by Marie Harte
He waited.
“What, by Narok’s sword, does sura mean?”
“Sura? Didn’t I tell you before? It’s my people’s word for drun.”
Her face flushed bright red at the insult.
He laughed. “I’m teasing. It means sweetheart or ‘one who is cared for’. A pleasant endearment, sura, nothing more.”
She huffed and crossed her arms. “It had better not mean drun.”
“Though you will recall that’s what you referred to me as when we first met.”
She flushed again. “I didn’t know you then.”
“And now?”
“Now I still might call you that.” Her lips quirked. “But then, there are a lot of other names I could think to call you as well.”
“Oh?”
“But before I get sidetracked, I think it’s time we talked specifics about tomorrow. Why don’t you tell me a little bit more about what to expect at the slave auction?”
Temis watched as all humour faded from Gren’s expression.
“You’re going to see it soon enough.”
“I’d like to be prepared,” she said quietly. She knew how much this bothered him. Though she could no longer read his thoughts unless he shared them, at times she still sensed his emotions. Right now she sensed anger, guilt, and surprisingly, shame.
He sighed and pushed aside his food. “The auctions are always different, and yet always the same. Captured women, normally drugged and therefore obedient, once prepared, trudge through long lines of disreputable men and women, some desperate, others sickly depraved.
“The women are naked, pawed and prodded as they walk from the entrance of the slave tent to the centre cage, where they await the bidding wars.” His face didn’t change expression, but the dark feeling around him deepened. “A beautiful woman, called an ogra, rubs dyes on their breasts and shaved loins, calling attention to the women’s femininity. She’ll also engage in sexual play with certain slaves, to entice them to behave or excite the mongrel onlookers.”
Temis listened in horrified awe. She could imagine it, the helplessness, the dirty feeling of dozens of eyes on her in her most vulnerable state. Then to be sexually molested by a woman for the amusement of those watching…
“It’s extremely unpleasant for the women involved. The ogra works for the auctioneer and derives pleasure from her work. The men and few women watching the orgiastic event chant and cheer. But the women in the cage remain oblivious, drugged to remain docile. Every once in a while the auctioneer will allow one or two women to attend the event aware of their surroundings.”
“Why?”
“To watch them fight their fate, then subdue them before the crowd. It isn’t uncommon to see slaves raped before the masses. I’ve heard the male slaves go through it too, though most of them are used in places for manual labour. The auctions I attended worked solely with females.”
She sat in troubled silence. “It sounds like hell.”
“Believe me, it is. But that’s not all of it. Depending upon the size and clients invited, a private party, normally held after the main auction, can be decidedly worse.”
“How could it be any worse?” She cringed just thinking about it. Maybe she’d taken on more than she could handle. She didn’t think she could participate in the events he’d described, peacemaker or no.
“A private party is smaller. Only the richest and most powerful are invited to attend. And only the prettiest, most unusual women are sold there. Normally a lot of currency is involved in a private party, where anything and everything occurs. For all that the slave auctions are terrible, at least there’s a certain measure of safety in the general bidding. The slaves aren’t allowed to be killed or overly harmed.”
No, just raped. She couldn’t imagine what the private auctions were like. Her mouth dried. “Will you be invited to a private party, do you think?”
He nodded grimly. “Ceril informed me of it just now. Rorn Fenhal will dangle any bait to get his hands on you.”
She swallowed, waiting for him to continue. When he remained silent, she prodded him to tell her the whole of it. “I’m sorry, Gren. But I need to know. I’m going to be there tomorrow, remember?”
“I know.” He cleared his throat. “I really hadn’t thought this through before, Temis. I can stomach the auction for the sake of those women, but I don’t think I can handle you there.”
“How bad can it be? I’ll have you there with me.”
He nodded. “And I won’t let anyone but me near you, that I promise. Some ‘owners’ are possessive, so it won’t seem too odd if I want no one near you but me. At first. I am going there to sell you, after all.” He cursed and ran a hand through his hair. “Private owners are a different matter, though. They’re not supposed to care for their slaves, so using them and sharing them means nothing. Public coupling is often a way of advertising.
“It isn’t unusual to watch the owner and slave engage in intercourse, or to watch the slave pleasure her owner in other ways. There’s also the option that the slave may pleasure anyone the owner chooses.”
“What are you thinking to do?” She wished at that moment she could read his thoughts. His mood shifted from angered to enraged to aroused and back again.
“I won’t let you do anything with anyone other than me, and only if it’s absolutely necessary. As obsessed as Rorn is with you, I’d bet he’ll want a private viewing. I could push for that.”
“But with you there, right?” She tried to act professional, but thoughts of having sex in public shocked her. Temis didn’t consider herself a prude. Though a newly sullied virgin, she’d been around enough pleasurers and men in her line of work to know about sex. But actual lovemaking was new to her, and with Gren, utterly meaningful. She couldn’t imagine dirtying it for the likes of Rorn Fenhal.
“Don’t worry, sura,” Gren murmured. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She couldn’t help it. She might be unnerved, hell, even frightened, but Temis fought her own battles. “I won’t let anything happen to myself,” she corrected.
His eyes glowed bright enough to cast a shadow behind him. “Then you’ll be doubly protected, won’t you?”
“You still need to explain that,” she said with a nod to his eyes. He scowled. Immediately, the aura around him dimmed. Pleased that she’d taken control of the tense situation, she smiled. “Don’t worry, Gren. I’m a peacemaker, remember? We’ll enter the auction, save the women, and nail Rorn Fenhal to the wall like the insect he is. I look forward to locking him up for life.”
“Sernal didn’t say he had to be brought in alive.” The look on Gren’s face froze her to her seat. She’d only seen him appear that deadly once before, when he took on a dozen peacemakers on Lady Justice. And then he hadn’t been out for blood.
“I need to talk to Sernal.”
Gren glared at her, and she could feel the energy thrumming around him. “Why?”
“Because he’s my superior. I’d like to know exactly when and where he plans to arrive with back-up, and to hear him say it doesn’t matter if Fenhal is brought in dead or alive. Jurisdiction or not, Sernal would never have sent me with you if he didn’t have a plan to get me out of here. He’s Mister Worst Case Scenario. I just know he has a plan for dealing with Colony6.”
Gren scooted closer to Temis, deliberately trying to intimidate her with his large frame. Instead of a threat, however, Temis felt arousal.
“Look, once we land on Colony6, we’ll have a few hours at most before the auction begins. If Sernal does plan to offer backup, he can’t arrive until after the auction is under way. One whiff of peacemaker involvement and Rorn will tear down and vanish, like most illegals do. We’ll use our prep time before the auction starts to map out extraction points.”
“But how are the two of us going to rescue fifteen or more women who’ve been drugged, and Narok knows what else, from a crowd of murderers and slavers? Even you can’t take on the dozens that will likely be t
here.”
He smiled, and she couldn’t help the shiver that raced up her spine. Though she felt completely safe in his presence, she knew his enemies wouldn’t be so lucky.
“Trust me when I say I can move the women to the extraction points. Drugged or not, as long as they’re capable of walking, they’ll be saved.”
“Come on.”
“Really. I can manipulate thought, to an extent,” he added with a frown.
She didn’t like that he avoided eye contact. “Are you telling me you can control minds?”
“Just female minds. For some reason, a man’s brain chemistry makes him immune to my, ah, talent.”
“So you can make any woman do what you want her to? Whether it be in passion, to clear her head, or to simply order her around?”
He swung his gaze to meet hers and nodded slowly.
“But that’s impossible.” He couldn’t possibly be saying what she thought he was. “You can’t control men, but women are virtually bound to your every thought, your every desire?”
“Temis, can we please just save the rest of this discussion for after the mission? You wanted to talk to Sernal. If you absolutely have to talk to him, come with me.”
Chapter Thirteen
The morning spent on Colony6 made Temis more than glad she lived in the charted sector of the system. This small moon, called a planet and given planet status to appease the Outer Rim Accord, was more like an outlying tundra set apart from planet Jaron and the sun by mind-numbing cold.
Had Gren not outfitted her with one of the extra exploratory suits, she would surely have frozen to death amidst the ice and snow covering the ground.
She hadn’t expected such cold, especially considering the skimpy slave garments she’d be forced to wear. She could only hope the slave tents had heat.
“They do.”
She glanced up at Gren leading the way through the heavily packed snow. He had insisted they remove all inner shields to allow communication at all times, especially should something go wrong. She wholeheartedly agreed.
She still had a hard time believing she’d spoken to Sernal via his bounty hunter brother, translated from thought by Lurin. That had been the strangest conversation she’d ever experienced.
“Talking with the Mardu brothers is always strange.” Gren waited for her to catch up to him.
Temis curbed her grin and strode to the top of the hill. She liked the intimacy of their shared thoughts, but kept the fact to herself. Gren had a big enough ego as it was.
The rocks and fallen needles of the red tipped trees pricked at her feet, even clad in tough rakhide boots. Though winded, she couldn’t help noticing that Gren breathed evenly. Envious and a little annoyed at his strength, she hurried to his side.
“I’m bigger than you, sura, it’s natural I can handle the cold better.” His words were meant to calm, but the arrogance in his tone made her snap her teeth together.
“You wait until we get back. I’m taking you to Chula for a proper fighting match. I’ll have you flat on the dirt in no time.”
“Such a short memory,” he chided, and a familiar vision of her dream fight with Gren surfaced.
“You know about that?” Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Wait a minute. You were there? But it was my dream.”
“Your dream that pulled me in, but my control of the outcome,” he said with a husky voice, and mentally sent her the memory of that first shared intimacy.
“I thought that was a dream.”
“It was. One I long to have again.” The hope on his face aroused her when she should have been more annoyed.
She swore under her breath, ignoring the quickening in her womb. “Just wait until I have you in a challenge ring on Zeyr, in my world, with my rules.”
They continued down the hill into a thatch of trees, pausing when a crude looking village came into view, curls of dark smoke escaping the dismal houses dirtying the clear golden sky.
“I need you to stay here.” Gren studied the stone dwellings. “I’m going to find us some answers.” Before she could argue, he turned to her with a warning. “You can’t appear until the auction. If Rorn’s men see me, no one will think twice. I’m known for being cautious. I can’t risk you being seen, sura.”
She didn’t like it, but she agreed. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.” She tapped her head. “Don’t even think of blocking me.”
He nodded and left. After what seemed like an hour but was likely no more than half that, she ’heard‘ him talking with a woman, someone named Cherel.
I’ve an affinity for women, Gren’s words rang in her mind, and she forced away the surge of jealousy. When she focused on Gren, she sensed his disdain for Cherel. The tight band around her heart eased and startled her. When had she become so possessive?
“Tell me, Cherel, where does Fenhal plan to hold his party?”
The woman he spoke with was a barkeep who often worked on her back for extra coin. Per Gren’s blunt thoughts, she had a pleasant visage and a figure made for sex, but too much greed in her eyes to be truly attractive.
That he found her at all pleasing annoyed the crap out of Temis.
Cherel answered him with breathy phrases, pressing her breasts invitingly against his forearm, and Temis wanted to throw her through a wall. Gren’s warm amusement didn’t help matters. She wanted to throw him through a wall as well.
“Why don’t we talk in a more private area?” Temis heard his vague mental comparison of the woman’s hair to her own, startled to find the woman was blonde.
“Have a thing for blondes, hmm?” She couldn’t help the heated comment.
Steaming, she waited in the cold, tall needle trees and large grey boulders her only companions, while Gren played with the floozy in a private room behind the bar. When she felt him expel a ball of energy and heard a woman’s cries of pleasure, she froze.
He wouldn’t dare!
Oddly enough, Gren remained unmoved, and her fury eased into confusion. What the hell was going on down there?
“Remember, sura, I can instil pleasure with a thought.”
Slightly mollified but still not liking Gren’s ‘quest for information’, she impatiently awaited his return. When he finally appeared sometime later, he sparkled with vitality and amusement, likely at her expense.
“What the hell was all that about?” She tried to hold onto her anger but knew he felt it all the same.
He enfolded her in his arms. “Sura, don’t worry. The woman was nothing more than a means of information. When she experienced bliss, she opened her mind to me. I know where the women are being held, as well as a detailed layout of Rorn’s estate.”
Temis relaxed enough to look up at him. “I felt you doing something to her but didn’t recognise what.”
“She’s a sad example of the inhabitants of Colony6, castoffs of the System with no morals or ideals. She would as soon have slit my throat for a pocket of coins as spread her legs for the promise of besting her competition across the road.”
“Nice friend you made.”
“Rorn seems to like her well enough. Seems he’s been building himself an empire for the last few years. When he visits, he brings women, drugs, and other illegal substances with him. He uses the people here for work, binding their loyalty.” Gren twisted his lips in disgust. “The things he’s done to that woman would make you cringe.”
Temis didn’t want to know. “You found the information we needed, but you took something else.”
He looked uncomfortable, piquing her interest.
“When a woman experiences bliss,” he began slowly, “she produces energy. The energy is pure, despite the woman who creates it. And that energy enhances my abilities.”
“What are you talking about?” She’d never before heard of such a thing.
“I absorb her energy. It’s like the surge you receive after replenishing your body with food, only much more powerful.”
He absorbed the woman’s energy? By Narok’s Sword
. She had heard about energy transference. Stories from her adolescence used to warn young girls to be good. To stay away from men capable of controlling a woman’s mind, of making her do whatever they wanted while they stole the very soul from her being.
A mythical race of monstrous, soul-sucking leeches. In the guise of a man, demons who could deliver pleasure as they sucked dry the ones they pleased. An old wives’ tale, or so she’d been taught.
The legendary Thesha.
“You can’t be!”
His eyes shuttered, as did the walls enclosing his thoughts from her. “You have such an imagination. Come on. We have a lot to do in a short time.”
As they walked back to their shuttle, Temis pondered what she now knew about Gren. Too many pieces of the puzzle pointed to the impossible.
A Thesha. Temis had met and bonded with an actual creature of legend.
“I’m a man, not a creature.” The heated reply shocked her. “And definitely not that nightmare you were thinking of.”
“Get out of my head, Gren.” She pushed him out, aware he still had a small hold on her thoughts, but not enough to accurately read more than her emotions.
Theshas supposedly had the ability to control women, but more so, to pleasure a woman until she wanted to die of the rapture. Rumours still abounded throughout the system that they existed. She knew the black market value for a real Thesha could be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions in currency.
Just a few years ago she’d heard of a rich woman on Jaron who had supposedly captured two Theshas. The story of not one but two legendary beings even existing instantly killed any speculation of truth about the story. In actuality, the woman and her daughter had killed her daughter’s betrothed, then kidnapped and tortured the victim’s alleged murderer—the ‘Thesha’—and the bounty hunter who’d captured him.
Her eyes widened. Hadn’t Sernal been on that case? She stared at Gren’s broad back as they entered the ship.
