by C. R. Jane
“Is that the new thing?” Corran asked. “Whoever holds the Raxu gets to kiss Ella?”
“We need to leave,” Derrial’s words ruined the moment, and I broke free from Thane.
I’d spent the last two days alone and now I wanted company. “Don’t go, please.”
“If we’re caught here,” Corran explained, “You could be disqualified from the trials.”
I breathed heavy until Corran cupped my face with both hands, and he kissed me gently. I softened against him, picturing myself in all their arms and naked. Yep, I had no control around these Vepar, but the more time I spent with them, the more I questioned why it couldn’t be.
Corran pulled back, smiling and joined Thane, both of them stroking TJ. I looked up at Derrial who stood in front of me now, and for those few moments, I didn’t expect him to kiss me, but in a swift move, he grabbed my arms and drew me to him. His touch fell to my waist, and without missing a beat, he lifted me off my feet and walked me to the wall.
Pinned beneath him, he guided my legs around his waist as his mouth sank against mine. Fire soared through me like a volcano. He set his hands on the wall over my head, his body pressed against mine, and he kissed with a fever I’d never experienced from him before.
His hips gyrated against me, the erection in his pants rubbing the sensitive spot between my legs. Only a few layers of fabric lay between us. His mouth fell to my neck, his tongue stroking and licking me. His breath on my ear was hot and delicious. “I’ve missed your smile, your taste, your pussy squeezing my dick.”
I shuddered at the words, and already I grew hot and wet. He lowered me to my feet and I stood there, letting the wall hold me up as I breathed hard. When I squeezed my thighs together, a euphoria of tingles spread over me.
The three Vepar just stared at me with hungry eyes, desire locked on their faces. If they asked me to strip for them at that moment, I know I’d be naked in a heartbeat.
Derrial cleared his throat and knocked on the door.
“Pet, we’ll see you soon.” Thane blew me a kiss and when the door opened, the three stalked out before I was locked up in the room alone. Just me and a spiking storm of heat that needed releasing before I exploded.
Chapter 12
The next two few days passed in a blur of waking up, breakfast, exercise, lunch and dinner with more activities like training to fight. Each meal consisted of vegetables, grains and fruit with small portions of protein. No dessert or breads, and most of the dishes were minimally cooked, so raw foods evidently were a thing here. I understood now why the Vepar insisted on healthy eating back on Earth. They believed in clean living.
The second test had commenced and a different girl went out each night, dressed gloriously for a date with the Vepar. I’d watched a few of them get ready, waiting for my turn, making themselves perfect, revealing a lot of skin, and even practicing their dainty laugh. It made me want to hurl. Thank god they weren’t going to win… or I hoped they wouldn’t, and then I could put all this crap behind me. If I attended this mating ritual as a real contender, unsure who the men would pick, I’d be so high strung and stressed.
To clear the constant thoughts hammering into me, I sat crossed legged on the lawn in the small yard filled with benches and gorgeous flower laden trees with the dual suns burning brightly overhead. There was a tranquility and peacefulness to Veon. Unlike Earth, most here rarely complained about their jobs and loved whatever it was they did. This place felt safe, though I also heard the maids talking about more attacks outside the city. How guards patrolling the perimeter were becoming more effective against the Khonsu.
A shadow fell over me, and I flinched, glancing up, squinting to see Zeni staring down at me, her hands gripping the loose orange dress she wore. It flowed to her ankles and with her hair loose and dangling over her shoulder, she was beautiful. Then again, who wasn’t gorgeous on Veon?
“I have something to show you,” she murmured and offered me her hand to stand up. I shouldn’t have accepted, but if I did end up becoming the Vepars’ mate, I didn’t want enemies but friends.
I accepted her offer and stood. The wind brushed past, pushing the hair out of her face. Her smile was bright today, and she almost bounced on her toes as we walked as if she was excited.
She looped her arm around mine like we were BFFs and strolled across the lawn, around the side of the house and through an opening in the gate.
“I’ve been thinking about you lately,” she began, while I glanced back remembering being told we weren’t to leave the house or grounds. But I was also curious what she had to show me. In reality, I was bored on my own. No books were in written english and the big monitor TV inside the communal room only showed news. The room was empty for a reason.
“It must be so hard being away from home, from those you love, and your family. I bet you had a boy or two who was interested in you too.”
I cut her a hard stare, and I saw right through her words. She played on my emotions, and sure, it worked a little because I missed things from Earth, mostly my freedom and mocha vanilla coffee, but what was she going to show me?
“Where are we going?”
“It won’t be long.” We strolled down a back alley flanked by towering fences backing onto numerous mansions. No one was around and Zeni sped up her walk.
“When I was young, my parents sent me to Journey, our nearest moon, to the best boarding school in our universe. While there, I missed them everyday and hated how everything seemed so foreign. So I understand what you’re going through.”
“Not sure you do.” Ever since losing my parents, I struggled to feel comfortable on Earth again and always felt like an outsider.
When she looked at me, something shifted behind her expression… doubt, but that was quickly chased away by her fake smile.
“What happened between you and Derrial, Corran, and Thane?” I asked. Yeah a low blow, but I wasn’t liking the way she mocked me as if she understood my life. I’d lost so much and barely kept it together most days.
She didn’t even warrant looking my way or responding, but pointed to something in the distance to a warehouse. “That’s where we’re going.” There was no heat in her voice, and her heart thumped steadily, but her smile sat crooked on her face.
Guilt skated over my mind because maybe here she was trying to do something nice in her own way and I brought up a hurtful past. Though she also threatened me in the cell… But she healed my bite marks in the first test and she didn’t need to. My arm didn’t drop off.
“I once read a quote that said, yesterday is gone. It’s a little something I try to tell myself everyday when I think of everything I’ve lost.”
“So you’re happy to move on from the past because you can’t do anything about it? That’s very defeatist,” she retorted.
“Not really. I don’t want to live with regret and always wishing I did something differently. I can only change my future.” As the words fell from my mouth, I wondered how much I truly followed this path since my parents were always on my mind, and I still drowned in the sorrow of what my supposed best friend, Cherry, did to me.
Zeni shrugged, not saying anything but hurrying her steps until we reached the side door of the steel gray building. She punched in a code into the security system on the wall, and the door slid open.
She grabbed my hand and dragged me inside, laughing. “You’re going to love this.”
We ran through an open space, our shoes thumping on the hard floor like gunshots, and we headed straight for a small spaceship. Black and slick, it was about the size of Corran’s first ship back on Earth.
Once we arrived, Zeni hit the controllers near the door and it slid upward before a set of stairs unfurled before us. She rushed inside and looked back at me, her face beaming with joy.
“Come on in.”
“What’s going on?” Nerves danced over my skin.
“Get in here, stop being so scared. I’m not going to kidnap you.” She laughed hysterically
, except I wouldn’t put it past her.
Reluctantly I stepped inside, curious and needing to know what made her so excited and if I’d feel the same way once I found out.
Black interiors and the lights across the front dash threw light across the small ship that contained a small bed and table in the back but loads of buttons which I assumed were all about revealing stored items.
Zeni was in the driver’s seat, swiveling around to face me, her horns throwing shadows on the walls that looked demonic. “What do you think?”
I shrugged, unsure what she referred to. “It’s a nice spaceship.”
She jumped to her feet. “Well this small cruiser is yours. I called in a lot of favors to make it happen. Isn’t that exciting?”
“What? How can this be mine?”
She snatched my hand and dragged me to the front, pushing me into the driver’s seat, and I flopped down.
“It’s all programmed and it practically flies itself.”
I stared at her blankly, trying to work out what was really going on? Was this a friendly thing to do in Veon? Give people spaceships?
“You have no clue, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Ella, you’re so slow sometimes. This ship can take you back home to your planet, Earth. You can leave right now and no one will stop you as I’ve got a few guards ready to turn a blind eye.”
Her words swirled in my mind, over and over, still not sinking in. “I can leave now?”
“Yes!” she boomed and danced over to me, taking my hand. “Isn’t that exciting? You can be home in under one human month, and put everything here behind you.”
My brain numbed for a moment, and my heart should have leapt at the chance, yet something in my chest sank through me. A sorrow for leaving behind what I’d found.
“What do you think?” she was jumping up and down in front of me like an excited child.
“I...I need to think about it.”
“Well you only have a short window to make that decision. And you don’t want to miss this one time opportunity only.” She paced toward the rear and back again, letting me think.
Thoughts shot through my head like a ping pong ball. How I’d dreamed of nothing more than going home, how it might give me a chance to put distance and hide from the Vepar once and for all… but did I really want that? We had the blood bond, but maybe such distance between us would break it. I could find another job.
But they wouldn’t let me go. They’d return and hunt me down… and what about the Khonsu roaming on Earth? What if they found me.. Who would come to my rescue?
Trying to organize the chaos of my life seemed useless because every time I thought of never seeing Corran’s smile again, feeling Thane against me, smelling Derrial’s sexy scent, I felt sick to my stomach and tears pricked my eyes. Uncertainty spreads across my mind like running ink.
The feelings roaming inside me told me everything, even if my brain screamed the opposite, telling me to accept the offer, to head home. But then what?
Freaking hell. This should be an easy decision, yet I slumped in my seat, my chest aching. Had I really fallen this deep for the Vepar? And if I left now, they’d be forced to select one of those five females as their mate. Then they’d hate me, and my heart would be ripped to shreds to imagine them with another woman.
Struggling to breath from the sheer stress pressing down on my chest, I got to my feet, needing to follow my instinct. Right now, it was yelling at me to get out of the ship as fast as possible.
“Zeni, thank you for the chance, but I’ll pass.”
Her mouth gaped open. “Are you crazy? I’m giving you a free ride home and you want to stay here where most people want to see you imprisoned and everyone else would love to see you experimented on so we understand why you don’t have horns or a tail.”
I shuddered at either of those options, noting that she didn’t seem to know about the fertility procedures yet. “You don’t need to understand why, but I am doing this for me.” Without waiting for her response, I climbed out of the cruiser and walked away, my knees knocking together, my throat choking with tears falling down my face.
I just walked away from returning to Earth.
Hell!
What was I thinking?
Chapter 13
I was officially going crazy. That was the only explanation for the reason why I wanted to throw all of the beautiful Vepar women vying for the guys’ attention off a cliff. I had chosen to stay, to try and fight for the Vepar that I had come to care for. But the current trial was making me second guess my decision.
After the first trial we had all been put into a huge structure that I assumed was considered a mansion on Veon. I thought at first it would be better than the cell I had called home, but it was infinitely worse.
It was like I was in high school again, except all the girls I went to school with were a million times prettier and a million times bitchier than the ones I was used to.
I had been put in my own room, while the four remaining participants shared rooms. I quickly realized that this was for my own protection when I hadn’t been able to figure out how to make sure no one else could get in the room and I had made the mistake of exploring the house. When I had made it back to my room, all of my meager belongings were in shreds like someone had dragged sharp knives through everything. That night I had been accosted in the hall with a gorgeous blonde Vepar whose nails I found out could transform into claws. She had been about to impale me when a Vepar guard happened to pass by and stop her.
One of the few girls who didn’t seem like her goal in life was to kill me, the girl I had first sat next to during Trial 1, happened to see me shaking in the hallways afterwards and showed me how to successfully lock my room. She claimed that she was only involved in the trials because of the pressure her family had put on her to apply due to the prestige having Derrial, Thane, and Corran for mates would bring.
She seemed nice enough, but I had learned not to trust anyone on Vepar with the exception of the guys. After that incident, and the whole Zeni trying to get me to leave the planet one, I had decided to spend all of my time in my room when I wasn’t training or being forced to participate in group meals with the other females.
I hadn’t anticipated how much it would affect me though. Each of the girls was getting alone time with the guys for this trial. I had never been a jealous person, but just imagining what was happening on the dates had me going crazy.
I had been tempted to leave the safety of my room to find out how the dates had been going, but I hadn’t had the nerve. It was enough seeing them getting ready for them. Plus, I was sure that the girls would exaggerate anything that did happen.
Still a part of me worried. What if one of these girls caught their eye and they decided that I wasn’t worth the hassle?
I hated how these trials and my time with the guys had reduced me into such an insecure woman. I wished I was in a place where I felt more confident about my place with them.
They had been saying all the right things, and my heart wanted to believe them. My head just couldn’t get on board.
Tonight was my turn to spend time with the guys. While some of the girls had been on activities with them, I was going on a dinner date with them. I didn’t have a dress or any makeup or hair tools to get ready in my room however, so I needed to venture out into one of the common rooms to use one of the cylinders.
I headed out of my room when I couldn’t delay any longer, sealing the door shut behind me. I tiptoed down the hallway, a useless endeavor since I knew the Vepar had extremely good hearing. I had just about made it to the common room with the cylinder when I overheard some of the contestants having a conversation in the room next door.
“It’s only a matter of time before we’re back together,” Zeni was saying to someone else. “It was like no time had passed when I saw them. There was always something between us, something that defied logic. We’ve loved each other since we were young, that wasn’
t going to change because of a little time on Earth.”
“But what about their relationship with the human?” another girl asked. I recognized her voice as Aery, another of the contestants.
Zeni scoffed. “They needed something to do while they were on Earth. Granted, I didn’t expect them to bring the little brat with them back home but Thane told me all about how she threatened to kill herself if they didn’t bring her with them. You know how Corran is, such a bleeding heart. He reluctantly convinced the others to bring her along. That’s why we’re doing this stupid thing in the first place, to get rid of her.”
“So you’re saying that the rest of us have no chance at all?” Aery asked, her voice growing angrier.
“I don’t recall you coming home two nights ago and telling me that you fucked them,” Zeni gloated in an amused voice.
“You didn’t...last night?” Aeryl said in an astonished voice.
“Of course we did. They couldn’t keep their hands off of me. I’m telling you, this will be all over soon and things will be back to how they were always supposed to be,” bragged Zeni, making my heart burn with her confident attitude.
“I may be wasting my time, but I intend to see this through to the end,” said Aery, her voice low and broken. I heard her getting up and walking towards the entrance so I hurried into the other common room where the wardrobe cylinder was waiting.
I leaned against the wall, rubbing at my chest. It hurt, kind of like I was having a heart attack.
She couldn’t be telling the truth. There was no way. She’d been trying so hard to get rid of me. It had to be because she was jealous. Just the thought of the guys wrapped around her gorgeous body made me want to scream. In that moment, I could understand how territorial they sometimes got. I felt like I was capable of murder.
