She stayed on the bed with the younger girl, who was now sitting up fully, training her crystal blue eyes down on the ground. “What did you do in New York?” Sophie asked.
“What?” Jayne was surprised by the question.
The girl stammered. “I-Nothing. It’s just… You seem really smart. Good at planning.”
Jayne put on a comforting smile. “I’m a teacher,” she told Sophie, “Elementary school. Part of my job was making plans for people to follow without getting harmed, so… I guess it comes in handy now?”
She talked to Sophie for the rest of the night and they ate dinner together. Meta refused the food at first, distrusting it, but with a planned run, for however long it would be, she knew she needed the strength. Together, they dined and talked, told stories about their homes. Jayne learned that Sophie had two younger brothers, that her family actually lived in Blackpool, but she’d been going to school in London. She also learned that Meta Vani was indeed a warrior.
Her father prided himself on a strong daughter and was letting her lead her first army to take over a neighboring village. She was kidnapped the night after the news, having gotten drunk to celebrate. Jayne told them about students, kids that she helped. She told them that she was in a bad part of her town picking up a friend from her job when she got taken. She told them how stupid she felt, knowing that the area was famous as an area where women were going missing, though the news had been linking those events to a serial killer doing his job.
The next morning, they were woken with a start. Well, Jayne wasn’t sure if it was morning, but there was a clock above the door, and she highly doubted they slept that long. She only got a quick glimpse of the time when she was being pulled out of bed again. Her arms still ached from the bruises from before, and Jayne twisted and squirmed. “Let… Go!” yelled instinctively.
“Stay the fuck down,” her attacker hissed. He had her face pressed against the bottom bunk and her arms restrained behind her. Jayne tried to twist her head to check on her friends, but she couldn’t see them, and a hand was preventing her from moving at all. She could hear Meta’s shouts and Sophie’s cries though, and knew that they must be getting the same treatment.
She heard another voice at the door. “I thought you ladies wanted off the ship?” It was the same man that threw her onto the ship, she remembered. Jayne would always remember that voice. She needed to.
The smuggler that had her restrained pulled Jayne back up. She could feel rope around her wrists now and an erection at her ass. She jerked away from him, causing the smuggler to shove her forward through the doorway.
With no way to stop herself, she ran straight into the wall, banging her head. Jayne cried out in surprise. She turned her body long enough to find the face of the man in the doorway, who had side-stepped to cause her to injure herself. He wore a lopsided grin on his face, cocky, and a scar going down from his left eyebrow to his chin. One of his eyes was damaged, the left one, the iris completely whited out.
“What you lookin’ at, bitch?” the smuggler who restrained her asked, picking her back up. He looked back towards his boss and sniggered. “Captain Randleman’s already got his red viper woman. He don’t like human slaves.”
“You could always take her, Gromm,” Captain Randleman laughed, “You know the rules. Try out the product, just don’t break it.”
That caused her attacker, Gromm, to scoff and start shoving Jayne forward again. “Where’s the fun in ‘at?”
I’m trying to remember your faces, idiots, Jayne thought, but she didn’t say anything. She kept on walking, meanwhile trying to get a read on the details of the ship, for anything that she’d missed while being thrown onto the ship.
She’d told Sophie and Meta to do the same and hoped that if she missed something, they would catch it. But Jayne very rarely missed things. And now she had a new piece of information. Slaves.
The first thing she felt when she stepped off the ship was heat. It was as hot as New York in July, though there was less humidity. It was a dry heat. Jayne winced from the bright light of the sun in the distance. Everything seemed white, orange, or brown. Even the sky seemed almost golden, the sun beginning to set. How the hell was it this hot at sunset?
She didn’t want to know how hot it could be during the middle of the day, and with it getting dark, Jayne took it as a good omen. But the land before her seemed like a desert. Flat, sandy, and orange mountains in the distance.
There was supposed to be a major city around them. They were supposed to be in some sort of underground sewer below the city. How far was civilization, from where they were meant to be? Where were they even?
“This way, bitch,” Gromm grumbled, shoving her again, “Fucking heat. I hate this place.”
She saw an opportunity. “Where… Where are we?” Jayne asked, tilting her head in his direction. She tried to keep her voice pleasant, even a little scared-sounding to make him feel like he had the real power in the conversation.
He answered her with another shove. Her bare feet burned from the temperature of the sand, making her move faster in hopes that they could get some more protective flooring. As they turned a corner, she saw homes built from mud in perfect squares. They looked completely abandoned.
In the center of the huts was a larger hut set up higher, built on top of a clay tunnel. “Imdali,” Gromm answered. He was taking her to the central hut, pointing his weapon at her as she followed his orders of where to stand.
Jayne’s toes dug into the sand, trying to move the hot sand and replace it with the cooler sand beneath. “S’pose this is your new home… If you do well at the auction, that is,” he said, “Maybe just keep your pretty mouth shut, and someone’ll bid a few imdallions on ya.”
“Imdali?” she persisted, “Is that in the Milky Way still?”
Gromm frowned. “What’s it fuckin’ to ya what galaxy you’re in?”
Jayne pressed her lips together. “Like you said, it’s going to be my new home.”
“What you’re doin’ here, you won’t need to know what galaxy. Want some useful information, bitch? Just smile, look pretty, and hope ya don’t get yourself one of the weird ones. Your red-haired friend? She’s young, doe-eyed… She’ll get a few perverts, no doubt.”
Jayne looked at him with disgust as he smiled. He was easy to get talking, and since she left her cell, the human knew what she was in for. Perverts… Slaves… Bidding. There was an auction for the women standing around her, for her. Sex slaves.
Jayne began to feel uneasy, now realizing what would happen to her if she couldn’t escape with her friends like she promised them she could. Gromm backed away with the rest of the guards that brought their prisoners out. Soon, they were all there, minus the red woman from their cell. God, what has that captain done to her?
She couldn’t wait another minute. Jayne felt nauseous, like every part of her was itching and the only way to solve it was to run and get away from these men. “Everyone, run!” she shouted. She didn’t care that her hands were tied behind her back, that she had no shoes, no idea of where she was going.
Meta didn’t hesitate, running in the opposite direction as Jayne to throw the guards off. Sophie hesitated for only a moment before she followed Jayne, a few feet behind her. They didn’t look behind them to see who else ran, but they could hear an uproar starting, female screams and male shouting.
Jayne didn’t stop for anything. Her feet and her lungs were on fire, and her balance was hampered considerably with her hands behind her. But she managed.
The sun was fully setting now, the sky becoming a dark blue. She kept her eyes on a start that twinkled just above a dark spot she knew were mountains. Run to that star, she told herself, Keep running, Jayne. Until you get to the star.
“Jayne!” Sophie shouted behind her.
She thought it was a sign of defeat, that Sophie was stopping. Jayne couldn’t stop, but she told herself that she would come back for Sophie. She would get her out once she caught up with
Meta, just like she promised she would. But it wasn’t a cry of defeat. It was a warning, which Jayne would have realized if she dared to look behind.
She landed in the sand with a painful thud. “Oof!”
“Gotcha,” a male voice grunted. Jayne tried to struggle against him, but with his weight fully on her, she couldn’t move. “You run incredibly fast for a woman with such short legs.”
Her captor lifted her to her feet. His hold wasn’t rough or violent like the others, but there was a firmness there that made her incredibly aware that he wouldn’t be afraid to grip her as bruisingly as the others, if not harder.
“You still caught me,” she breathed. She turned her head and met eyes with them. His eyes were large, brown. They’d almost seem kind if they didn’t look so hardened and serious. Distant, that’s what it is, she thought to herself.
He was dressed differently than the men on the ship, dressed for the desert with light armor and loose clothing. He didn’t look at all polished either, tan and covered in a thin layer of grime, beard thick and brown hair all shaggy and matted down to his forehead with sweat. “Who are you?” she asked.
She didn’t know why, but the man smirked. “Does it matter?” he asked.
Jayne shrugged. “Maybe. You get to know my name, don’t you?”
“No, and I don’t want to know it.” His hand moved down to the ropes around her wrist, walking with her and pulling it in the directions they needed to go.
“It’s Jayne,” she said boldly, “Jayne Mannet.”
The man sighed in response, giving her nothing else. She didn’t learn his name until much later.
Chapter Three
D’Anil knew she was going to be trouble from the start. He’d been watching from afar as the females were all grouped together. And he’d seen she was the one that triggered the outbreak. Luckily, the guards weren’t complete idiots, though as smugglers, they weren’t as trained as D’Anil would like when working in a group.
There’d only been one of them that had nearly gotten away, some warrior princess that they’d gotten. If she wasn’t such a catch, they may have let her go, but as soon as D’Anil brought the first one back, he went after the princess. His tracking skills never missed.
The smugglers took great care from that minute on. The princess was the most watched, as was the one that started it all. It’s Jayne. Jayne Mannet. D’Anil spit into the sand as he marched on. He never wanted to know her name, didn’t want to know it now.
Normally, it would be pretty easy for him to forget it, but he was specifically assigned to her and the princess, since he was the only one that could catch either of them. And they were kept separated from the rest of the group, not allowed to speak to each other even. The princess hadn’t taken too lightly to all the rules, and now they had her chained in a cart.
He wished they’d taken Jayne Mannet instead.
She didn’t shut up as they walked, making the days almost seem longer. By the time they were a day away from Dlahik, D’Anil felt like they’d been traveling for weeks. Where D’Anil liked silence, the woman seemed to try to avoid it completely.
D’Anil looked back to where she trailed behind him, her rope in his hands. They were given shoes now that they traveled in the daytime, and the smugglers had to avoid beating her, their product. But D’Anil could see through the thin clothing they put on her, on all of the slaves, the bruises on her arms.
Her skin was tanned, so it didn’t show like the others, and he only ever saw it when her clothes moved a certain way, but he had to wonder why her spirit hadn’t broken like so many others. Even the princess was growing hoarse in her voice.
Pretty faces are the most deceiving, he thought to himself as she jabbered on. She could be stronger than she looked. Jayne Mannet was much shorter than him. His height comment from the first time they spoke seemed to bother, the woman haughtily mentioning that she was actually at average height for her species, at 5’6.”
The Drunae were not so different than humans in their appearance. In fact, their only difference seemed to be in body type. The Drunae were just bigger, stockier and taller. He was at least a foot and a half taller than her, and that was an average height for his species.
But for all intents and purposes, she could pull off looking like a Drunae woman, a very small one at that. And soft. Her clothes were loose, but D’Anil could sense she had gorgeous curves. He’d felt them when he first tackled her.
She had green eyes and dark hair, brown like his, though a few shades darker. “Probably from you getting more sun,” she’d mused, “I mean, we have a sun on Earth, of course. But the days here seem longer. Is everywhere like a desert here? Aren’t there any cities?”
At first, he tried to meet her questions with silence. But Jayne had a lot of them, and D’Anil still couldn’t understand why. Did all the slaves do this? When he looked around, he didn’t see any of them talking. Just crying or walking in complete silence. “There are cities,” he replied simply.
“Are we going to one now?”
“Yes, we’re going to Dlahik.” Not that she would know where that was. Jayne didn’t seem to know a lot about anything related to Imdali besides the fact that she was on it.
“How far do you think we are?” she asked, “How long until we get there?”
D’Anil sighed. “We’ll probably be there tomorrow.” There was only a moment of silence as Jayne nodded. He looked back to her, her mouth already opening with another question. “Are you going to talk the entire rest of the time?”
She grinned. It was the first time he’d seen her smile. She has dimples, he observed. “You could always talk instead,” Jayne countered, “I’ve been supplying over half of the conversation here. I’m going to need some water soon.”
Well, I can stop giving her water, D’Anil mused. “I don’t like talking. I like the quiet.”
“That’s boring. Talking makes the time go by faster.”
“I’d have to disagree with that,” he replied dryly. Another minute of silence. When he looked back at her, she had her rosy lips pursed, obviously thinking. “What do you have to say now?”
Jayne tilted her head and smirked. “You could always let me go and point me in the direction of Dlahik, on a path where they won’t catch me. If I’m not here, I can’t talk, can I?”
“You wouldn’t last out in the deserts. You’ll die from the heat, get lost, or get taken by some stray bandits-“
“Because sticking around with smugglers is so great,” she snorted.
“And I’d lose my pay,” he continued on, as if she never interrupted him at all. D’Anil smirked as he eyed the brunette woman. “Nothing comes between me and my pay.”
“Then I guess you can handle another day of my talking.” This time her smile was more patronizing than anything.
D’Anil took one long look at her. She clearly didn’t know who she was dealing with. Perfectly understandable since part of his job meant that no one knew what he was quite capable of. She didn’t know that he could have her bled out in the sand in a matter of seconds, kill her and hide her body with perfect ease.
If she weren’t such a high profile prisoner, maybe he would have contemplated those options some more. Now, though, they’d notice if one of the main escapees was missing again. And there would go his pay. “We’re getting you a gag.”
He saw in her face that she thought he wasn’t serious, but he was. And the next time Jayne opened her mouth, he kept his promise.
Night had fallen. The sky was pitch black save for the skies just over the eastern hills of sand. In that direction, there was a tinge of orange, which D’Anil knew to be the city lights. They were close, but the men were tired and their deadline was the next day. They could get one last sleep in.
D’Anil sat down at the fire, across from Jayne. She looked at him sourly, which was the look she’d given him since he first followed up on the threat. Ignoring the glare, he looked at flames between them and sighed, drinking from his c
up.
The alcohol was shit, but it would do the trick, at least get him to sleep tonight. D’Anil had trouble falling asleep, had since he was a child. He knew it had to do with his mother, with losing her the way he did, but he never really dealt with it besides with booze to numb him enough.
“Y’know, you’re pretty when you’re not talking,” D’Anil told Jayne boldly, smirking into his mug. It was emboldening him, loosening his tongue. She was pretty even when she was talking, though he’d been too annoyed at first to really realize it.
Her eyes seemed even more bewitchingly green with the reflection of the fire burning in them, and now with the fact that he couldn’t see her mouth, D’Anil was remembering how pink and full her lips looked, and her dimples. He sighed, shrugging his cup towards her. “Want a drink?”
She cocked an eyebrow in response. “I’ll remove the gag if you stop asking so many questions,” he continued.
Jayne looked down at the mug thoughtfully, then back at up at D’Anil. She exhaled slowly and gave a reluctant nod, which amused D’Anil. Did she really like talking that much? He got up and moved around the fire, placing the mug at her feet.
Making quick work of the ropes, the man arranged it so that her hands were tied in front of her, settled in her lap, instead of behind her, and he kept her legs bound as well. Finally, he removed the gag, placing it carefully on the ground beside her.
“Seriously, one question and you’re done,” he warned, “The gag goes back on.”
The human woman smirked, replying a moment later, “People who don’t like questions tend to have the most secrets.” She took a drink from the cup, ending up coughing and putting it back down with a frown on her face.
D’Anil laughed. It’d been a while since he laughed. “Good there?”
“It’s strong, definitely strong,” Jayne coughed, “How can you guys even drink that crap?”
“That’s a question.”
Jayne looked at him sardonically. “Bite me.”
D’Anil smiled again before reaching for the mug. He moved closer to her so that they could share it, taking a swig. “Be careful; I might actually do it.”
Alien Romance: Stranded With The Alien Assassin: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 3) Page 2
