Being above ground, Jayne realized how wet the cave air had been. Outside, it felt almost crisp except for the fact that it was so hot. She wanted to take off her dress immediately and strip down to her shorts and tank top that she had on, though the dress only covered a little bit more than the shorts and tank top did. How D’Anil was able to handle his leathers, even with the short sleeves that he had now that he was stripping off his coat, was a wonder to her.
The little house was a different one than the one she’d come in through. It looked almost near identical except for the childish drawings of a family drawn on the walls, smudged in black with something that looked like charcoal. It was night outside, much to her surprise, but Jayne was glad for it. They had to get moving before Sophie’s owner realized she was gone.
D’Anil seemed to have a similar idea. He only stopped long enough to grab a bag from an upstairs room in the house. It had four water bottles. “There’s a few of these I stash around the desert,” he told them, “A lot of my work is in the Outer Circle, and I like the be prepared.”
Jayne smiled, grabbing a water bottle, though she didn’t drink from it. She knew she’d need to save this for when she really needed it. “Look at you. I don’t even have to ask the questions anymore,” she teased, causing D’Anil to snatch the water bottle back.
“Don’t think I didn’t bring a gag for you, Jayne,” he warned, though she thought she detected a playfulness in his eyes. It was difficult in the dark.
They started a relentless pace, just as bad as the pace the smugglers set when they first dragged everyone to Dlahik. Jayne tried to keep up as best as she could and tried to pull Sophie along with her.
But her flats, though they helped much more with the heat than any of the other shoes she had, were starting to rub against her feet in all the wrong ways. Her legs ached, not used to so much exercise. She used to do quite a lot on Earth, had to, but that almost seemed like another lifetime ago, and her body felt it.
By the time the sun was starting to rise, the Imdali sky turning from black to lighter and lighter shades of blue, Jayne was praying for D’Anil to stop them. She was covered in sweat, she had blisters on the sole of her left foot, and her lungs burned for air, her stomach aching for food. “How can it be so hot at night?” she gasped.
“Welcome to the summer season,” D’Anil muttered, who looked completely untouched by the heat himself. He narrowed his eyes and pointed to a group of abandoned houses in the distance. “There. We’ll rest there. Hide anything that looks expensive. We don’t want thieves following us.”
“Thieves?” Sophie asked, her own breathing labored. Once the glittering city of Dlahik disappeared, the blonde seemed to ease up a bit more. Out of sight, out of mind. “We have to worry about thieves too?”
“Not if you hide your shit,” D’Anil replied in a monotone voice, glaring at her.
Sophie swallowed and looked down at her clothes. Everything she had looked expensive. While Jayne’s blue dress was a nice silk, so was Sophie’s, though it was a light pink with gentle, white swirls sewn into the design. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, she looked perfectly angelic. “He only gave me really nice things. I don’t- I don’t have anything else.”
Jayne looked at her friend, a thought popping into her head. “D’Anil, give her your jacket. We can hide all the fancy stuff under that dirty thing, right?”
“Hey, this dirty thing is my favorite jacket!” he protested, patting the old, faithful piece of clothing that was currently folded over his bag, “You know how many dust storms this thing protected me from? How many knives have tried getting through this?”
The brunette woman raised a single eyebrow, putting a hand on her hip. “Are you getting emotional over a jacket?”
He didn’t give her a response after that, just tossing the leather over to Sophie. The blonde turned up her nose slightly at the smell, but she slipped it over her shoulders anyways. It did the opposite of her pink slip of a dress. While she was tall, she was thin, and it almost looked like she was swimming in the brown jacket.
Luckily, there were only two people within the small cluster of homes. The first was an old, blind woman named Gruha and her young grandson named Tahiq. They kept to themselves, reminding Jayne of D’Anil. They didn’t even ask for their names, only giving their own because she directly asked. After that, they shut their door and didn’t say a word to the three.
“That’s not even their real names,” D’Anil said as he shut the door of their own home behind them. “Home” was a very loose interpretation of what the hole really was. It was a skeleton of a home, but it was enough to protect them from the sun outside. Jayne shined away from the lights beaming in from the space in between the boards on the windows.
“Why would they lie?” she asked, throwing her bag onto a couch. She briefly glanced at Sophie, who was already passed out on the ground, D’Anil’s jacket tucked under her head for a pillow.
“Why would they tell the truth?” he asked, “They don’t know you. They don’t know what your agenda is, who you are… And you’re much too clean to be a true Outsider.”
Jayne made her way up the stairs, finding a bedroom of sorts. There was an old cot, covered in dust. Her nose wrinkled. Maybe Sophie had the right idea for sleeping on the floor.
She turned to find that D’Anil had followed, standing out in the hallway and inspecting the rest of the place. “There’s only one bedroom,” she commented, trying to sound casual. They shared a bed in his home as well, but nothing ever came of it. Sometimes, Jayne would wake up to her body curled into his, but it never lasted long. Either she would grow nervous and shy away or he would wake up and move when he realized the position.
“Are you offering to share the floor?” D’Anil asked, pointing at the bed, “You’ve been traveling in dust and sand all day, yet you look afraid to sleep in it.”
Jayne waved her hand. “There might be… Bugs, I don’t know.”
D’Anil smirked, but moved to the bed nonetheless. He plopped down on the mattress, the bed creaking from beneath him. “There’s bugs in the desert too, but you ran to the desert anyways.”
She sat down beside him, picking up his challenge. “I’m not running to the desert. I’m running to my home,” Jayne corrected, “The desert just happens to be along the way.”
“The desert is my home.”
“And the apartment in Dlahik is…?”
“A place to clean myself off when the layer of grime gets too thick on my skin.”
Jayne laughed softly. “You’re disgusting.”
D’Anil found himself laughing as well. “You’ve never minded it before.” Their eyes met, and their laughter stopped. Jayne realized, maybe, what he was trying to say. How she was running to the desert, or to home. There was an underlying meaning, one that they both knew but had never said directly. She was running away from him.
“Living with you wasn’t so bad,” Jayne told him, her voice low. She felt it was important for him to know that. She appreciated the fact that he wasn’t like the others, that he didn’t beat her like Meta’s owner or try to change her and manipulate her into becoming his own fantasy like Sophie’s did. “Your messes were less annoying to deal with than me talking all the time, I’m sure.”
“Probably,” D’Anil replied, shrugging softly, “Now you can go back to cleaning up kids’ messes as, what, a teacher?”
She hesitated, opening her mouth. But Jayne stopped. “Yeah,” she said, with a nod, “It’s weird. I didn’t realize how much I missed work until just now. All my co-workers… Not like you know, though. You always work alone.”
“In my line of work, it’s better that way.” And Jayne believed him. D’Anil didn’t sound sad about it, didn’t seem to care that he could never really get close to anyone at his jobs.
“Sophie told me who her owner was,” Jayne said suddenly, looking up at him, “She said his name is Alem, the Chief of Justice. He’s the leader of Dlahik, isn’t he? The actual lea
der, not just some politician?”
He didn’t answer for a while. And even when he did, it wasn’t a confirmation. But he didn’t say she was wrong either. “Her Master could have told her a lot of things-“
“She said she knew who you were, who I was owned by,” Jayne went on. He won’t protect his employer when he knows the confidentiality agreement only works one way. “He told her that she was lucky to be with him, that she could have ended up with a man like D’Anil Troga. I didn’t even know your last name until she said it.”
“Jayne-“
“He told her that I would be lucky if I made it out of your care alive. He said you were a callous man, that you don’t care about anyone except for yourself. She told him that you’ve killed people for him before, and that with one wave of his coin purse, you would kill Sophie too.”
She felt his hands ball into fists, twisting on the mattress. Jayne looked at him, studying his features, at his strong cheekbones and the way his dark hair fell in waves to frame it… But he refused to look at her. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Three reasons,” Jayne said, “First, you can stop trying to keep his name from me. Second, you can try being nicer to Sophie since she’s scared of you. Third, I wanted to give you a chance to explain your job.”
D’Anil stood up, hands raking through his hair. “There’s nothing to explain. There’s nothing to justify, Jayne. When Alem needs something, I do it. If he needs someone taken out, I take them out. If he needs me to protect the smugglers and our economy’s biggest business venture, then… Yes. I do it. And I don’t regret doing it. I don’t feel bad, if that’s what you’re wanting to hear.”
“If you don’t feel bad, then why didn’t you tell me before?” Jayne asked, “Why’d you hide it from me? Do you think I would have cared?”
“Oh, you mean the girl who’s on some justice crusade against every single person that’s wronged her? Yeah!”
“My justice crusade is against people who do wrong against hundreds of women a year! Do you know how many people go missing in my town, how many young women? The last time I checked, it was an average of fifty a month. That’s more than one woman a day, in just one town, on just one planet. What about-“
She didn’t expect it, completely caught off-guard, but there was his warmth against her body. D’Anil’s lips captured hers in his own and Jayne responded immediately. Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling her to him until she couldn’t breathe anymore. “What are you doing?”
D’Anil breathed softly, their lips within mere millimeters of one another. “I wanted you to shut up,” he said softly, eyes still closed and forehead resting on hers, “You can’t save them all, Jayne. You’re not that stupid that you actually think that.”
“Someone has to,” she replied resolutely, “I’ll start with Sophie… And then I’ll come back for the others.”
He kissed her again harshly. “Be quiet,” he ordered. Jayne shivered, obeying. She kissed along his beard and down his throat. It had been over a month since they’d been together, and yet Jayne felt like there was no in-between time, like they were picking up right where they left off. Except this time, they weren’t drunk. And this time, she didn’t have her hands tied.
She wanted to kiss him, and as he sighed, tilting his head to the side to make room for her mouth, Jayne realized that she hadn’t wanted to stop the night that they started this. For the past month, she’d blamed it on the alcohol and her nervousness of entering the slave trade. But she was on her way home. She was about to be free again in a matter of a couple of days. He was pretty decent, she told herself, trying to dismiss it, You’re just excited to be gone from this place.
“You’re infuriating,” he breathed, yanking on her hair roughly. Jayne gasped, and D’Anil kissed a trail up her throat, “Get on the bed, Jayne.” When she didn’t move, too eager to move away from his mouth, he pushed at her. Jayne’s knees hit the mattress, and she fell back. The bed groaned loudly, even louder when he joined her. “I should have taken you on a proper mattress.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked. His head dipped down to her collarbone, nipping softly. Her fingers entwined in his brown hair, chest arching up to be touched. “I was your slave after all. Wasn’t that the point?”
He looked up at her, his brown eyes meeting her green. In utmost seriousness, he said, “I told you I didn’t buy you for that.”
Jayne didn’t know what to say to that, and she didn’t think he wanted a response. D’Anil didn’t say anything more, pulling Jayne’s top off and throwing it onto the dusty floor. The old cot they laid on was rough against her skin, much rougher than she was used to, but it was better than the desert floor they fucked on the first time.
She pushed her hips up to remove her bottoms, smiling as she watched him survey her body. There was still that look in his eye, calculating, looking over every part of her skin that he hadn’t had the chance to look at before. In the darkness of the house, she could still see his eyes grow darker with lust.
“D’Anil,” she whispered, growing impatient. Her body writhed beneath his, his legs straddling her hips. Jayne pulled him down to kiss her again, untying the laces on his leather vest, pulling off his undershirt. She moaned softly at the feeling of his hairy chest brushing against her nipples.
Every nerve ending felt like it was on fire, and in that moment, it started to feel like there was nothing going on outside that room. No one chasing them down when they realized Sophie was gone, not even a girl sleeping downstairs or a family living in a home just twenty feet away. No sun that would burn them and boil them as soon as they left the cover of their temporary home.
He took the hint, his hands moving between them to take off his trousers. Once he was fully divested of his clothing, the two laid together in bed, their tongues battling with one another and enjoying the feeling of their bare skin against one another, a feeling that they hadn’t been able to enjoy the time before.
Jayne also found that it was better, being sober this time around. She could focus more on how soft his hair actually was, how good it felt between her fingers as she tugged and pulled. She could focus on his skin, so cool compared to hers, and had to remind herself that his species was more cold-blooded. Surprisingly, it only made her burn more for him.
Her legs opened up, wrapping around his waist, and D’Anil didn’t waste another moment. Aligning himself, he took himself in hand and pressed into her. He hid his face in the curve of her neck, but it didn’t hide the groan that escaped past his lips, still so unused to a human woman’s heat wrapped around his length.
Jayne smiled to herself. If she could get that reaction out of a man who always tried to hide his feelings, she could do anything. “Tell me what you want, Master,” she murmured softly, the new title so foreign on her lips. It felt dirty, almost wrong, to give into something she’d only been pretending to be, what she’d really been fighting against the entire time. But Jayne meant it. He could be her Master in this dirty room for this one hot day.
It caught him by surprise as well, his hips jutting forward to bury himself completely at the hilt. When D’Anil realized Jayne was being serious, a corner of his lips turned up. “I want you to scream my name this time,” he told her, as his hips started to move faster and faster, “You’re not holding back this time. The whole desert is going to hear you crying for my cock, slave.”
Jayne whimpered, turning her head to the side and her eyes squeezing shut. She didn’t remember being so sensitive, though that could be from the roleplay. Already, she felt herself starting to tighten, could feel the first wave of pleasure start to hit her as he angled his hips to brush over her sweet spot.
Jayne cried out, bucking up into him. Her hands moved all over him, doing what they couldn’t before and memorizing each inch of his skin. Her fingers pressed and dug into his shoulders, nails biting at his flesh. They smoothed down his back, feeling his muscles tighten and contort as his body moved over her. They brushed over his li
ps before she pressed her mouth against his.
“Yes,” she sighed, “Yes, Master… I want your cock. Please, harder!”
She didn’t think he actually could fuck her harder, but D’Anil proved Jayne wrong. He snapped his hips into hers, and she could feel where she would have rug burns from the cot, her body jostling about like a doll’s. It should have been demeaning. She should have felt like a toy meant only for his pleasure, but Jayne didn’t. She felt empowered and completely lost in the pleasure that he was giving her.
Soon, her cries stopped making any sense, unable to form actual words. As D’Anil dipped his head down to suck at one of her nipples, Jayne finally gave in, screaming his name as her body shot up from the bed. Her core squeezed and tightened all around him, milking D’Anil for his own orgasm. But he resisted, if only for a minute more, as he thrust one, twice, three times more into Jayne before he reached his own climax.
They were both covered in sweat and too hot to hold one another, but Jayne settled for his hand as they laid side by side on the mattress. She exhaled softly, then found herself laughing. D’Anil frowned with confusion, and she leaned forward to try to kiss it away, but could only stay close for a couple of seconds before she fell back down onto the cot, her brown hair spread in all directions.
“You should have fucked me again weeks ago,” she murmured.
D’Anil smiled. “Shut up and go to sleep.”
Jayne turned to her side, smirking. “Yes, Master.”
Chapter Eight
They didn’t end up sleeping much, but D’Anil wouldn’t blame Jayne for it. The third and fourth time they’d gone around, it was completely his idea, pulling Jayne up by the hips right as she was starting to fall asleep and fucking her from behind for the third time, and sleepily making love to her the fourth time, moving slow as their limbs were becoming too tired and heavy to carry on anymore.
Alien Romance: Stranded With The Alien Assassin: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 3) Page 7
