by Alison Aimes
Read on for a taste…
“You can’t just leave them here.” A woman’s furious voice reached prisoner 673 through the rocky canyon. He froze. Cocked his head. Inhaled, but scented nothing except the usual arid scent of dirt and dust.
After so many years alone, the sound of such loud squawking was jarring. And that the voice was a woman’s? His cock twitched and rose, taking notice. Eight years was a long time to go without. The last time the droids had dropped a woman on Dragath25 was five years ago. 225’s pack had gotten hold of her first. She’d lasted five minutes.
It was a good reminder. Fragile things didn’t last here. And nothing, not even long overdue pussy, was worth risking his survival.
“You hear those shrieks? They’re coming.” An equally enraged male’s voice boomed through the canyon, thoughtfully telegraphing his precise location. “Our shuttle streaked through the sky like a clear come-and-get-me invitation for the entire penal population of murderers and psychopaths. We don’t have time to dick around. We don’t have time for those who’ll only slow us down. We’re moving out.”
“You coward. I saved your life. The least you can do is try and return the favor.”
673 cleared the canyon in time to see a bull of red-haired soldier dressed in fatigues grab a far smaller woman in a torn grey uniform, her boots dragging along the ground as he shook her hard.
673’s whole body went tight. He didn’t like bullies. He dropped into a crouch. Instinct taking over as he slunk forward, his gaze absorbing everything. The way the soldier bastard favored his right side. The large firearm strapped to his holster. The second weapon at the man’s back. The way the woman’s ripped uniform clung to her curvy body and the outraged rigidity of her spine even up against a man twice her size. The nine other thick-necked, smug soldiers with similar military-issued buzz cuts standing close by, no clue of the danger he represented, their sole attention on the woman.
In the next instant, the woman dropped into the dirt. On a perfect, heart-shaped ass.
Freezing in place, 673 waited to see what happened next.
“Fine,” the woman shouted, stumbling to her feet. “Go. But I’m not leaving. We’ll find a way.”
“Your funeral.” Soldier bastard grabbed a pack off the ground. He slung it onto his shoulder next to a similar one.
“At least leave us one.” She surged forward, grabbing for the pack, but soldier bastard darted out of reach.
“Not so high and mighty now, are you, Cadet West? In fact, seems like you and your Council-friends might need us after all.” Soldier bastard patted the pack. “These were issued to the military crew, and you know how strict Command Council is about ensuring resources are relegated to the proper department. You survive the night, I’ll be ready to hear just what you’re willing to do to get an unsanctioned taste.” With a final leer in her direction, soldier bastard kicked it into a jog. “Let’s go, men.”
An odd frisson of uncertainty snaked through 673. He wanted those weapons. Wanted what was in those packs. But he’d come for a different reason entirely, and with the seven soldiers out of the way, the few left would be easy pickings.
It was a curious thing: choice. For so long, there had been only the option to survive. He didn’t like having alternatives. It almost made him feel human again.
“West, please,” a dark-haired female in a similar grey uniform limped over to where the other woman stood, the quality of her boots marking her as Council even without his ability to see the CC designation on her skin, “go with them. You’ve done so much for us already. Why should you die, too?”
He’d already noted this second female and the wounded Council officer on the ground and dismissed them as any kind of threat. Fact was, like fighter girl, they were dead folks walking—because, in this case, soldier bastard was right. The strong barely survived out here. The injured didn’t have a chance in hell.
His fighter girl didn’t seem to care, though. His? No, she wasn’t his. She wasn’t anything but Dragath25 dirt in the making.
He’d learned long ago not to stick his neck out for anyone else. Keeping himself alive was hard enough.
Just beyond, the wind picked up, brushing against 673’s skin, signaling the start of another dust storm. Within the half hour, this place would be choked in dirt and debris, everything within suffocated under an indifferent cloak of dirt and rock.
“I’m not leaving you.” Fighter girl stumbled forward, her wavy, soot-colored hair brushing her ass…so easy to grab and wrap around his wrist. “Let’s find something I can drag Dr. Winthrop in.”
She turned in his direction, giving him his first full view of wide green eyes, a lush pink mouth, and firm, high tits full enough to fit his hands.
His body rioted to attention, the man he’d once been waking with a silent roar as white-hot lust flooded his veins. He jerked to standing, all subterfuge, all caution, forgotten. The absence of touch for eight long years a sudden agonizing stab of need across his skin.
“Look!” She pointed near to where he stood, and for a heart-stopping moment, he was sure he’d been sighted. But then she turned back to her friend. “There’s something that looks like a cave only a little ways up. If we can make it there, we can hide.”
“But—”
“No but. We are making it there.” She dropped to her knees beside the wounded officer’s body. “No one else is dying. Headquarters will send search and rescue to investigate the crash. We only have to stay alive until then.”
The shrieking cry of 225’s pack sounded again. Closing in fast.
The reminder cooled 673’s lust enough to get him thinking again.
His gaze flickered between the woman, now frantically working with her friend to wrap the man in some kind of fabric, and the strewn, burning wreckage that littered the ground. His hands clenched and unclenched.
Choices.
His dick was telling him one thing. His mind another. Shit. He really hated choices.
He started forward.
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Excerpt from TAKEN
Excerpt from TAKEN, the second book in the Condemned series
Run-away breeder Ava Davies only wanted to live life on her own terms. Now she’s captive within a labor camp deep within Dragath25’s core, a sweltering maze of caves overrun by brutal prisoners-turned-slaves. Her only chance for survival? Appeasing the leader of the most powerful subterranean gang: a man from her past with his own score to settle.
Two years ago, resistance fighter Hunter Valdus’s and his men were sentenced by the Council to live and die as slaves. Now a beautiful, desperate female from his past has landed in his grasp. A woman who just might be the key to his crew’s escape and his revenge. All he has to do is keep her alive and at a distance until he can use her for his own dark purposes.
But raw, blood-pounding lust is a potent force. Forgiveness and love even stronger. And the best-laid plans can be laid to waste, especially on Dragath25.
TAKEN, Book Two in the Condemned Series, is an action-packed sci-fi prison planet romance that burrows to the deepest, hottest recesses of the globe to explore what happens when revenge and lust, redemption and love, collide.
“Freeze.” A near-growl, thick with authority, cracked through the hold and down Ava’s spine.
Everyone froze.
Bright light and scalding air poured into the hold. An awful metallic, charred smell as well. The echo of crashing boots making it sound as if an army was descending.
Instinctively, she shielded her eyes, but the light was too bright. Everything reduced to pinpricks of shifting black and white spots right in front of her eyes.
The silver lining? The ruthless fingers digging into her scalp loosened.
Jerking free, she scurried back on her knees, knocking Yellow Eyes off balance He stumbled into the body next to him. A tree-trunk of a man who roared and shoved in return.
Seizing on the distraction, she skirted around t
wo corpses with sightless eyes—neither of them thankfully similar in size to Pratt—backpedaling on her ass as fast and far as she could until her spine hit the wall, a small target blocked by a sea of far larger torsos and legs.
“Next to move will regret it.” It was the same deep voice. Lethal. Dark. Ice cold.
She curled into a tighter ball.
The sound of a scuffle regained her attention. A howl.
Yellow Eyes crashed to the ground, unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his chest.
It was the only proof he was still alive.
“On your knees or you’ll suffer the same. Eyes on the ground. Hands on your head.” The sharp command drew her attention as the speaker swaggered toward the middle of the room.
Her breath stuttered in her lungs.
He was massive. Twice the size of Yellow Eyes. A beast from the depths—or her worst nightmares. His face concealed by a crude rectangular, silver faceplate that looked like it had been hammered into submission and offered only narrow horizontal slits for eyes and the hint of a hard, square jaw. Leaving him faceless. Expressionless. Utterly devoid of humanity.
The rest of him, however, was on full display. His bare, bronze chest stretched by slabs of lethal muscle that flexed ominously with every shift of the gleaming pickaxe in his hands. His biceps alone bigger than the hated rocks Bella had been urging her to haul around for defense.
And he wasn’t just wide. He was as tall as the trees of old. His shorn, brown hair brushed the ceiling even though he stood with his body partially folded, his knees bent. Streaks of red and silver dust covered his body like war paint while around his waist was a tattered loincloth that showcased powerful thighs.
The only half-civilized thing about him were scuffed, worn black boots.
She risked a longer glance, her gaze following the trail of sweat that glistened on his skin, dripping from his neck to roll down the ripped ridges and valleys of his carved stomach, passed a hundred nicks, scars, bruises and burn marks.
There wasn’t an ounce of body fat, an inch of give. Thin straps of sinewy leather crisscrossed his muscled chest and back, holders for an impressive array of primitive pickaxes, metal blades, and what looked like bleached bones. They swung against his skin like trophies on display. Savage. Animalistic.
He was raw, barbaric power—and totally terrifying.
One blow from him and she’d be dead.
Worse, behind him in a tight v formation stood a pack of at least twelve similarly armed, faceless giants almost as big and wide.
And then she saw it, a flash of silver, on the harness of the leader himself, one among his numerous weapons—and yet everything to her. A tantalizing glimpse of the compound she’d only found small traces of on the surface. The rumored ore that had drawn her to this planet in the first place. The key to her freedom. On the hips of a killer.
Of course.
It wouldn’t be easy, but she’d have to find some way to discover where he’d gotten it.
Sucking down a bracing breath, she hid her spear length-wise between her thighs and shifted to her knees, placing her hands on her head, just as ordered, terror and sudden excitement thrumming through her veins in equal measure.
Not surprisingly, the other prisoners took up the same position.
If these were the authorities down here, no one wanted to piss them off.
Swallowing hard, she risked a quick scan. No cameras. The rush of relief left her dizzy.
Beyond the open doors, a terrible screeching erupted: taken, taken, taken.
“Exit the transport hold.” Indifferent to the chaos, the mechanized voice emerged once again from the ceiling offering instruction. “Incineration will occur in five metrals.”
Incineration?
A few of the prisoner surged forward.
“Freeze,” it was the same deep, commanding voice from before, “or die.”
“What by the storms of Janus is this place?” A stocky prisoner with the word Death tattooed between his shoulder blades shoved to his feet, panic laced his voice.
Before she could blink, the faceless warrior grabbed the tattooed man, lifted him as if he weighed nothing, and slammed him back onto his knees. “Hell.”
The mocking pronouncement rung terrifyingly true.
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About the Author
Alison Aimes is the author of the award-winning sci-fi romance Condemned series as well as the contemporary romance Bad Boy Billionaires series. An ex-professor with a PhD in Modern History, she’s an all over the map kind of woman with a love for dramatic stories and great books, no matter the era. She lives in Maryland with her husband, two kids, and her a cuddly pup who likes to sit in her lap while she writes.
Alison can be found on line at
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Books by Alison Aimes
THE CONDEMNED SERIES:
TRAPPED
TAKEN
TORMENTED
TAMED (coming soon)
ALIEN ALPHA STANDALONES:
STOLEN: AN ALIEN ALPHA ROMANCE
THE BILLIONAIRE BAD BOY SERIES
BILLIONAIRE BLACKMAIL
BESTING THE BILLIONAIRE
Stolen: A SciFi Alien Alpha Romance
Bookmark: Copyright
Published by Orchid Publishing
Copyright 2020. Orchid, Inc.
Cover by Frauke Spanuth
EPub Edition ISBN: 978-0-9964683-8-1
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-9964683-9-8
Except from TRAPPED copyright © 2015 by Alison Aimes
Excerpt from TAKEN copyright © 2015 by Alison Aimes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This work of fiction is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at www.alisonaimes.com
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