“Look up at me, sweet one.”
She’d learned early on not to look up into the eyes of the slavers, but a slave’s first rule was to obey, so she raised her gaze to his, trying hard to keep from flinching.
From the look on Manivietto’s face as he stared down at her, that last virginity would go soon. He was handsome, in an almost womanly kind of way. With slashing brows, high cheekbones, a sharp chin, and full, puffy lips. They curved now as he cupped her chin in his hand. “Lovely. Look at those eyes.”
She tried to picture what he’d see. He was used to the full-blown black of the Vestige eyes. She must look washed-out, pale.
“Angelic,” he said, as if he could read her mind, and released her chin.
“Yes, very,” said the other man, who’d been lurking in the corner. He was the one who’d brought her here, collected her from the port where she’d been brought in, stashed in a crate with airholes like an animal. He’d broken open the crate, done a fair bit of groping of his own, and then loaded her into the boot of a hover with a hard shove, and flown her here.
She cast her face back toward the floor, taking comfort in the drape of hair over her shoulders, sweeping a furtive gaze around the room. A study, elegantly appointed, and rife with wealth. Polished quartz floors covered in woven carpets in understated colors, a desk larger than the crate she was shipped in on, throw pillows, and the affectation of books and scrolls bound in leather and crumbling with age. The old her would have laughed.
Manivietto’s polished shoes squeaked as he moved to the desk and took his seat in a massive, carved chair there. “Come, slave.”
She started to rise, but he halted her with a hard, “On your knees.”
There was a place she could go in her mind, a place of her own making. It was soft there as if it had all been upholstered in silk, the fancy kind her family had never been able to afford. In a light color, something classy, ivory maybe. And it smelled good. Like fresh herbs and sunshine. There was nothing harsh there, no bright lights like on the spaceship, no sharp voices like here. She went there, and laid down in all that soft scented silk, and didn’t give her mind time to bristle at the degradation, the humiliation, the injustice of it all.
And safely escaped into a warm, happy place all of her own, she dug her fingers into the whisper-soft warp and weft of the carpet, and crawled to serve her new master.
Predictably, he had his cock out.
The men wore dresses on Vesta. That had been a surprise. Not all of them, but some of them. This man wore a short one made of gauzy white material. He had gathered it up around his waist, the long, thin length of his cock jutting up, a pair of hairy balls below resting on the leather seat of his chair.
She crawled up between his spread legs, and leaned forward to lick at the crown, already shining with precum.
If he’d been Argenti, that one taste alone might have driven her mad with lust, but he wasn’t. Like the slavers who’d taken her, he was Vestige, and his cock wouldn’t turn her into a rabid sex-addict. That was reassuring. Her body might be his, but her mind was her own.
She lapped at the flavor. It tasted like all the others. A little salty, a little bitter.
Her eyes drifted shut. She could do this.
He slapped her. Hard. With no warning.
Pain blasted below her eyes.
She fell back on the floor.
Her vision spun. She touched her cheek bone. It wasn’t broken, but it burned no less.
“I’m sorry, master. I didn’t mean to—”
“Silence.” Now his voice was soft, but somehow that soft voice spoke to greater danger. It was the softness and stillness of a river just before it careened over a cliff in a waterfall strong enough to tear a human body limb from limb.
That thumb came back to touch her chin.
She blinked away tears.
“You will ask permission before you ever touch my cock.”
“Yes, master.”
He stroked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Now begin again.”
“Master, may I touch your cock?”
“Eyes on me. None of this staring at the floor business.”
She lifted her gaze. His face bore the expression of a zealot, lips pealed back slightly to reveal teeth, eyes slightly bulging. Not unhinged, but impassioned. It was her mind he wanted to fuck, not her body.
She wet her lips, trying to slide off into her silky safe place, but he wouldn’t let her, his eyes held her in place.
“Try again, looking at me.”
Her chin trembled. “Please, master, may I touch your cock?”
An exultant smile. “Yes, of course, dear.”
She leaned forward, lapped at the head.
Long, thin fingers wrapped around her skull and pulled her closer.
“Now,” he said, but she could tell he didn’t mean her. He meant the other man. The scarred, groping, creepy man who’d brought her here. “Tell me what’s going on with the woman. Vangeline.”
Boots squished in the carpet as the man crossed closer. The chair creaked when he sat. “She’s fucking a guy who claims to work for the Boss.”
The fingers tightened on her head as she looked up at him, her neck arched at a painful angle. His mouth tightened into a grim line. “Never call him that.”
“Delsanthio. Sorry, Consular.”
“Has she got any information for us?”
“Supposedly they’re smuggling felanas out of the city. One at a time, through some woman named Freysa Vireilla.”
“And have you found her?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”
Manivietto’s cock was softening. He snapped down to look at her and said, “Very good,” though he didn’t seem to think it was very good at all. He looked disappointed, pulled her back and forth by her head a few times until he got harder.
Briella tried to slip away again, but he wouldn’t let her. He could tell somehow when her focus shifted, because he’d slap her, shake her head around the cock sliding in and out of her throat.
His nose twitched. “Do you have the estrus-stimulator?”
No. She couldn’t help herself. She shook her head, garbling around his cock. Please, no. Please. I’ll be good.
With a sympathetic smile, Manivietto accepted a silver syringe from the man across the desk. He brought it to her shoulder. There was a slight pinch.
That look was back on his face, a hungry look, a thirsty look, the look of a man who’d been denied nothing his whole life and had responded simply by asking for more. His fingers stroked her throat, reached down to tease her nipple to a tight peak. “That will encourage you to suck with a little more passion.”
6
echoes
WHEN TESSA WOKE in the morning, it was to a wet rag being thrown in her face.
Plop.
Cold water trickled down her neck.
She propped herself up on an elbow, blinking blearily around the room, still reeling from hot dreams of Primes who smelled like candy and sex and velvet.
Leyla was leaning against the wall, hand on her hip, eyes narrowed. “Let’s go. We need to get to the baths before they get busy, and I want to get it over with. I don’t think it’ll hit until late tonight, but I don’t take chances.”
Unlike you. She didn’t finish the sentence. But it was loud and clear anyway.
“And you stink of that Prime,” Leyla hissed, two hard lines between her brows. “I’m lucky that stink alone didn’t trigger an early onset.”
Still angry, then. Tessa couldn’t blame her. Approaching a heat, smelling Prime was a bit like starving beside a banquet of fatted grazers doused in hot butter.
She groaned and hauled herself out of bed. It would be a day of punishment then. She was used to it. Her mother had never approved of her either.
The morning sun burned hot already.
Leyla
threw a tamminbar at her face as soon as she walked out of the bedroom, dressed in her customary black trousers, shirt and boots.
But this time, Tessa was prepared. She caught it. “Quit throwing shit at me.”
Leyla lobbed a second bar at her, which Tessa snatched from the air.
After that, Leyla didn’t even look at her, just tugged on her backpack, yanked on her hat, and dropped off the edge of the rooftop to the fire-escape ladder below.
No one held on to grudges like Leyla. But tonight, she’d be tied down to a bed, ranting like a lunatic, and the only person available to help would be Tessa. Ley would have to forgive her then.
A few moments later they were down at street level, mixing with the humanis.
No one even glanced at them twice. They looked like two scrubby street boys, dressed in black, hats tucked in low. She followed Leyla to the bath house in the center of this arondi. Not as nice as some, not as bad as some.
And this early, it would be empty. Most people preferred to bathe at day’s end, to wash off sweat and grime, and hit their beds fresh, but Tessa and Leyla were outlaws. Worse, they were felana outlaws pretending to be humani males. They had to take what they could get.
The private rooms would be open at this time of day, and they’d be able to bathe in peace.
She followed Leyla past the armed guard at the edge of the massive quartz dome that housed the baths.
Inside, Leyla sent her one last withering glare and disappeared into one of the semi-private baths.
The privacy wasn’t total, the partition wasn’t much more than lattices, flanked by tammin and ferns, but the stone bath was hers alone. She could hear Leyla splashing on her side of the partition. A boot hit the ground with a loud echoing thud. Leyla wasn’t wasting time. Tessa bent down and unlaced her own boot, standing on one leg to tug it off her foot.
She tossed her boot pointedly.
A second boot hit the ground on Leyla’s side. Tessa grinned and tugged off her boot, tossed it too. Leyla may not be talking to her yet, but her boots were.
Progress. She lobbed her shirt over the edge of the divider and laughed silently when she heard it flop down on the other side.
She turned on the faucet and lay back to float, her ears under the water, full of the rushing of the faucet. Ley had probably sent the shirt soaring back.
The filtered spring water steamed and bubbled.
Tessa soaked for a long time, enjoying the break from Leyla’s anger and way the heat opened her pores. A small part of her, if she was totally honest with herself, missed the loss of all that delicious Prime scent. He’d dragged his lips and nose down her neck when he’d had her plastered to the wall last night and she’d slept like the dead, lost in dreams of him. Remembering all the hard planes of his body.
She washed her hair and scrubbed her body with scented salts.
Then she froze, frothy, herb-scented sea-sponge clenched in her fist, water sliding down her nose.
Shit.
Her shirt had been soaked in Prime scent.
And she’d sent it straight at her sister who was right on the brink of a heat.
She could practically see it, Leyla reaching down to pick up the shirt and send it back over the divider, only to hesitate, bring it up to her nose, breathe in pure, unbridled Prime scent. Like candy and sex and velvet.
It would be enough to catapult her heat into full throes.
Tessa surged from the water, freezing, listening, but didn’t hear anything, scenting the air for felana pheromones.
They were there.
Thick in the air, once she stopped smelling the herbs of her own scrub.
She climbed out of the pool. “Ley?” She whispered as loud as she could. But got no response.
“You ready?” She hissed through the partition when she was done drying off.
No answer. She sniffed the air, smelling soap mostly.
“Ley?”
She yanked on the clean clothes she’d brought, slapped her hat over her head, and walked around the edge.
Leyla’s pool was empty. No boots. No clothes. No Leyla.
Just a puddle of water that spread across the stone floor, and maybe, maybe, the lingering smell of a felana in heat.
Fuck.
Tessa turned around. The main pool bubbled. Light spilled down through the oculus at the center in a big steam-filled beam. She walked to another private pool, her boots echoing in the space.
It was empty.
Nothing but bubbling pools, palm fronds, and echoes.
She walked to another.
Empty.
They were all empty.
Shit. How long did she float next to the roaring faucet, her ears under water, her nose full of soap?
She was breathing fast. Way too fast, and her vision was spinning a little. But this was Leyla. Leyla who never took risks, who never fucked around. Leyla barely even told jokes and she never laughed.
Leyla was gone.
Where the hell had she gone?
Tessa swallowed. Her tongue was thick and dry in her throat.
Leyla would never have left without her. No matter how mad she got. She wouldn’t have left her.
“Ley?” she whispered, and the only response was her own voice bouncing off the dome above, and the walls of the empty room. She was alone. All alone.
Please answer. Please answer.
“Ley?”
She walked around the whole bath three times, heart in her throat, eyes on fire.
A trio of men, wrapped in loose towels ambled toward the main pool, voices raised in bawdy chatter.
She had to go.
She looked back at the empty pool where she’d last seen her sister.
The wet shirt was gone too. Oh shit. This was her fault. If Layla had gone into heat, if someone smelled her, how long would it take someone to haul one too-skinny felana from a pool and drag her from the room. Minutes. And with Tessa floating on the water, her ears under the surface, listening to the roar of the faucet, she’d have missed any sounds of struggle.
What the fuck did she have to throw that shirt?
Maybe Lay had gone back to the aerie without her.
She hoped.
One of the towel-wrapped men stared at her, his gaze lasting a tick longer than was polite.
Time to go.
She had nowhere else to go, so she took off pell-mell for the aerie, begging every god whose name she could think of the whole way there that she’d find her sister waiting for her.
She ran the whole way, pushing humanis out of her way, brushing past pedestrians and vendors alike. Half a mile and up twenty flights of stairs. The whole time, clinging to hope.
But the aerie was empty. And Leyla was gone.
7
loyalty isn’t the kind of
shit that can be spread
all over town
SANGER LEANED BACK in his chair and grunted as he came in a woman’s mouth. She moaned with fake gusto as she swallowed down the first blast of his cum. He took her hair in his hand, pulling her into a faster, deeper rhythm. She gagged repeatedly. He pictured the skinny felana from last night, imagined it was her mouth wrapped around his dick, her chin smashing into his balls, her throat making that kvekkvekvek sound.
A few final gushes of cum.
He pushed her away so she’d get off him.
“Do you want me to keep sucking? Get you hard again? We could—”
“No.” He zipped up his pants.
She stood, lingering awkwardly. Her tits still out of her dress, her lips swollen and wet. Waiting, apparently.
He tried to think of something he was supposed to say. “We’re done.”
Her shoulders softened. “If you need me again my name’s Halla.”
He stared back at her, trying to figure out why she wasn’t leaving. “Okay.”
She tucked her tits away and slid out of his door, and into the main thrust of the warehouse where a few of his men looked her up and down.
The woman passed Shane as he walked among the men down on the floor of the warehouse. His bald head gleamed under the harsh lights. He barked orders periodically, gesturing with meaty arms.
They were checking the guns.
Sanger raised a brow.
Shane shook his head.
It should have been a routine check to make sure the solar chargers worked.
Except not one of them did.
Not fucking one.
Sanger tossed the gun on his desk. It clattered and echoed around the shitty office, making a wining metallic hum. It was useless. Vangeline had delivered faulty goods.
An army without reliable weapons wasn’t an army. They were just a crowd.
Shane stopped to talk to the leader of their second largest division.
The man’s name was Draggor. He’d been with Sanger for seven years.
Shane would be asking Draggor what he’d been up to the night before. They’d discussed this in advance, planned this conversation out meticulously. Draggor did what bad liars, the universe over did. He froze slightly, his face holding an unnatural blank expression for longer than was normal, as he tried to come up with a lie.
Which sealed his fate.
Nothing happened in Didgermmion that Sanger didn’t know about. He had a whole array of informants. Street kids, junkies, prostitutes, thieves, bartenders, politicians, and bums. They knew he’d drop yenna their way in exchange for information. And he paid well. And what he didn’t know, Shane or Freysa did.
Which was how he knew that Draggor had slept at Vangeline’s brothel last night, in bed with Vangeline herself.
He had ordered Draggor to follow her and report back who she met with at all times. She wasn’t getting guns into Didgermmion by herself.
Draggor had not reported that.
He had lied.
Lies could not be tolerated. Loyalty wasn’t the kind of shit you could spread over town like a drug or a disease.
Not if you wanted to work for the Boss.
The Claiming Page 3
