by Raven Dark
Malek showed me how to work the touch screen controls for the water, the shampoo and the soap, all on a wall inside the stall.
Testing the water temperature, I fought down a twinge of nervousness at being alone with this man. He still scared the shit out of me, but he also smelled delicious, making my senses go haywire.
“What is it?” Standing in front of the stall, rippling arms crossed, Malek’s eyes danced, telling me he damn well knew the answer.
Raul’s voice still drifted out of the office, speaking in Xandari, so I focused on him instead of on Malek. “I think the translator is messing up again. He’s coming through in your language.”
“He’s using a scrambler.” Malek nodded for me to get into the stall.
For some reason, I could feel danger radiating off him like electricity. Was he up to something?.
I stepped under the spray and groaned in pleasure, forgetting all about Malek as the hot water pounded down against my shoulders, massaging the kinks out of the tired muscles.
Pretending I was alone, I focused on the questions racing through my mind. There were so many things I wanted to ask these guys, now that I could understand them. Questions that I hadn’t allowed myself to think about now found their way to the surface.
What was this…Order Raul had mentioned? They were connected to the Xandar Home for Girls, involved in their abductions, but how? And what were they on this world, some sort of government agency? How bad was the damage the Rith had caused here? How would we get to Raul’s father if the ship couldn’t get us there? How long would the trip take? And if Raul’s father had been caught in the attack, what then?
Without the faintest hint of modesty, Malek undressed and stepped into the stall with me.
Oh my god. What the hell was he doing? Every thought fled from my mind as his warm body crowded me toward the back of the stall.
Feeling suddenly cornered, panic raced up my spine. The heat in his purple eyes and the way his pupils dilated until his eyes were almost black made my pulse flutter, even while indignation at the lack of privacy made me stiffen against the wall.
My captors didn’t allow me to take a leak in private, so why would showering be different?
“Didn’t think I’d join you, did you? Turn around.” His sultry, velvety voice was gruff with need, stroking every nerve in me until my skin tingled. Would he fuck me right here in the shower? I hated the way my muscles coiled with longing at the thought.
I sighed and turned my back to him.
He didn’t fuck me.
Instead, he washed my hair with a pleasant smelling shampoo that was neither feminine nor masculine, and then scrubbed my neck, back, and arms down with a thick cloth and a similarly scented soap.
What the hell was going here? Washing me? This kind of… attentiveness was something I’d have expected of Z’pheer, not Malek. It freaked me out, leaving me wondering what he was building up to.
Malek did the same for himself, scrubbing down while I washed my face and neck, before he soaped up my breasts and pussy. He wasn’t shy about touching me, stroking my pussy from behind while he washed me. I held in a moan and forced myself not to squirm against his fingers.
“No coming, nayna,” he rasped in my ear. “Hands on the wall.” I could hear the smile in his voice as he slid his fingers from between my legs. “All of your pleasure belongs to us.”
I panted, almost whimpering at the loss.
He started washing my ass cheeks, his palms warming the skin. It hardly stung now, or maybe he was turning me on too much for me to notice the pain.
“Every pleasure you will have in life from this day forward will be given, or kept from you, at our choosing,” he added. “Every pleasure… and pain.”
“P—pain?” My imagination ran rampant, fear electrifying my skin.
He rumbled in affirmation. The pleasure in that sound caused my heart to hammer. His cock brushed my ass, growing harder. “We will teach you to enjoy both, nayna.”
Panic began to well up. The memory of Raul’s hand burning my ass caused my legs to nearly fold under me in dread.
I tried to turn around. He put my hands back on the wall and pinned my wrists there. His powerful frame pressed against mine, his chest heating my back.
“If I fucked you right here, right now, what would you do?” he whispered.
“Malek—”
“Not right now, nayna. V’ir.”
I closed my eyes, trying to get a handle on my breathing. “V’ir—”
“I asked you a question.” His tongue teased my ear. “What would you do?”
Oh my God. My mind screamed at me to find a way out, hopeless as it was, even while my core ached for him. I was already wet, and not only from the water.
“I…I…”
He inhaled the scent of me, his chest expanding on a growl. “I will tell you what you would do.”
His hands slid down the curve of my back and cupped my hips. Somehow, my legs were already spread; all he had to do was angle his cock the right way, bend me over a little, and thrust inside.
Shame washed over me at the ease with which he made my body respond to him with so little effort. I tried to close my legs. He put his feet between mine, keeping them apart.
Jesus Christ, he was going to fuck me. Right there, whether I wanted it or not. His cock rested neatly against the small of my back. Ready.
With no way to escape, I clung to every word he was about to say, waiting. Dreading what came next. He had me on a fucking knife’s edge, pinned right there between real fear and need so intense I would have done anything he said.
Fuck, I hated him for putting me in this situation, but I hated myself more for wanting him.
“If I chose to fuck you right now, you would bend over right here and take every inch of me.”
I wanted to fight him, wanted to curse at him, but then two of his fingers slid between my folds, stroking just right, and revealing the truth of his words.
“You’d take everything I gave you,” he murmured, removing his fingers just as the sensations grew intense enough that I’d started rocking my hips. He imprisoned both of my hands against the wall again. “You’d take it like a good shleta, and then you’d come, thrashing like a wild animal caught in a trap.” He bit my shoulder. The sting almost made me come right there, and I let out a whimper. “And then I’d cover your beautiful back with my come, marking you as mine, just like Raul did.”
Everything in me wanted to tell him he was wrong. I couldn’t stop him from fucking me, not with my hands pinned and him keeping my legs spread in this tiny stall. If he chose to, I’d have no way to escape, but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I wouldn’t come. Only, I knew damn well I would have. With the way my pussy was throbbing, all it would take was a few hard strokes from him and I’d come apart like shattering glass.
The truth in that cut like a knife. I sobbed, as terrified of my body’s inevitable response to him as I was of what he’d do now.
Malek’s palm stroked my back, sliding all the way up to my nape. He wrapped my hair around his fist in a grip that gave him total control.
“If we had more time, I would take you, my little shleta.” He dropped a tender kiss on my shoulder.
Relief washed over me in a dizzying wave, as if I’d narrowly escaped a trap.
Malek pulled back. Then his fist yanked on my hair so that my neck was craned all the way back. “Luckily, we do have time.”
He thrust into me in one swift, hot, brutal stroke.
I moaned, a throaty needy sound that hid nothing from him and laid my need painfully bare to him.
A victorious growl rumbled from him. He pounded me savagely. Giving me no time to acclimate. I screamed in pleasure, so loud the whole ship must have heard me. He yanked on my hair, an unrelenting grip. Somehow, the sting only made me hotter.
He hammered himself into me, greedy, wild thrusts. My body shuddered, thighs shaking, every stroke spiraling me higher. I came, thrashing.
M
alek let out a string of alien curses—or what I assumed were curses. He thrust a handful of times, cursed again, and spilled himself into me.
I panted, my legs threatening to fold under me. Malek released my hair and one arm slid around my waist, holding me up. He gave a satisfied moan, washing us both off thoroughly, but quickly.
Then he turned off the water and released me, stepping out of the stall.
Head spinning, I turned, meaning to reach for a towel.
Malek grabbed a towel from a shelf and dried me off. He padded me down with short brisk movements, not the way one would tend to a lover, but like an owner with a prized doll. The sudden distance from him had me wanting to run, but there was nowhere to go.
Without a word, he wrapped me in the towel and carried me back to the bridge. Still naked, still shivering. There, he set me in one of the chairs. His fingers smoothed my hair back of my face. A smile touched his lips, one that didn’t touch his eyes. Then he turned and started talking to Raul.
As if I wasn’t there.
Leaving me with nothing but darkness in my thoughts, and a hole in my heart.
Fun times.
13
A Narrow Escape
The bridge was a bustle of activity with the men preparing to leave, but I hardly noticed it beyond the chaos wrecking havoc on my thoughts. After what had just happened in the bathing room, I felt like I was caught in a fucking gale, being buffeted by a storm of emotions I could barely process.
What the holy fucking hell had happened down there?
Malek’s actions shouldn’t have been a surprise, and neither should his ignoring me now. He was a goddamned barbarian, after all. Hell, I should have been glad I didn’t even seem to be on his radar at this point. As long as he ignored me, I was safe. He couldn’t do any more damage. I didn’t want him, for Christ’s sake. The less attention he paid to me the better.
And yet, as I sat there shivering from the bath, naked but for a towel in front of my captors, I once again felt stripped of something no clothing could make up for.
Malek’s savagery had reduced me to a plaything, a toy put there for his use, and while that pissed me the fuck off—while I should have welcomed his distance—his dismissal felt worse. It left me feeling hollowed out and lost, if he’d bound some part of my soul to his, and then, without warning, cut me loose to drift in the vastness of intergalactic emptiness.
Shame at the way my body had responded to him ate at me, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I let my anger burn it away. Anger, I could deal with. Anger gave me strength, kept me from falling apart.
The men put me to work helping them pack extra supplies, stowing clean clothes and those packets of dried food and cured meat in their bags, then filling three canteens with water from the ship’s onboard water supply. They grabbed bed rolls from the bedroom I’d seen the last time I was here, all of which weighed little and allowed for easily carrying. I lost myself in the work; it was easier to focus on mundane tasks than to worry about Malek or his effect on me. The added supplies indicated we were in for a longer trip than the one we’d made to and from that tower yesterday.
No one told me where we were going.
It annoyed me that I was too afraid to speak up, but all I had to do was remember Raul’s rules—in this case, the one about not speaking without permission—and the words died in my throat.
While Malek helped me do up the ties on my dress, I tried not to think about his hands on me, about what had happened between us. It didn’t work. His spicy, masculine scent still catapulted my senses into overdrive.
Clearly noticing the stiff way I stood in front of him, he pushed my hair behind my shoulder, a knowing smile toying with his lips. He slipped the poncho over my head and put my hood up, tugging playfully on it.
I just clenched my jaw and glared at him.
“What the hell did you do to her down there, Malek?” Raul teased him as he came back from the weapons room. He had his axe strapped to his back, but a quiver of arrows also hung from his belt now. He carried a bow in one hand, and a sash lined with more than a dozen small throwing knives in the other.
“We just had ourselves a little fun down there. Didn’t we, nayna?” Malek settled the poncho until it covered the bright red garment underneath.
Fun? He’d said that so casually, as if we’d been discussing the weather.
A chance of pleasure with a side of torture. Jesus.
“I’ll bet you did.” Chuckling, Raul handed Malek the sash. As though the thought of what Malek had done to me turned him on, Raul’s pupils enlarged until they reduced the gold in his eyes to a thin line around the edges, making them look like two obsidian lunar eclipses.
Raul cupped my chin. “You must tell me what he did to you later, Vahashatai. Perhaps while I take my turn with you.” He released me and tested the bowstring on his weapon. Then he started adding a few more food rations to the supplies.
My jaw almost dropped. The shameless way these men discussed sex, not to mention sharing me, left me as baffled as the way my muscles coiled deliciously with awareness of him. Honestly, had they no fucking shame at all?
It disturbed me to realize that they somehow made their openness and the concept of passing a woman between them like chattel feel natural. That it felt right.
To get my mind off that thought, I opened my mouth to ask the same question that had been nagging at me since we’d first got on the ship, only to close it. Raul’s earlier warnings about repercussions strangled the words in my throat.
Oh, to hell with this. “Raul, can I ask a question?”
Surely, if I asked nicely, he couldn’t expect me to be constantly left in the dark. There would be reasonable questions I could ask, right?
“No, you may not. Here, Z’pheer, do you have room in your pack for a few of these?” He held up a handful of Tarku’s dog packets, dropping them into Z’pheer’s backpack when Z’pheer held it open.
Really? I dropped my arms. Call me crazy, but I’d only meant to ask where we were going, hoping I’d feel a little less anxious about the dangers of this planet if I wasn’t totally out of the loop.
“But I only wanted to—” I started.
“Z’pheer, shut her up.”
“With pleasure, Atan Raul.” Z’pheer picked the muzzle up from a chair, shoved the rubbery piece into my mouth, and buckled the vile contraption around my head.
Wishing I could bust his nose, I settled for glaring at him. His eyes sparkled. He clapped my cuffs on and they gave their activating click.
Malek gave them a playful tug, ignoring my daggered look and checking over the knives in the sash he now wore across his chest under his sword.
Raul put Tarku’s collar on, and Z’pheer clipped the end of my leash to his bracelet. While I was glad I’d be with him instead of Malek, it didn’t go unnoticed that Z’pheer tethered me to him with the exact same nonchalance as Raul leashed his fucking dog.
When everyone was ready to go, we left the ship, and Raul activated its cloak. I watched the craft disappear, hopelessness clutching my heart in a tight fist. The ship was still there, only hidden behind its invisibility shield, but I couldn’t help feeling as if I’d watched my only way off this planet vanish into nothing.
Silly, since I needed my captors to get home, but there the thought was.
There is only one way for a slave to escape her bond with her V’ir, and we will not let you take such a way out. Raul’s words imprinted themselves forever on my thoughts.
The only way out of this was death.
I shivered.
Malek and Z’pheer brought the hepta back out of the stable, and the men saddled up, strapping the bed rolls behind the saddles. I rode with Z’pheer this time. We headed into the jungle with the suns lower in the sky, Raul in the lead, Tarku once more trotting alongside Raul’s mount.
Unlike the trek to the ship, the hours of travel through the jungle flew by this time. The men kept their mounts moving at a much brisker pace. Th
e movement of the suns, offering enough light to see by, and a few degrees drop in temperature offered the only indicators of time.
Again, the men said little, radiating readiness, all three of them seeming constantly on guard. Z’pheer’s metallic fighting staff remained at full length and in his grip nearly at all times. His other arm was around me, an ever present bar of steel that kept me pinned to him. Shortly after entering the jungle, Raul had drawn his axe, holding it across his hepta’s back in front of him, once more scanning the ground as often as the trees, as though expecting his mount to step on a landmine.
Malek often took the lead position. Before, his suddenly taking charge seemed strange, but now it made sense, especially since it happened whenever the Rith calls that echoed through the jungle seemed closer. He was protecting Raul. Knowing that, I wondered how I didn’t see it for what it was before.
Throughout the trip, Malek twirled one of his throwing knives between his fingers. A seemingly idle gesture, but I got the feeling he was ready to throw it the minute a Rith appeared from between the trees.
The men were expecting an ambush. Wherever we were headed, I could tell, once again, they wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Before nightfall, which couldn’t have been more than a few hours away.
I’d have given anything to be left alone with my thoughts, to finally consider—really consider—the questions that continued to multiply in my mind. But the constant threat of an appearance from the Rith kept me on guard, a quiet, almost numbing fear keeping those questions from drifting too close to the surface. With this infernal muzzle on my damn face, I couldn’t have voiced any of them even if I’d hadn’t been too terrified of an enemy attack to do so.
As happened on the way to the ship, the hepta never stopped moving except when the men had to relieve themselves. I was allowed to do my business only when my captors did, and always right in front of them. We ate on the road, the canteens and food rations passed between us.
The hepta never seemed to tire. Even Tarku trotted alongside us, his massive furry body always in motion, apparently filled with boundless energy. Sometimes I tired just watching him.
