“The hell I will.” Sy forced her to the ground. There was no time to be gentle. He yanked her sheet of red hair back and saw a gray patch beneath her skin that could only be the implant. It was about an inch long and barely two millimeters wide. Snapping his pocket switchblade knife open, he hoped against hope he could do this quick enough to save her.
* * *
Lita was no stranger to pain, but the searing agony in her neck was something else entirely. She bit down on her hand and made strangled little whimpers. Screaming involved too much movement, which seemed like it would make the pain worse, so she tried to avoid it. Tears ran down her eyes as she willed Sy to save himself, but the silly man was trying to be a hero. Didn’t he know that people like them never got their happy ending? The thing in her neck bleeped again, to signify that fifteen seconds had passed.
“Please live,” she implored him tearfully.
“Shut up and let me save you.” He was growly and stoic as ever.
There was the feeling like something was being ripped apart, and nerves screamed through her entire body.
“Got it,” he remarked.
Lita looked up in time to see something small sail over the parapet, then an explosion rocked the building. Down below, people screamed. Lita looked up at Sy with her one working eye.
“Thank you, Master.” Her last thought was that Father Croxden would punish her very harshly if this was all a test, then darkness engulfed her and she was aware of nothing more.
* * *
When Lita awoke, she was in Sy’s bed.
“Master?” she murmured.
“You’re gonna live. I stitched you up and you’ve been asleep about ten hours.”
“Thank you, Master. And for saving me.”
“Is your silver eye working again yet?” Sy asked. Lita tried to focus her eyes, but everything around her looked flat and it seemed to take longer for her to process the things she saw.
“No, Master. I think it’s completely broken.”
“Good. Then tell me what the fuck just happened, because you didn’t give me the whole story before,” Sy ordered. His voice was hard. Lita didn’t blame him, but she still wanted him to speak to her softly again. His voice usually reassured her that everything was right with the world.
“Was this all a test?” she asked. “Are you taking me back to him now?”
“A... what?” He stared at her.
“All right then. I wasn’t sure if I was being tested by Father Croxden. If not, then he sent me to stay close to you so he could kill you once you’d completed your task. He doesn’t like loose ends. The explosive in my neck was plenty for both of us. If I’d tried to warn you about it, he would have triggered the detonator.”
Sy just looked at her. Lita wished she could disappear.
“I’m sorry, Master,” she added.
“I’m not your master.” His reply was the most hurtful thing she’d ever heard in her life. Her stomach clenched up and her cheeks flooded with heat. Of course he didn’t want to be around her. She’d almost blown him up.
She waited for him to give her some idea of what happened next, but instead he simply went out, slamming the door behind him and leaving her alone in his bed.
What had she expected? Feeling stupid, she wanted to run away, but she was completely unable to move—whether it was from having her neck cut open or because her heart had been mutilated, she didn’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t like she had anywhere to go. She was free from Father Croxden for now but he would soon catch up with her if she wandered the streets.
Never had she been so utterly lost. She stared at the dingy gray ceiling and allowed herself to break down. The tears came readily. The only man she had ever cared about had just walked away from her.
Long minutes passed, or perhaps hours, Lita was unsure. Sy returned and she hastily tried to dry her face. She had been punished enough times for crying, she knew a tear-streaked face wasn’t pleasing to masters unless they’d intentionally hurt her to watch her cry.
He held something. Two somethings. One in each hand. She didn’t know what they were.
“Do you like strawberry or blueberry?” he asked her.
“What?” She stared at him in confusion. Should she still call him Master? He had been so adamant before he left. She didn’t want him to leave again.
“I’ve got two snow cones,” he explained patiently. “One’s strawberry, the other’s blueberry. Which do you want? Or should I pick for you?”
“I don’t know!” she replied, panic rising. What was a snow cone?
“Here, have the blueberry.” He passed her the blue thing in his hand. It had a long, pale brown stalk. She took it from him carefully, unsure what to do next. She looked to him for guidance.
He licked the side of his cone then made the sort of satisfied groaning noise she’d only ever heard men make during sex. Intrigued, Lita copied him, and her tongue was flooded with a slightly tart, mostly sweet fruity taste, with an undertone of cream.
Sy said nothing as he ate his snow cone with obvious enjoyment. Lita felt like she was imposing on a private ritual. Carefully, she ate her own treat, and it was soon gone.
“Every damn day I get myself a snow cone. It’s the only thing on this entire planet that makes me feel like I’m not dead yet,” he explained in a gruff voice.
“Why are you here if you don’t like it? You’re not a slave. You could go anywhere, M—uh...” Lita pointed out, biting back the urge to call him Master again.
“Do you know what a motorcycle gang is?” Sy asked.
Lita nodded hesitantly. “Father Croxden is always going around them and telling them what to do. In exchange, they pay him a lot of money.” Although the camera and implant couldn’t harm her now, she still worried about sharing this information, but she really wanted to tell Sy about it.
“Wait, what? What sort of things does he make them do?” Sy asked.
“Sometimes he’ll tell one gang something about another gang, then he’ll go to them and tell them something about the first lot. He once told someone that he likes making the gangs fight each other because it stops them teaming up against him.”
“Yeah. It figures. I was in a gang called the Mother Theresas. It started out pretty friendly, but as time went on, things changed. A new leader started pulling the strings, and suddenly instead of making money from protecting hookers and selling fake IDs, we were robbing banks and getting rid of bodies. You don’t leave a club, though, unless you’re dead. So when a job went south and a convenience store I was robbing caught fire, I decided to let them think I was inside it at the time. Came here, didn’t look back.” He looked thoughtfully at the ink on the back of his hands.
“Why did you get involved in the first place?” Lita asked.
“There’s a lot of lies told about what motorcycle clubs really do, because they keep to themselves and they’re a mystery to people. What unites every club, beneath their turf wars and different patches, is that they all love bikes, and they all stand for freedom and chaos. The clubs all live those values differently. Some think freedom extends to killing people. Others just resent having to play in the rat race. Living your whole life to line someone else’s pocket, toeing the party line, following orders... it gets old.”
“But don’t they have to do that in a biker gang anyway? Their leaders take a cut of their money and boss them around just the same.” From her own position, Lita easily saw the imbalance of power in this so-called freedom.
“Clever girl. But it’s usually got better hours and more varied tasks. And the money’s worth it. I got in because I was restless at eighteen. I’d been to school, I saw the sort of jobs on offer. College was just false promises for people like me. I didn’t have rich parents and connections to set me up in a job afterwards. I wanted freedom. And I wanted out of Mars. Grew up here. Hated it.”
“Why did you come back?”
“To lay low from the Theresas until they forgot my face. Then the stupid pries
t found me.”
“You know he’s not a real priest, right? He just pretends he’s religious so he doesn’t get searched at the spaceport.”
“Is that so?” Sy looked amused. Lita’s heart picked up at the thought that she’d told him something useful.
“He isn’t even ordained. I heard him tell someone once.” She giggled irreverently at sharing this with Sy.
“Then I feel less bad about what I want to do to him.” His voice was dark.
“Which is?”
Sy fixed her with a hard glare. “Mind your own business.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I don’t trust you, yet.” If his intention was to soften the rebuke, it failed miserably, and Lita closed her mouth.
Sy shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But I’m not going to magically let you into my world just because you told me something about your boss.”
Lita got riled up at the idea she worked for Father Croxden. “He’s not my boss. People choose to work for a boss. He was my master. And I never chose him. I never chose this. Being a slave. It’s something that just happened to me. I couldn’t tell you when the eye-cam was working but do you know what my earliest memory was?”
“Go on,” Sy growled. Lita thought he was only humoring her but she decided to tell him anyway.
“Waking up on an operating table, and the doctor was talking to Father Croxden about me, like I wasn’t even alive. I felt so aroused, like I might just disintegrate right there. It overtook everything. I didn’t remember who I was, and I don’t know how I got there, but I’m certain that if I’d chosen it, they wouldn’t have made me forget. Then the priest took me underground to train me. The doctor checked on me sporadically, to ensure I would survive whatever punishments I’d been given. Sometimes, the doctor punished me himself. His methods were more precise, more painful, and rarely left any marks on my body. My choices were to obey or to be taken apart, over the space of years. Do you know what they do with the failed slaves?”
“Kill them?” Sy hazarded.
“They’re the lucky ones,” Lita said darkly. She stared into the distance as she remembered the terrifying sounds that filled the cages at night, then she roused herself with a shudder. “These are people who removed my eye so they could put a metal camera in my face. It really hurt. And now I’m half-blind. So if you’re planning to take me back there, I’d rather have a new exploding implant.” She hadn’t been allowed the luxury of dignity or privacy for so long that, now that she had a voice again, she had no hesitation in telling him about her past, even though she knew he wouldn’t reciprocate.
Slaves were supposed to be completely honest and open with their masters, but masters were bound by no such rules. They lied all the time, misled, acted like they were on her side, but ultimately they only wanted her to do their bidding.
Without the fear of the camera and the implant, Lita found her respect for anything resembling authority was greatly diminished. So why was she still treating him like he was her master? She remembered that he’d saved her life by putting his own in danger. Perhaps she ought to be more respectful after all, even if he was pushing her away.
Sy regarded her with something almost approaching respect. “Cool it. I’m not telling you my plans yet, but they don’t involve handing you over as his slave. Here. You should drink something.”
He handed her a glass of water. Gratefully, she sipped it. While she drank, Sy asked her to detail all of Croxden’s comings and goings for the last two weeks. She couldn’t answer in as much detail as he wanted, because she was frequently given to people for one or two days at a time, but she told him everything she knew.
When they went to bed that night, faced with so much uncertainty and confusion, she cried her heart out as soon as he began to snore. Whether she had woken him or if his sleeping self was more kind, she didn’t know, but he wrapped her in his strong arms and held her through the night, until she slept and dreamed of freedom.
* * *
After a restless night of broken sleep punctuated by Lita awakening several times in tears, Sy got up and went out to fetch breakfast. The girl was coming out of a seriously bad situation, but who knew how much they’d messed with her? He didn’t want to share anything with Lita, in case she was lying about that eye-cam being broken. But he needed Lita’s knowledge of Father Croxden. Otherwise, Sy couldn’t save his sister and stop the Mother Theresas from knowing he was here.
He had to share things with her. It was obvious. But that didn’t make it easier.
Pushing the door open a few minutes later, he returned to Lita with two paper bags of waffles, syrup, coffee, and croissants. He shook her awake. With puffy eyes and tangled strawberry-blonde hair, she was still a vision. It was clear why Croxden had made her a slave. She startled for a moment when she realized she was in someone’s bed, then her eye landed on Sy, and she stopped trying to get to the floor. Her silver eye drifted off in a random direction.
A pang of guilt and pity shot through Sy’s stomach when he realized how badly Lita had been screwed over. His own life wasn’t worth a damn but she probably had a family, friends, maybe a job or something. And it had all been taken from her so someone could make money by whoring her out to people.
“I got breakfast,” he said, because he wasn’t much for reassurances. He held out a paper bag for her and she fell upon it.
“Thank you, Mast—uh, thanks,” she finished awkwardly. Sy knew he’d behaved like a jerk the night before. He liked the kinky stuff, but he had very little firsthand experience with slaves, and didn’t really know the best thing to do for her. He didn’t want to control her every action, he wanted her to try to think for herself. Internal enslavement—a complete dependency on her master—was going to be hard to recover from. She didn’t need him acting like a grouch every time she did something she’d been trained to do.
“Would it make you feel better to call me Master?” he asked.
She looked up at him dolefully and both eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know. Not really,” she decided.
“But you seem to have trouble avoiding it.”
“Yes, but there’s no point saying it if it isn’t true,” she replied, as tears streaked her cheeks. “So, instead, I will try my best to avoid saying it.”
Was she so desperate for a master that she would accept anyone, or was there something more between them? Sy couldn’t figure her out. He put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly.
She smiled at him. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder to not say it. And to be more agreeable,” she promised.
“You know you don’t have to be, right?” Sy asked. “No one, not even the real Mother Theresa, was ever nice to people all the time.”
“I don’t know how else to be. I mean, I know I get disagreeable sometimes, but then I feel bad about it, and I don’t think I’d like to ever feel like it was okay to be grumpy.”
“It’ll take time. Eat.” He stuffed a croissant in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Was it better to keep her in the structure she was used to, or try to show her what normal looked like? No one had ever said finding a sexy slave girl was fraught with this many complications.
“And when I did bad, sometimes I felt better after they punished me,” Lita whispered, her cheeks coloring red. Sy fixed her with a stare and tried to ignore the twitching from his cock.
“What else happened to you when you got punished?” he asked. “Be truthful.”
“I’m always truthful. And... uh... my pussy got wet.” She kept her gaze on her waffle as her voice fell to a whisper once more. Sy raised an eyebrow. If a punishment got her wet, she was probably submissive even before the priest got his hands on her.
“I know you’ve been punished plenty, but did you ever have a sexy spanking?” Sy asked, his pulse pounding in his ears as he waited to hear her response.
“No, Mas—I mean, no.”
“Oh, good,” Sy replied. “Maybe there’s something I can teach to the experienced little slave girl. See, spanki
ng is like hot coffee. When it’s the perfect heat, it feels real good. But if it’s hotter than that, it burns too much. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“I think so.” She finished the waffle and occupied herself with the coffee instead.
“Good. Because once this nonsense with Croxden is settled, I intend to put you over my knee and give you a long, thorough, sexy spanking. Would you want that?”
Lita paused for a moment in surprise, then she uncharacteristically looked straight at him. “Yes,” she replied, with the most certainty he’d ever heard from her.
“I need to take him out,” Sy mused. “My sister is in danger every minute of the day right now. The clubs are all over a barrel with him. I want to teach him the error of his ways. Fatally.”
“Can... can I come?” Lita asked.
Sy looked at her for a long minute. The task was going to be dangerous, that much was obvious. But that didn’t seem like a good reason to stop her from going. He wanted to keep her safe, but she deserved to have closure on this, probably more than he did. There was no way of knowing how long she’d been at the mercy of Father Croxden and his doctor friend. Why did his heart want to protect her so bad?
“Fine, but if you turn out to be a sleeper agent in disguise, we’re not having sex ever again.”
Lita giggled. It was a beautiful sound.
“If I’m a sleeper agent, I’ll make it up to you any way you like,” she replied, wiggling her ass suggestively.
Sy smiled and his heart glowed at a rare glimpse of Lita’s underlying personality. She got his dry sense of humor and matched him with her own wit. He only hoped she wouldn’t wind up dead anytime soon.
* * *
Sy handed Lita a helmet and a leather one-piece suit that he’d just bought in her size.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“It doubles up as an airtight spacesuit and it’s body armor for if you come off the bike on a road. We probably should’ve used them last time but I only had one, which would have been too big for you, and all the stores were closed. There’s a parachute in the back, so if you fall off in the air, you’ll be safe.”
Alien Alphas: Twenty-Three Naughty Sci-Fi Romance Novellas Page 90
