Eeete didn’t. “Slaves aren’t allowed to look at each other or anyone else for too long. We never speak to each other. It’s forbidden. We’re punished if we don’t obey.”
Paige recalled the slaves in the hologram, their odd behavior with each other, and wondered what kind of monster could have created such an awful world for them. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she murmured. “I promise. Look at me, please.”
A long moment passed as though Eeete needed the time to convince herself to do so. When she did, Paige saw genuine fear in her eyes.
She cradled her cheek. “It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them.”
Eeete’s silence, her continued caution, said she wasn’t certain whether to believe or trust. Apparently, she’d placed all her hope in Zekin, maybe because he’d saved her from the appalling world she’d known. She still didn’t move away from Paige. Even if it bothered her to be touched, she didn’t seem to believe she had the right to stop it.
Suppressing a sigh, Paige spoke as kindly as she could. “What did Zekin tell you about where you came from? Where you were born? What about your parents? Where are they?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your parents,” Paige repeated, lowering her hand. “Your mother. Your father.”
Eeete murmured the words several times, then shook her head. “What is that?”
“I don’t know what you call them in your language.” Clearly, Eeete didn’t understand the English terms. Paige tried to explain. “Your mother and father were the people you loved when you were a child.”
A look of puzzlement remained on Eeete’s face.
“The woman and the man who held you when you were afraid,” Paige continued. “Who worried about you. Who smiled when they saw you.”
“No one did that.”
Huh? Everyone had someone. A mother who gave birth. An adult or adults who fed, clothed and protected the child.
Even as alone as Paige was, she’d had her father for a while, and then she’d hoped to have Johnny, with them building a family, making a baby she could pour all her love into. It was supposed to have made up for her brutal hours at the firm, the partners treating her like shit, as though she had no feelings or needs outside of making them happy.
Of course, it didn’t come close to the ugliness Eeete must have known as a pleasure slave. Her every thought, action, her entire life and future controlled by others. Poor thing. “What did Zekin tell you about your past?” Eeete had to be human. She couldn’t be a robot or a cyborg, if those things even existed outside of sci-fi films. She looked too real…while also being too perfect to be real. “How you came to be alive?”
Eeete suddenly brightened. “Our rulers have places where those important to the realm work. Those people study hard to learn all they can about people, so they can create and alter them so each one is different from the other.”
Was she talking about scientists and labs where they did genetic experiments? She reminded Paige of a student repeating a lesson by rote, not understanding much of it.
“My kind grew in artificial…” Eeete paused as if searching for the correct word or memory of what Zekin had told her.
“Wombs?” Paige asked. Seeing Eeete’s confusion, Paige described what she was talking about.
The young woman brightened once more, another rare show of happiness, as though she were pleased they understood each other.
Paige couldn’t comprehend any of this.
“After we were born,” Eeete continued, “the rulers immediately sent us to the Pleasure Palace. My first memories of it are when I was much smaller. I, and others in my group, cleaned the Palace and prepared the food until we came of age. A great time, our keepers said. It’s an honor for the rulers to use or punish pleasure slaves in any way they can. It was why we were born. Our only purpose in being alive. To serve. To submit.”
Chapter Five
Zekin found Qatar and Bruda—the first men Paige had seen here—in the dining hall. He gestured for them to follow him so they could speak without the others overhearing.
Their boots clanged against the metal flooring as they moved through the pods, stopping finally at the intake area where each of them had once stood naked and chained, helpless as the guards whipped them mercilessly, threatening worse if they dared cry out, preparing them for their life sentences here. Letting them know what happened to Vakar’s subjects when they defied him in the least.
The manacles that had once hung from the ceiling hooks were no longer present. Zekin had ordered them removed after he and the other men revolted, taking over the prison, disposing of the hated guards. They hadn’t killed those men with their bare hands, nor had they used weapons on them. There was no need. They’d simply forced the remaining guards from the safety of the prison and its life-giving air, then watched as they’d struggled to hold their breaths so they wouldn’t drown. None of them did. Within seconds, the water creatures were upon them, at first curious, then murderous. They attacked the guards, who could neither breathe nor move quickly enough to escape, tearing limbs from torsos, heads from necks. The feeding frenzy lasted for minutes. To Zekin, it seemed like days. He’d found less pleasure in the brutality than he would have guessed. Nor did he realize a lasting peace.
With his arms crossed over his chest, Qatar leaned against the tall metal counter. Bruda stood next to him, clasping his hands behind his back. Unknowingly, he’d placed his booted feet over the symbols on the floor where he’d once waited for the next lick of the whip that was to have been his only future. His fate. The same as Zekin, Qatar and so many others.
All of them were criminals. To their people, they were the vilest life form possible, men without honor or loyalty to Vakar, their realm’s leader. The populace held only the vampires—that they’d banished from E2 eons ago—in greater contempt.
Qatar was the first to break the growing silence. “Were you able to take out any of the guards?”
His pitch was similar to Zekin’s, the same as his features, though not identical as Paige had assumed, her startled reaction giving away her surprise. Even though all the men in Zekin’s realm looked alike, there were subtle differences, marking each as an individual. Zekin’s baritone was a bit lower than Qatar’s. The man had a mole on his neck but not one on his temple and arm as Zekin did. His hair was a bit wavier. Small distinctions that made each of them unique.
The same was true of Bruda. He was an inch shorter than Zekin and Qatar, a result of a problem with his mother’s pregnancy. His complexion, though olive, was a bit lighter, another mark of a gestational difficulty.
Paige hadn’t noticed the faint disparities. She hadn’t been here long enough to do so. She wanted to go home. She’d said he’d promised to take her there.
Zekin’s shoulders and arms ached with uncustomary tension. The longer he’d been away from E2, where emotions weren’t allowed, the more they battled within him, demanding to surface. For the first time in recent memory, he didn’t want to push them down. He allowed himself to recall Paige’s sweet fragrance, so stunning when he was used to the prison’s sterile atmosphere, no different from the air on E2. Her mouth had been soft and willing beneath his. She’d readily accepted his tongue…as a pleasure slave might.
And yet, there’d been a difference. Free will and desire had driven her, not mindless obedience. In that moment, she’d wanted him, while he’d hungered for her. His yearning returned now, passion so deep, so genuine, it stole Zekin’s breath and strength. He locked his knees before his legs refused to support him, and forced himself to take a calming breath.
It did little to quiet his racing pulse. Heat continued to pour through him as he recalled the pleasure of Paige’s body against his, her nipples pressed against his chest, their thighs touch—
Bruda cleared his throat, breaking into Zekin’s thoughts, then asked, “You killed none of the guards?”
Zekin battled his persistent yearning for Paige and forced himself
to answer. “One outside. Three within.”
“Four?” Qatar’s inflection betrayed his surprise. His expression, like Bruda’s, remained unreadable. “That’s all?”
With as much patience as he owned, Zekin explained, “It was enough to rescue Paige before more guards showed up, either from another wing of the outpost or from E4, perhaps E1. I didn’t have an endless supply of extermination darts to bring with me. I had to use several on each of the men inside before they went down. We need to strengthen the toxins we use. What we have now doesn’t work quickly enough.”
Bruda and Qatar exchanged a glance.
“Paige?” Bruda asked.
Zekin pretended to ignore the slight change in Bruda’s tone, not exactly mocking but close. Until now, they’d referred to those they’d rescued as “the female” or “the male”. Of course, none of the pleasure slaves had names, except for Eeete. Even hers wasn’t really a name but simply a way for Zekin to address her. “She told me that’s what she’s called on her plane.”
Qatar pushed away from the metal counter and paced, his boots slapping the floor. “None of the guards followed you and…Paige?”
“If they had,” Zekin said, “I would have killed more of them, as you obviously wanted. If that hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here.”
Qatar ignored the sarcasm. “What about the other females in the guards’ outpost? Were there more from E1?”
Zekin recalled the woman he’d seen. “Only one. She’d been locked out of the building, the same as the others from her realm.” From what Zekin had witnessed, none of those females had lasted long. They weren’t lovely enough for the guards. Nor were they compliant. “There were also two pleasure slaves. Their bodies were just outside the door not yet eaten by the creatures.”
“The guards will want more playthings,” Bruda said, “now that you’ve taken their last woman.”
“Paige wasn’t theirs to take,” Zekin countered, irritation sparking within him. An unexpected response. In times past, he would have tamped it down but couldn’t now. The energy it created was far too liberating. “None of those women from E1 were. Nor are the pleasure slaves.”
Qatar stopped pacing and glanced over. “We’ve already rescued quite a few of them.”
“Too many,” Bruda cut in.
Zekin frowned, no longer trying to hide his frustration with them, something he would never have done on E2. There, the discussion would have been all too civilized and quiet, behavior demanded by Vakar and his kind while they committed atrocities none of their people knew about. By sending Zekin and the other dissidents here, Vakar had meant to rid himself of their treason. Little did he know how his actions had released something deep within Zekin—a shocking hunger for freedom, the pleasure of feeling and reacting—rather than further imprisoning him.
Pity it didn’t appear to have had the same effect on Bruda and Qatar. Their turns were coming up to rescue the next victims. They didn’t seem as eager as when the task had been his. Not even trying to hide his disdain, Zekin asked, “It’s better to let them be abused and murdered?”
“I’m not saying that.” Bruda unclasped his hands and gestured in appeasement. “We should rescue them, of course. However, we’re timing our raids too closely. The guards may put up security measures that will trap us. They’ll learn we’re behind what’s been happening, and they may retaliate.”
“There’s no end to them, as you know,” Qatar added. “The scientists who create their kind and the pleasure slaves have seen to that. Even after we get rid of one, or a few, more always follow.”
Zekin shrugged. “Let them.”
Bruda mumbled, “Perhaps they’ll give up the idea of having an outpost.”
“They haven’t yet,” Qatar countered. “They seem drawn to this plane despite its dangers.”
“Then I stand by what I said,” Bruda blurted. “They may begin to retaliate.”
Zekin sighed. “They’d have to know one of us was even in their outpost. I left no trace of being there.” He pulled the used darts from his pocket and dropped them on the counter. Their tips make faint plinking noises. “I even hid Paige’s clothing in a snowdrift. They have no idea any of us were involved in her rescue or that of the pleasure slaves’. Even if they suspected such a thing, to do anything about it they’d have to find us. They’d have to know this colony exists.”
“You believe that will never be a possibility?”
“Anything’s possible,” Zekin argued. “If it does happen, we’ll fight them as we did the guards here, and we’ll win again.”
“Not if they have something else in mind,” Qatar warned. “What if they eventually discover the colony because of our raids and decide to tell Vakar what’s been happening here—what’s already happened when we took over the prison?”
Bruda’s face drained of color. “We can’t possibly fight Vakar and his men. They have all of E2 on their side. It’s a war we can’t possibly win.”
“One we’ll never have to fight,” Zekin reasoned. “What guard is going to tell Vakar that he came here and saw that we’ve taken over the prison? Vakar will want to know why the guard was here in the first place, given that E5 wasn’t his assignment. He’d been born to serve in the Pleasure Palace. Is the fool going to tell Vakar that he and the others like him are defying Vakar’s orders? They’re opening portals with the devices given them by our scientists, though not for Vakar’s benefit. Instead, they’re using those portals to spirit doomed pleasure slaves from E4 to this realm so they can enjoy them. And when that didn’t satisfy them, they decided to kidnap women from E1—not for Vakar to use and abuse as he demanded—but to keep the females for themselves.
“None of them will dare talk,” Zekin said when Bruda and Qatar didn’t respond. “The guards who could, the ones who ran this place, are gone. We monitor the systems in their absence, transmitting what they would have if they were still here. There’s no way Vakar will ever know what’s happened.”
“Until another of our kind is sentenced to this place as we were,” Qatar said, “and arrives with more guards.”
Zekin gestured dismissively. “We’ll take care of them as we did the others. If they don’t return to E4, who will notice? In particular, Vakar. As you’ve said, there’s no end to them. A few among dozens or hundreds won’t be missed. How could they be? They’re clones, identical in every way. There’s no means to track them by their genetic code as the scientists do with the pleasure slaves.”
“Perhaps not,” Bruda mumbled. “However, I still say we wait a bit before our next raid to keep them off balance. Even if the guards who come to this plane don’t alert Vakar, they may decide to storm the colony without considering the consequences. They’re not like us, Zekin. Primitive instincts—their anger, hunger for food, shelter, sex or power—drives them more than intellect. They may not care if they can’t get inside. Their only intent might be to damage the pods. If that happens, where would we go? There’s no place on this realm we could survive.”
“You keep forgetting they’d have to find us first,” Zekin argued. “They’d have to plan an attack. You believe creatures as primitive as they are could do that?”
Qatar answered before Bruda could. “They were shrewd enough to build an outpost here without Vakar’s knowledge. They manipulated the devices so the portals would bring them to this plane rather than E1 or E4. They may not match our intelligence or our ability to reason rather than to react. However, they do appear to be evolving into something that could risk all our lives.”
Paige regarded the metal plate Eeete had just handed her, overflowing with stuff she was supposed to eat. Unfortunately, the food looked very similar to those creatures Paige had thought were snowflakes. Coating their spindly legs was some kind of batter deep-fried to a golden brown. Must have been sixty of those suckers on the plate.
“What exactly is this?” she asked, then added immediately, “Yes, you have my permission to speak. Please do so always, whenever I ask a quest
ion.”
Eeete still hesitated, then spoke haltingly. “It’s tioma. What you call food in your language.”
Uh-huh. Paige fingered the collar of the camouflage shirt she wore, identical to the one on Zekin and the other men. That was, the men who looked like him and were dressed. Apparently, there were no clothes for pleasure slaves since they remained nude.
Paige’s legs and feet were still bare, the boots and pants Eeete had provided too large to put on. They lay on the floor near the pallet. In the brief time it had taken Paige to get dressed, Eeete had returned with the meal.
It seemed Zekin didn’t want Paige in the dining area. Could be he thought she’d freak out at all those nude bodies.
“Yes, I know it’s food,” she said, as nicely as possible, doing her best not to stare at Eeete’s lovely breasts, smooth mound, extraordinary beauty. “But what kind?”
“Kind?”
Paige was about to pick up one of the things to demonstrate what she meant, but thought better of it. “What kind of food is it exactly?”
A flash of understanding crossed Eeete’s face. “Good food. There’s much of it,” she added, the words rushing from her as if she couldn’t say them quickly enough. “Here, no one goes hungry. You can eat anytime you want, whenever you need to. No one stops you, no one whips you.”
Paige’s stomach fell, not only at what Eeete had just blurted, but how she looked. A kind of ecstasy transformed her features. She didn’t seem to realize how little she expected of life. No doubt because of the constant brutality she’d experienced. Paige wanted to hug the young woman, tell her everything was going to be all right.
A promise she hadn’t a clue how to keep. Offering the only thing she could, Paige lifted her plate. “Are you hungry now? Would you like some?”
Eeete stepped back. “All that is for you. Once you finish, I’ll bring you more. As much as you want. This too.” Her expression said she’d forgotten about the cup she held. Advancing, she handed it to Paige.
Stolen Desire (Outlawed Realm) Page 5
