The Breaking

by Imogen Keeper

  Silence filled the chamber. Untimely demise. Off Pilan. Old memories stirred in the back of her brain. The obscure drug references. Septusine, the drug Utto had used to make her compliant. Something Rennie said about loving tits, and Utto saying he never had to speak with the women whose tits he touched. It wasn’t possible. What women? There were too few women.

  No. Does he mean Rennie?

  Shepherd caught her eye, and something moved in his gaze. She leaned forward, studying him. It all made sense.

  “Do you have proof?” she asked, earning a curious glance from Ajax.

  “My fellow scum-kings worked in human trafficking. One of them was meant to deliver a shipment to Quasilliaro. Who would then deliver the shipment to me. Neither of them is alive. Yet my clients are still here. I am in what you call a quandary.” Shepherd’s voice carried a trace of sympathy and the hint of a smile, even if he ignored her question.

  A muscle under Ajax’s eye tightened. His jaw clicked. Fury veiled his face. Or maybe it was disgust.

  “Not our problem.” Ajax’s voice was intransigent.

  “Oh, it is your problem. If you ever want to leave Pilan, I need your help.”

  “What do you want?” Ajax’s voice seethed with thinly contained disdain.

  “I would like to provide my clients with a product.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” she asked, tired, sick, and desperate for this conversation to end.

  “You would make a prime slave.”

  She shivered, the pulsing between her thighs growing too urgent for her to bother feeling fear or anger at his statement. She could too well imagine the life of a slave—she’d been one herself. No control over one’s present or future, moving from one slap to the next. Fear.

  “Again,” she said, “if you wanted to make me a slave, your bald men would have killed Ajax, and you’d have made me a slave. What do you really want?”

  Shepherd sank his teeth into his lower lip. “Quasilliaro supplied the merchandise. And I took care of sales. The people in the club were promised a slave.”

  Ajax shook his head, firm and resolute as ever. “No.”

  “You see my dilemma. I have a thousand men waiting in a room. They flew in from all over the galaxy. I cannot simply tell them that the goods are not here.”

  One more person who wants to use me.

  Ajax’s fingers tightened on her waist. “No.”

  Shepherd lowered his palms to rest on the glittering surface of the table. “Then you are not leaving this room.”

  Ajax’s hand dropped to her thigh. His grip was hard as he slowly shifted her away. His other hand shifted slightly, body coiling to spring. “You’re not selling her.”

  “I agree.” Shepherd’s smile was beatific.

  Both she and Ajax froze.

  “I don’t actually need to sell her. I just need to pretend to sell her. To a specific buyer.” Shepherd’s eyes grew more intense. “A specific blond buyer.”

  Ajax’s face darkened. He exhaled a long, deadly slow breath. “How can I trust your word that you won’t let someone else buy her instead?”

  Shepherd spread his hands wide. “Would I do that to my new friends? After you’ve so kindly taken out my competition.” His gaze flicked over to Feola again. “All my competition.”

  Her heart pounded. Was that confirmation that Rennie was the third scum-king?

  “Of course, it is customary for the new owner to provide a small level of entertainment after the auction has ended…”

  The words hung in the air, lingering like a bad smell.

  Like have sex in front of them? “We can’t,” she said. “We aren’t Bonded.”

  Shepherd’s smile didn’t waver. “You need serum. No?”

  He had them there, and by the serpentine glint in his eye, he knew it. “I can keep you safe. And immediately after, you’d be on a ship, flying into the distance.”

  She leaned forward. It would get Ajax out of here safely. No bloodshed. And whatever his qualms, they were born of his desire to be a gentleman, not because he didn’t actually want it. He would enjoy it. “The ship will be fully stocked and untraceable?”

  Shepherd nodded.

  “We’ll do it,” she said at the exact same moment that Ajax said, “No.”

  She turned to him. “I do need serum.” Her face burned as she glanced over at the grinning Shepherd. “We need to get off this space station, and he can help us. Done.”

  “I’m not parading you in front of a group of men like some sort of trophy.”

  She leaned forward. “Why not? Women and men have been paraded for far less worthy a reason. This will get us out of this mess. It makes sense.” She studied his narrowed eyes, tight jaw, hard mouth. “You just don’t want anyone else to see me naked.”

  He closed his eyes at that, inhaling sharply. He turned back toward Shepherd. “You could just be a decent person and let us go.”

  Shepherd merely shook his head and rose. “I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss.”

  “No need,” she said, eyes hard. “I can’t wait much longer. So bring in your hair dye and prepare your club. Tell them to get ready for a performance.”

  Shepherd glanced at Ajax with something approaching sympathy. He offered up a tight nod and exited the room.

  She turned toward Ajax, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  17

  This wasn’t quite how I imagined it.

  Ajax swiveled in his chair in Shepherd’s meeting room so he could rest his elbows on his knees.

  The vein along the side of Feola’s throat quivered with every beat of her heart.

  He took a deep breath, tearing his gaze away, and it carried the scent of epicanthu and her. Sweet. Feola.

  He couldn’t look at her. She shifted beside him, leaning forward. “Please, Ay-shocks. I know this isn’t exactly what you want, b—”

  “Are you kidding?” He kept his eyes on the floor, didn’t need to look at her to know she’d stiffened. He could feel her eyes on him. “This is all I want. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Just not like this.”

  She leaned closer, cupping his cheeks in cool hands, forced him to look up and meet her wide yellow-green eyes. “How did you want it?”

  He inhaled sharply. He didn’t even have to stop and think to answer. He knew. “Like the first time I kissed you in that hallway. Simple. Honest. Straightforward. Just you and me. Because we want each other.”

  A breath gusted out of her like she’d been punched in the stomach. Her nipples hardened right before his eyes, and the sweet scent of her arousal filled the air.

  “Then forget it’s like this. We’re doing this to escape, but we’d have done it anyway. Pretend it’s just us. No past. No future. Just now.” She sank her teeth into her lower lip, and all the blood in his body rushed straight to his cock. That might be true, but it didn’t factor in whatever the hell had happened to her since she Bonded with the wrong man.

  A smile ghosted across his lips. “You were right,” he muttered.

  “About what?”

  “I don’t want to share you.”

  “You won’t. Let them look, Ay-shocks. You’re the only one who will touch me.”

  For now. His throat tightened at the reminder that whatever this would be, it wouldn’t be a Bonding. It was just an exchange of serum. He nodded tightly. “Fine. But… Feola?”

  She nodded at him.

  “Don’t dye your hair. I love your hair.”

  Those big white teeth flashed in the dark room. “Maybe Shepherd can come up with a hat.”

  Within moments, supplies were brought to the room. They prepared fast, Feola’s shivers getting worse with every minute that passed.

  “Are you ready?” Shepherd asked from the door. At least he didn’t smile. If the prick had smiled, Ajax would have punched him.

  Ajax offered Feola his hand, and she took it, rising gracefully. “You feel all right?”

  She shrugged, with a quick flash of a grin. �
��I will be, in a few moments.”

  He traced a finger down her cheek. She’d pulled her hair back into a tight bun, hoping it would look darker under the lights, less obvious. Shepherd had produced a black mask for him—apparently everyone in the audience wore them to conceal their identity as they took part in the illegal proceedings. But none for her. She’d go in completely exposed.

  Which made him feel as small and pathetic as the cockroaches roaming Pilan’s underbelly. What kind of man let a woman under his protection perform like this in public.

  Not your choice. She isn’t yours.

  She touched his hand. “Ay-shocks. Thank you for doing this. For us. For me.” The style made her skin glow even paler, and her eyes burn brighter. They blazed yellow-green and effervescent. Animated. Like she glowed. Always. He just wished he knew the secrets hiding behind those eyes.

  Her choice.

  “Believe me, this isn’t entirely altruistic.” He trailed his thumb over her cheek, ran it down over that full pink lower lip. Soft. Her lips parted. Her mouth was wet, and her tongue warm and smooth when she dragged it across the tip of his thumb. He barely suppressed the growl building in the back of his throat.

  Her cheeks flushed, skin heating under his hand, and the air carried another burst of arousal as she sucked at the tip of his thumb.

  “You’re killing me.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead and retrieved her hand, preparing to lead her into a bizarre sex club to be auctioned in front of strangers.

  Shepherd stepped away from the leaf-like door and gestured Feola through. The black silky fabric of the robe Shepherd had given her shimmered under the light as she moved. He tried not to think about what was under that robe. Nothing. Or rather everything. Feola’s naked body. Slicked with oil.

  Shepherd dropped a hand to Ajax’s arm, and Ajax froze, his eyes taking in the man’s creepy orange gaze. “No one will recognize her. Or hurt her. Trust me.” Ajax must have made a face at that because Shepherd offered up a low laugh. “She’ll be on a stage. Separate from my patrons. They won’t get to her.”

  “And the exits?”

  Shepherd sized him up for a long moment. “There will be one just off the stage. To the left. One of my men will show you when this is over. There’s a tunnel. He will take you to your ship. Fully stocked. With all the provisions you could need.”

  “And untraceable.”

  Shepherd nodded. “Completely.”

  Ajax gritted his teeth, staring at Feola’s back while she stood, impatiently shifting, uncomfortable. Needy. Waiting for him.

  “Let’s get this show started.”

  Shepherd’s smile was grim.

  18

  On my knees for you.

  Feola removed her slippers outside the door to the stage.

  The club was dark as night, punctuated by warm, low lights. Loud, driving music shook the floors and sent a pulse throbbing between her thighs.

  Shepherd had promised they’d be waiting on the other side of the door when she and Ajax exited. She curled her toes against a sudden burst of ridiculous nerves. Not that Ajax would touch her, for some reason that didn’t scare her a bit, but to be surrounded by all those men…. Utto had complained constantly about how small her breasts were, how big her butt was. And now thousands of men would see her. Bare. Exposed.

  She shouldn’t care what they thought, but somehow….

  What if they thought she was ugly? What if they booed her and Ajax off the stage? It would be so embarrassing.

  It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. Getting Ajax off Pilan mattered.

  Utto can’t hurt me.

  She refused to think about the fate of the girl who’d been meant to take her place. Where was she now?

  The floor was hard and as cool as the air that swirled under her robe as she walked onto the stage. Frosty on the damp skin between her thighs. A fresh stab of need coiled low in her belly, and goosebumps rose across her skin. The need was so much stronger now. And she felt the weight of Utto’s apprehension, thick and frenetic in her chest.

  Hundreds—thousands—of men sat in chairs like a massive open arena, all of them facing her, faces concealed behind black half masks. Guards paced nearby.

  Black silhouettes eyed her as she stood alone on the stage, washed in blinding lights.

  Her body rebelled when Ajax moved past her, down the steps to take a seat in an empty chair in the front row. She bit down on the inside of her cheeks, forcing herself to relax, slowing her breathing.

  Some announcer moved around the stage. Talking fast. Saying words that made no sense. Prime flesh. Choice slave. Unique eyes.

  She let it all wash over her like the tide in the Green Sea back home on Triannon. There was a saying at home that she had repeated to herself a thousand times. It had been Mamma’s favorite saying. The wise flower turns its face away from the shade. Adapting was not the same as surrendering.

  She didn’t have a choice about this ridiculous public performance, but she would control how it happened. This would not be one more moment in a lifetime of things being done to her. From now on, she would be the doer.

  She would give these men what they wanted. She would play a role for them.

  With shaking fingers and a deep breath for courage, she untied the knot around her neck that held her robe closed.

  Forget them all. Forget every last person in the room but him. Ajax matters. They don’t. Not right now.

  She couldn’t see his face. He was just one more shape in the crowd. But she focused on him anyway.

  The robe fell to the floor in a dark puddle at her feet, and she was naked before a thousand men, but her skin prickled for just one of them. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them on her skin. Hot. Hard. Determined.

  Forget about Utto and Rennie and everything that happened at Romeo-Two. Just look at Ajax.

  The slithering Bond in her chest twisted so tightly that she rubbed her hand over the ache. Someday she’d cast Utto from her chest for good.

  The crowd clapped. And the announcer had to shout to be heard, loud enough in her ears to block out the sound of Utto’s taunts and Rennie’s smug laughter. The lights were bright enough to blind her to anything but the feel of Ajax’s invisible gaze.

  Across the theater, blue holograms of her appeared. Close up, blue-tinged, and enormous, her body gleamed around the room.

  The lights in her eyes dimmed slightly. The thousand masked faces in the crowd were all leveled right on her. They held up their hands, and the announcer’s voice came even faster. The bidding had begun.

  Ajax’s face, eyes shadowed behind the dark mask, loomed like a promise. Soon. She’d belong to him and no one else.

  He waited. So long. Until finally the number of hands raising lessened. There were three or four. And still, Ajax did nothing. Then just two.

  Then finally, that elegant, long-fingered hand sliced up into the air.

  The announcer’s voice grew excited.

  It didn’t take long after that. Ajax rose to a smattering of applause and ribald cheers.

  Time slowed.

  Every single second. All the details faded away. The noise of the crowd. The lights.

  He stood in front of her. So big and tall, a breath of a smile at the corner of his lips. “I guess you’re mine now.”

  She nodded, a second pulse pounding between her thighs, fervid and incessant. Chewing her lip, she reached up for the zipper of his flight suit over the hard ridges of his collar bone.

  The straps of knives would need to go. Her fingers slid over the buckles, tugging them free. He held them, dangling from one hand, body rigid as she tugged down on the zipper, leaving his flight suit gaping from neck to groin.

  She stroked a finger down his cheek, along his jaw, along his throat, over the rise of his Adam’s apple. It bobbed when he swallowed. He cast a wary glance around the room, shifting their bodies so he faced the audience.

  His nostrils flared in time with his breathing, his
breaths fanning over the skin of her shoulders, over her breasts. Her nipples, already tightly beaded, throbbed. Demanding no touch but his.

  She pushed the arms over his shoulders. Hard biceps came into view, corded forearms.

  The sharp lights of Shepherd’s club accentuated the fierce, jagged edges of Ajax’s body. She sucked in a breath. She’d never seen anyone as sharply muscled in her life.

  He stood head and shoulders above her, and except for the rise and fall of his chest, he didn’t move a muscle. Just waited.

  She licked her lips, blocked out the sounds of cheering from the patrons of the club behind her, pretended she couldn’t feel infinite gazes glued to her bare bottom, and traced her hands down from his collarbone, over the thick rise his chest, over the hard bulges of his abdomen, over his navel, and lower.

  A roar from the crowd buzzed in her ears, and desire made her dizzy as she closed her hands over the hottest, hardest part of all. The thin layer of fabric was a barrier she didn’t want.

  He shuddered but kept his gaze on the crowd around them.

  She’d never touched him there. At least not with her hands.

  She undid the snaps and wrapped her fist around him. His body shook.

  Scalding skin. Smooth and velvety soft. Silk stretched over iron.

  “Feola,” he said, like the breaking of a dam. His hands closed around her waist, pulling her closer, higher, so she stood on the tips of her toes. Her neck and spine arched back as he bent over her and claimed her mouth with his.

  His thick length pressed against her belly, calling to her. She was hungry for more, desperate for anything, everything he had to give.

  His tongue stroked hers. He’d kissed her like this once before. A long time ago, shortly after she’d woken from cryo. As if he’d lost control and wanted nothing more than to fuse them together into a single unit, as if he could give her a part of his soul, and swallow hers.

  “Ajax,” she panted against his mouth, desperate for the taste of him, more potent than eeffoc, heady as aphrodisiacs hit her lips. Everything faded away. Utto’s Bond heaving in her chest, and all their spectators. Gone.