Marc flipped the switch to open communications with the King’s guard. “I will not tolerate being accused of thievery.” It was all he could do not to crunch the handheld device in his palm. The King itched to find something to hold against the House of Torin, but this was stooping so low it left a putrid taste in his mouth. “You return to your King and tell him we have nothing that belongs to him.”
There was no response for a moment. He doubted the King’s men aboard the carriers pursuing them had any knowledge of the truth. They followed their orders blindly. Men like that repulsed him.
When the light flashed on the black communication device in his hand, he focused on it, the muscles tightening painfully throughout his body. Dree had no way of defending herself against King Sorale. And the thought of that bastard laying one of his bony fingers on her was enough to put Marc into a rage.
Marc pushed the button, allowing the guard to speak. “Stop your carriers. Now.”
“They’re on our ass.” Trent Dar wasn’t a man who got nervous.
He looked at Marc, waiting for the order to stop. Marc glanced at the steely expression on the Gren’s face and then down to the wide-eyed look of panic on Dree’s face.
Marc nodded to Trent, who immediately slowed the carrier, while sending out messages to the two other carriers his men were in to stop. Dree braced herself on the floor while the engines slowed, her soft hair falling around her face when she looked down.
Marc waited until they’d stopped, and then reached for Dree. His fingers easily wrapped around her arm. She didn’t look up at him, but focused on his hand, her small tongue darting out to dampen her lips. His cock stirred at the slight movement of her mouth, remembering too easily how sweet she had tasted when he’d kissed her.
“I won’t let them take you.” He wanted her to believe she was safe with him.
They knew little about each other, and he wouldn’t blame her at all for worrying about her immediate safety. But he wouldn’t allow King Sorale to use her to get to him.
Dree nodded, not looking up. Her action showed little trust, little faith. Her world had been destroyed. He wasn’t sure how she’d ended up here but he had all the faith in the assumption that she hadn’t been treated well since she’d arrived. If her appearance when he first met her was an example, the King certainly hadn’t given her a thought.
Until now.
He looked at the Gren. “Stay in here with her.”
Trent Dar’s expression didn’t change. Those hard black eyes simply watched him.
Marc opened his door, stepping out onto the uneven ground. Darkness surrounded them, the lights from the surrounding cruisers rushing across the field, outlining the tall grass that swayed around the large carriers.
He turned to see two of the King’s men walking toward him, several more standing back, and probably circling around the carriers. Warning lights triggered inside him, his instinct to fight and defend what was his rushing through his veins.
“You will open your carriers so that we may search them.” The taller of the two guards stopped just a pace away, the huge man spreading his legs and placing his hands on his hips as if his size might intimidate Marc.
The urge to toss the brute across the field almost overtook him. “There will be no search. The woman in question is with us. But she is not a sex slave. Nor does the King have any claim on her.”
The guard behind the spokesman for the two stiffened, his hand moving to his weapon on his belt. Marc watched the act and then looked at the man in front of him in the eyes. Neither of these two were his match. And he had no doubt he would win if he took them on. But he wasn’t sure where the other guards were, and wouldn’t put it past the King’s guards to ambush him.
“You take her word on the matter over the King’s?” the guard asked him, taking a half step closer. As if that would intimidate him.
“I do.” Marc didn’t budge.
“Our orders stand.” The guard straightened to his full height, a good couple of inches taller than Marc. But then all of the King’s men were bred for height and strength—not brains. “We will take her with or without your consent.”
The door to the carrier slid open behind him, catching the guards’ attention. Marc turned and watched Dree step down to the ground, with the Gren right behind her, his intent gaze immediately on the King’s men. Dree’s oversized clothing made her look like a child. But when she looked up, even in the dark, he saw her terrified expression. There was something else though. Something possibly akin to determination when she looked from him, to the guards past him.
“I am the one you are looking for.” She spoke clearly, although the hint of nervousness in her voice couldn’t be missed. “I am ready to return to the castle.”
The guard reached for her and Dree jumped back, her actions instinctive. Marc stepped between her and the King’s men. Hatred and outrage over everything the King stood for pumped through him. He needed to stay focused, to realize he couldn’t put Torin on the line for a beautiful former slave simply because she stirred something in him that no other woman had stirred before.
Her small hand touched his arm, her gentle warmth flooding through his clothing, searing his skin. Turning to look at her, he noticed those moist gray eyes of hers pleaded with him. His heart constricted, his anger only increasing that such an exotic creature would willingly turn herself over to the King.
“My people need me.” She spoke so softly he had to concentrate to hear her. She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. The tremble in her movement revealed the fear she tried to mask with bravery. “And they are at the castle. I need to go back.”
She’d told him that since he’d taken her from there. Dree swallowed, glancing again at the guards and then up at him. Her tongue moved over her lips, his insides hardening while he watched her. It would take little effort to take down these two men. The other guards were nearby, but so were his men. They were well-trained and loyal to him. He had all the faith in the suns that he could prevent them from taking her.
“This is what you want?” he asked her, needing to convince himself that forcing her to stay with him was treating her no better than the slave she’d been all her life.
Dree nodded and ran her hands down her clothing. She stepped around him, moving closer to the King’s guards.
Marc planted his feet on the ground, watching while the small woman, with more courage than grown men twice her size, walked between the King’s men to their carrier.
Everything inside him wanted to attack, to end the continued atrocities the King displayed. But this more than anything he’d witnessed over his years, to see Dree walk away from him, possibly to endure torture beyond what he cared to imagine, ate him alive.
Torin had grown under his leadership, his people flourished, enjoying a life envied by the rest of Benox. The King despised Marc, and his father before him, for the good lives the people of Torin enjoyed. Hard work, honest labor, and the willingness to fight to keep their freedom. That is what Torin had.
King Sorale offered poverty, disease, and unfair and unjust laws. His people hated and feared him. And what Marc had witnessed while at the palace, the sex arenas, the rape rooms, the King had some perverse kinks.
Dree climbed into the King’s cruiser, her head lowered with her hair fluttering around her face. She never looked his way but disappeared inside, the door shutting silently behind her.
“Damn it to all the hells,” Marc muttered, frustration overwhelming him.
This might be the last time he saw her alive. He wasn’t sure he could live with that knowledge.
“Let’s go.” Trent Dar stood next to him. He glanced at the Gren who wasn’t looking at him, but at the King’s cruisers as they backed away from them and slowly turned around. “There are duties at Torin.”
Marc turned around, noticing his men standing behind him, having appeared from where they’d been hiding and waiting, once they realized there was no need to defe
nd their leader. He climbed into the cruiser and the rest of them turned silently, ready to head home. There was a sense of discontentment in the air though. None of them were pleased with Dree heading back to the palace. They all knew what awaited her there.
Chapter Five
Dree stood silently and watched while the two kitchen slaves dropped the dead body into the ground. There was no ceremony, no words spoken, just another one of them dead, forgotten the moment her last breath left her body.
The smell of the dirt, the fresh blood on the young girl’s body, all of it turned Dree’s stomach. The few people standing in the field, some from Torl, a couple who worked in the castle, stood silently in the morning chill—quiet.
Dree closed her eyes, the metal shovel making a thudding sound as it hit the ground, filling the shallow grave the former Torl slave lay in.
A week had passed since the guards had dumped her at the trash dump by the palace. The King had never sent for her, nothing had changed. The moments she’d had with Marc of Torin seemed like nothing more than a dream now, her reality having returned.
Thinking of him made her heart ache, the pain spreading through her until her entire body throbbed with regretful pain. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she did her best to ignore the intense emptiness inside her.
This wasn’t right. Little by little every one of them who left Torl was dying. Abused and mutilated at the hands of the King. They were no longer slaves, but this wasn’t freedom.
“Best head back before we are seen out here.” Bean shivered against the morning breeze.
Dree rubbed his good arm, making sure not to touch him anywhere that might hurt his sore hand. “I don’t think anyone cares where we are.”
“As long as we don’t disappear.” He referred to her leaving with Marc of Torin.
All of them had heard about her misadventure, had listened in silent awe while she told them about it around the smoldering coals outside the back doors of the kitchen.
“I think if we left without involving someone the King didn’t like, he wouldn’t notice.” They had discussed this before.
Bean shook his head, and like the others, the thought terrified him. Her brief escapade had convinced the rest of them that leaving would make things worse for them than staying here and waiting their turn to be tortured as the King’s play toy. None of them knew the land. They had no skills, no money or clothing or means of taking care of themselves. The small group who were left from her home planet were doomed to live out their days waiting for the King to decide to make them the entertainment for the evening. And they’d all quickly learned how perverted and demented his type of entertainment was.
“The King will be having his guests arriving for the aligning party.” Tork, the bulky kitchen slave who handled butchering the meat for the King, fell in alongside the two of them. “If you want to disappear, now would be the time to do it. King Sorale will be busy entertaining, and most likely too drunk to care if you leave.”
Something inside Dree fluttered to life. “Would you help us?”
Although not from Poltar, the native-born slave had befriended the small group of sex slaves when they’d stumbled into the palace what seemed like a lifetime ago. She looked into his scarred face, his squinty eyes focused ahead of them.
“Dree. What are you thinking?” Bean whispered, looking around them as if anyone would be listening this early in the morning in the dung heap side of the castle.
Her thoughts had instantly gone to Marc, his tall, well-built body a pillar of strength and cocky confidence. Memories swam through her of his blue eyes filled with lust while he watched her, those soft brown curls bordering the strong features of his face. She could still feel his strong hands washing the dirt from her body, exploring her, praising her. It would never happen that a man with so much power, a leader of his people, would ever take a serious interest in her. But she couldn’t deny the flush of heat that ran through her at the thought of seeing him again.
Like that would ever happen.
“We have nothing here.” She wished Bean would be stronger, would act like half the man he could be if he would just try.
“And we would have nothing anywhere else we went. So why leave?”
It had been like that all week, all of them arguing in hushed whispers about whether they should try to flee for their lives or not. And that is what they would be doing. Just like when they ran from Torl, the only home they’d ever known, while it exploded in flames around them.
“I just said now would be the time to do it if you were going to leave.” Tork looked at his hand, and then wiped it against his trousers leg. “Don’t know how I would help you though.”
Dree smiled up at the big brute of a man. “You could protect us. You know this land better than we do. Oh Tork, it would be so much easier to go if you went with us.”
“He is one of the King’s slaves though. Tork would be missed.” Bean had a point.
Dree sucked in her lower lip, chewing on it while she tried to devise a plan. The last thing she wanted was for more of them to get hurt if they left the castle.
They’d reached the lower end of the castle and stood outside the outer kitchen door. People moved around them, focused on waking up and their tasks for the morning. Green wood burned in the pit outside where the trash was burned. Someone had dumped the remnants of breakfast into the flames, filling the air with thick smoke and ripe odors. No one paid attention or cared that they stood talking.
“They deliver fresh meat before sunup every morning.” Tork scratched his balding head with his thick short fingers. “Maybe the driver could give you a lift out of here.”
“Where would we go?” Dree smelled leftover meat fat burning, more than likely the breakfast scraps from the slaves in the King’s court. Her stomach growled.
“We?” Bean shook his head adamantly. “This won’t work.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” she hissed at him. “Or any of us from Poltar. Don’t you see, Bean? We are all just sitting here waiting for our turn to die.” She pointed toward the field where the shallow grave was. Turning back to Tork she pressed. “Would you check with the driver? See if he would take us out of here?”
Tork shrugged, looking at her with puffy eyes. “I don’t know what’s out there for you, Dree. But I’ll check.”
She didn’t see Tork over the next few days. Dree hung out around the fire pits late in the evening, listening to the peddlers who stumbled around to the backside of the castle looking for handouts from the kitchen. From what she heard, those who lived outside the castle didn’t have it much better than she did. King Sorale ruled with a harsh hand, making sure no one gained too much.
She remembered the look on Marc’s face when he confronted the King’s men. He was ready to attack. And if she hadn’t intervened, she wouldn’t have been surprised if there were bloodshed.
At the time, she believed he fought for her. But now she wondered if it hadn’t been a deeper-seated hatred, a disgust for how the King ruled the land.
The remnants of trash in the pit glowed while the fire dwindled. There was more heat standing close to the others around her than there was from what remained of the fire. Dree stood among them, barely noticing their idle ramblings, or the stench from so many unbathed bodies, and let her thoughts drift as they did too often lately.
Marc of Torin crept into her dreams, stayed with her while she kept busy during the day, and distracted her in the evening. She imagined his hands brushing over her skin. The crowded backyard of the castle no longer offered a chill. Warmth traveled through her while the thoughts of Marc caressing her heated her with a feverish desire.
No one in the castle compared to his magnificent good looks. Even during her adult years on Poltar at the house of Torl, no man she’d had sex with came close to the sexy good looks Marc had. Those blue eyes of his, so intense while they didn’t seem to miss a thing happening around him. She swore there were moments when he watched her, when he was
just a breath away, right there within her grasp.
An ache she couldn’t make go away consumed her. She imagined where he might be right now, in some magnificent hall, everyone laughing and happy around him. Her pussy throbbed while she pictured him, gallant and fair, enforcing the law of his land.
The throbbing built, the ache growing into a painful pressure. Her breasts seemed swollen, her nipples aching for his warm mouth to cover them, suck on them, while she impaled herself on his thick long cock. His shaft would fill her, while her pussy clamped down on him, her juices soaking both of them. Just thinking about how it would be to fuck him had her wet, her own juices trickling, dampening her pants between her legs.
Dree sighed, staring through the darkness at the strangers who stood around the dying embers in the trash heap. The empty longing inside her didn’t fade, but she fought to ignore it, focusing on their quiet conversations.
“Business will be good with the town preparing for the aligning.” The man next to her nodded his agreement with something someone else had said. He looked at her like she would agree with him. “Now’s the time to make a deal, don’t you think, missy?”
“She’s from Torl.” One of the cook’s sons poked his finger into her arm. “You ever been to an aligning party, Dree?”
She shook her head, not wanting to admit she didn’t know what the party was about.
The stranger next to her stuck his thumb toward the sky. “When the planets align there is always a celebration. Half-price travel to any of them they say.”
“Like you could leave Benox,” someone on the other side of the trash pile called out.
“Like you could afford to leave King Sorale’s empire,” another hissed.
“How would you leave his empire?” Dree asked.
The immediate comments offered various means.
“You want to leave the castle, do you miss?” The man next to her eyed her carefully.
Sex Slaves 2: Waiting For Yesterday Page 4
