She shifted uncomfortably, but it didn’t shake his glazed gaze off.
She wondered, briefly, why Kagan hadn’t allowed her to put her clothes on, but it seemed pretty obvious when he wouldn’t meet her gaze and Goran couldn’t drag his from her.
It was a new twist.
She supposed it wasn’t really unexpected given the discussion she’d had with Jenna and Amy when she’d begun the journey of mounting the giants, but she was thrown at the abrupt shift in directions.
Taurin had kept her entirely to himself—despite the fact that he was clearly as close to his duo as Kagan was. And now, at least it seemed, Kagan was tossing her directly to his duo when they’d only just ‘disconnected’ and she could, in point of fact, feel Kagan semen trickling from her.
It made it really hard to eat anything—all of it.
She never knew from moment to moment, though, if she would get another meal. So far, she hadn’t missed any, but there seemed nothing she could really grasp and hang on to—nothing she could count on not changing and throwing her completely for a loop.
She hadn’t been with Kagan five seconds and he had convinced her he practically worshipped her and then tossed her to Goran in the next damn minute and dusted his hands.
What was all that shit about ‘making baby’? Be my woman?’
A knot formed in her throat. Taurin had said that ‘my woman’.
She supposed that was to mean ‘for the moment’.
She’d thought Earth men were total bastards for using women like tissues and tossing them aside the minute their radar picked up another ‘cave’ to explore. But these guys were like Earth men on steroids—literally in every way.
Without the social polish their more civilized counterparts managed—like lying really well and knowing exactly what to say to convince women to forget they had a brain that they could, and actually should, use when they were in a ‘relationship’ to assess whether they were the only one in it or not.
So far, it looked like zero for zero for her in dealing with the giant aliens.
Maybe she’d get the hang of it when she got passed a few more times, she thought glumly, wondering how the other women were dealing with it.
One thing seemed certain—they had no weapons at all to protect or defend themselves with. They couldn’t dangle the pussy out there as a prize when the bastards just helped themselves. And there was no affection to be had—period—so they couldn’t expect an attachment that might make them hesitate to break them in half if so inclined or ordered to do so.
They couldn’t take them on physically.
And she didn’t know of any way to poison them.
Not that she could really consider that anyway when they hadn’t done a thing to them beyond taking them captive.
And by the time, if, they did, it would be too late to rely on anything as subtle as poison to defend themselves with. They’d need a fucking cannon.
Naturally enough, the meal passed in a blur.
And then Kagan dressed, collected the remains and left.
Niki eyed Goran uneasily, struggling to resist the urge to cover herself.
He summoned her with a gesture of his hand.
She was tempted to pretend she had no idea what he meant, but when he met her gaze for a long moment, she thought better of it.
And it still took an effort to get up and go to him.
He pulled her between his legs and drew her down to sit on his thigh, and then he explored her with his free hand, touching her everywhere stroking her almost worshipfully—as Kagan had.
She tried to ignore it, tried not to resent it. Because she knew it didn’t mean anything at all beyond the fact that they, clearly, hadn’t had the chance to get hold of anything female for a very long time.
She supposed she should feel bad about that.
And she did.
She just hated that it made her feel so special when it meant nothing at all. She hated that she had no control of her body’s reaction and her mind’s perception.
She told herself it was the only form of self-preservation available to her.
But it was a lie.
Well, possibly true, but it had nothing to do with her nearly instantaneous capitulation. He had her so worked up before he’d taken anything at all off that she was ready to jump him.
As if sensing her readiness, her eagerness, he set her on her feet, stood, and began to strip.
Her belly began a dance of impatience as she watched him reveal more and more skin.
He was unique in his way—and just as magnificent—as any of the others.
Well, maybe a shade less than Kagan and Taurin—but not so that her body was concerned.
Wondering a little wildly if it was some kind of chemical aphrodisiac they produced—that was like catnip to her kitty—she began pulling at him as soon as he lay down with her, trying to force him to mount her immediately.
He refused, determined to explore her until she was next door to delirious before he gave in to her demands and entered her, moving then with an impatience to reach the peak that she had.
Her climax was so powerful it was almost mind bending.
She wanted to lay like a dead thing and relish the aftershocks.
He wanted to start over.
He won.
And then she passed out.
And woke up when Kagan scooped her up and took her to his bunk.
She didn’t count … anything. It seemed like one, very long, session. She was going up or coming down, dead to the world, eating, going up, crashing—delirious to the point that she had to open her eyes to determine whose dick she was mounted on after a while.
She was so relieved when Kagan finally merely gathered her close and went to sleep that she felt like she’d just caved in. Everything on her body was still sparking and twanging from one orgasm after another—as if she was hooked up to a live wire—until she wasn’t certain she was ever really asleep.
She was so exhausted when Kagan shook her awake that she was completely disoriented. “Wha …?”
He crouched by the bunk and stroked her hair back. “I must take you back. You are not ours to keep … though I wish it was so.”
Niki stared at him blankly, too tired to read anything at all into his tone or expression and she certainly couldn’t understand what he’d said. “Take Niki … to Taurin.”
She blinked at him, still thoroughly confused, but she got up at his urging and took the clothing he handed to her.
She was so sore from all of the ‘exercise’ it felt like she had torn muscles when she lifted her arms to put the T-shirt on and she winced.
Kagan caught her face, studied her frowningly. “Niki hurt?”
She shook her head. “Just sore.”
He ignored her and summoned Goran.
Goran felt her carefully and finally lifted his hands and placed one on either side of her head. She stared at him in confusion but in a moment she felt warmth—from his hands. It seemed almost to reach inside of her like … tentacles, tendrils of warmth that searched and then curled around inside her and became heat.
After a moment, after it intensified until it reached the edge of pain, the warmth was withdrawn. Goran leaned close and brushed his lips across hers and then he released her.
It was so strange she just stared at him, searching inside of herself.
She felt … better, she realized, and when they both moved away and she pulled her panties on, she discovered the soreness was barely more than a twinge.
A sense of wonder filled her.
They didn’t just think they could heal that way. They could.
She’d been certain it wasn’t actually a ‘real’ thing. Maybe it was a part of their belief system, something they believed so strongly that it actually affected them physically. But she realized she had seen it in the nature of the so called psychics on Earth—people who had no real gift beyond the ability and understanding to read people—maybe highly intuitive, but possessin
g no actual paranormal powers.
She didn’t believe, though, so he couldn’t have manipulated her in any way.
Smiling abruptly as it dawned on her that they’d at least cared enough to notice her pain and to want to help her, she reached impulsively for Goran and kissed him and then Kagan.
They both looked uncomfortable, exchanged a long, speaking look, and then rose resolutely. Kagan offered his hand to her and when she took it, he pulled her close for a moment and then the three of them left their cabin and headed towards the common room.
Kagan walked her to the bathroom, kissed her soundly and then popped her lightly on the ass when she turned to go inside.
She bathed—thoroughly. She felt like she’d been rolled in semen.
When she came out, Taurin and Jurik were waiting. Their expressions lightened—not enough for a smile of greeting but enough to allow her to know they were glad to see her.
She dismissed the nagging doubts circling at the back of her mind like buzzards and joined them at their table, taking care not to look for Kagan and Goran, although it almost seemed that she could feel their gazes.
If she could, though, if they were there, she just didn’t want to know.
She didn’t really understand what was going on, but she thought if they meant to pass her back and forth between the four of them and leave it at that—at least until they got tired of her and were ready to move on—then that beat the hell out of running the entire circuit.
Thank god there’d been two hundred women on the ship!
It wasn’t the security she had been hoping for, though.
She supposed that just wasn’t to be had.
And she wondered what was ultimately planned for them.
She didn’t want to think about that. She tried not to, but it was always there—like the buzzards.
Chapter Eleven
Resentment flickered through Taurin when the bastard, Kagan, strode boldly across the room and settled his ass directly across from Niki. Goran settled beside him. And both of them stared at Niki like they wanted to eat her.
“You wanted something?” Taurin growled ungraciously.
To be close to her, Kagan thought, feeling stupid but unable to fight the urge and then unwilling to. Which was why he was currently seated beside the man he wanted to kill, who was just as eager to kill him. “You have a problem sharing … your table?”
Taurin forced himself to relax. “No. So long as you … observe polite manners.”
Kagan bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Oh … I will be polite. We will. Will we not, Goran?”
Goran’s fake smile looked garish. “Absolutely.”
Reaching up, Kagan turned the speaker off on his translator, pulled it off his head and tossed it onto the table. “I cannot help but notice there is a change in the air,” he said conversationally.
Taurin studied him. After a moment, he followed suit.
Naturally, both Goran and Jurik removed their own.
“I presume you are referring to the … debate we had before regarding the old ways?”
Kagan frowned thoughtfully. “In a sense.”
Taurin tilted his head curiously.
Kagan shrugged. “I cannot entirely put my finger on it, to tell the truth.”
“Try,” Taurin growled.
Kagan lifted his brows at the challenge in Taurin’s voice. “That is a part of it,” he said. “You bred her. You must know that. Traditionally, the … uh … mating aggression should be expended by now. And yet you are not only still displaying it, you clearly have no intention of moving on.”
Taurin frowned, but more thoughtfully. He could hardly deny it when his mind had instantly leapt to the suspicion that Kagan was angling to get his hands on Niki again when he had just passed her back. They were to share—not hoard. Otherwise he would never have allowed Kagan within sniffing distance of her.
“I also feel it, I confess—even though I lost and know very well that you bred her. And that I could not, now, even if I challenged you and killed you in battle.” He frowned. “And that is another thing. Not that I can honestly say that my memories are clear, but I cannot actually recall a time that I felt a strong enough streak of aggression for it to cross my mind to kill any challenger. I was too busy fucking any woman I could convince to have me to consider breeding.”
Truthfully, now that Kagan had pointed it out, he could not either. Not that mating was ever a major engagement. The women were only fertile for a matter of days and they lost interest as soon as it ‘took’.
“And then there is the other thing,” Kagan said pensively.
“I’ll bite. What other thing?”
“The conditioning. I was sick as bedamned afterward—as always, but when the pain went away so did the fogginess. So, also, did any interest in putting the empire’s interests before my own.”
Taurin stared at him, searching his own mind.
“It did not work.”
A wave of heat and then cold washed over Taurin. He turned to study Niki, wondering what, if anything, the women might have to do with what Kagan was hinting at.
“We still have the regulators,” Jurik said pointedly.
“Which we believed we could not remove—because we were conditioned to believe that,” Goran countered. “You did not notice when you removed his pain?”
He had … but he had been more interested in fucking Niki and thinking less about the healing than he should have been and he did not realize he had noticed. “The delizos are unfamiliar with our power to heal,” he said thoughtfully. “They believed the things would work.”
Kagan shrugged. “Either way, they can be removed.”
“And that leaves only the safety of the home world standing between us and them.”
“Except we know now that they lied to us about it. They stripped our world of everything that could support it—including us.”
“We cannot fly this ship,” Jurik said.
“There is a reason we could not take prisoners and force them to do our bidding?” Kagan asked sourly. His expression hardened. “They are taking our women back to their world. And I, for one, would rather die than give them up.”
“The plan is to invade and destroy and take,” Taurin said.
“Do you think Niki will not look at us as monsters if we do that? We are their tool to invade and destroy.”
Taurin swallowed a little sickly. “I have thought of little else since he announced it,” he said angrily. “She does not look at us as monsters now—even though we took everything from them. I do not want that to change.”
Kagan fixed him with a hard look. “Then we must turn on the slavers and take our freedom back—so that we will be men to them, yes?”
Taurin massaged his temples. “Yes—but are we better if we choose to deprive them of their freedom?”
Kagan, Goran and Jurik all gaped at him with varying degrees of dismay and anger.
“I am not fool enough to take her home and turn her loose to see if she will stay with me or run to them!” Kagan growled. “I want her. I will share her with you if I must, but I cannot let her go!”
Taurin smiled a little crookedly. “Do you think I want to risk her choosing her people over me?”
Kagan frowned. “She chose to leave them. She told me that she had left to find a new home and make a family. Why would she not choose us? Why must we dangle that in front of her and make her choose between her home world and people and us when she had already given it up for a different life? We can take the ship and take her to that world where she was going and make a family with her.”
Taurin shook his head and picked up his translator. “First we must find our way to freedom. Then, when we have a choice and something to offer … then we can decide.”
* * * *
“I would kill for a change of clothes—well, actually a change of underwear and some clothes,” Beth muttered glumly.
“It would take too long to strip us,” Jenna sai
d tiredly.
Niki had gotten up and joined the huddle that included her crewmembers as soon as all of the men had abandoned her to play with their swords. “I think that bastard lizard man got everything,” she said tightly. “I’d like to cut his throat just for that.”
They all stared at her for a moment, stunned by her vehemence and then shrugged. “If I wasn’t so tired I feel like crying,” Amy said, “I’d go with you.”
The comment sent a flutter of excitement through Niki that died almost as quickly. “I can’t even find my way from here to the damned cabin—and couldn’t if I could remember which one I’m supposed to be in. I’d never find the hold.”
“Well, and there’s the knife thing ….”
Niki studied Annette thoughtfully. “I guess the swords the guys use are just too heavy.”
“The damned things are as long as we are tall!” Beth said irritably. “We might be able to hold them up if the bastards would be so obliging as to fall on them.”
Niki chewed her lip. “I’ve never actually tried to go in that room ….”
Jenna sat up a little straighter. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Niki’s lips thinned with annoyance. “So … you’re suggesting just what we’re doing? Which is nothing?”
Jenna frowned.
“Eventually, they’re going to get tired of us or run out of food and they’ll have to land somewhere. Or take another ship.”
“Yes … but.” Niki thought back, trying to recall everything about when they’d been taken. “This ship wasn’t anywhere near ours when they took us. It took hours to get to it.”
“Yeah. I remember. I thought I was going to pee my pants waiting for that elegant, modern piss bucket they let us have when they brought us in,” Jenna muttered. “So?”
“So I don’t know how the guys got there. But …. Well, I don’t know. I didn’t see a smaller ship.”
“Transporter,” Beth said, nodding sagely.
“We don’t have those!” Jenna said irritably.
“No but they’ve been on our wish list for years and years. And she said there wasn’t a small ship that could have brought them—not that I see them fitting in a small ship anyway.”
Niki frowned thoughtfully. “You think they’d trust those cold blooded bastards to particulate them and send them across space?”
Alien Warriors: Invasion Page 10
