“I just stand here on the uh, front porch of the bakery and take people’s food coupons and give them loaves of bread,” Penny explained. “So how many loaves do you need?” she asked, trying to sound professional.
“Just two for now.” The butcher held out two blood stained coupons which had pictures of loaves of bread printed on them. Penny took them carefully from him, not wanting to touch either his bloody fingers, or the bloody parts of the vouchers he was holding.
“Let’s see now, which ones do I want?” Skrug started to paw through the purple loaves with his long, bloody fingers but Penny stopped him.
“No, wait—I’m the only one who’s supposed to touch the bread!” she exclaimed in alarm. “Also, I’m the only one allowed here in the, uh, the front porch area,” she added, thinking fast.
Skrug glared at her.
“Says who?”
“Says Head Baker Goone,” Penny said promptly, hoping she wouldn’t get in trouble for taking her new supervisor’s name in vain. “She says nobody who doesn’t work here can come in. You just give me your tickets, er, coupons, and I give you the loaves. That’s it. So please back up.”
She made a shooing gesture to the huge alien to edge him out of the storefront.
Skrug backed out of the small space, a scowl on his ugly, snaggletoothed face.
“All right, pretty girly, I’ll stay back for now,” he said as Penny handed him the two loves of bread he’d touched and left bloody handprints on. “But I won’t stay back forever. ‘Cause we’ll be seein’ a lot of each other, you and me.”
“What…what do you mean?” Penny felt her stomach drop. “What are you talking about?”
“Why, we’re neighbors, ain’t we?” Skrug leered at her. “Side-by-side like. Me choppin’ meat and you handin’ out bread? We’ll be seein’ each other every day—what with you being the ‘bread girl’ and me being the ‘meat man.’” He grinned and waggled his scaly eyebrows at her. “And let me tell you, girly—I got a lot of meat.”
He shook his hips, making the dangling head of his dark blue dick dance between his knees.
Penny’s heart sank as she realized that what he said was true. Hadn’t he been working at the outside chopping block when she and Claudette first approached the bakery? So it was reasonable to assume that was his regular station. And now, her own work placed her in the storefront right beside his—not two feet away.
She was going to spend all day, every day with the huge blue alien leering at her. Her new job was going to look like a PSA about sexual harassment in the workplace.
Great. Just great.
But things got worse.
“Yup, seein’ each other every day,” Skrug went on, grinning at her. “And just wait until the next Public Breeding, girly. Then we’ll be more than just neighbors—I can promise you that!”
Penny felt like someone had just dropped her entire body into a vat of freezing cold water.
“What did you say?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, you heard me. I’m gonna breed you good, first chance I get, girly. You won’t be walking straight for a solar month once I get through with you.” Skrug licked his lipless mouth with a thick blue tongue and the dangling shaft between his knees twitched in anticipation.
“Do you know who my husband is?” Penny demanded, wishing her voice wouldn’t shake so much. “Do you know what V’rex will do to you if you dare to even touch me?”
Of course, she had no idea if the big Hybrid would care enough to protect her or not, but she had to say something. Make some kind of threat the huge ugly alien would understand.
But Skrug only shook his reptilian head and grinned.
“Ain’t nothing he can do about it, girly. Leastways, not if it’s a Public Breeding. All the girlies in the Marketplace is fair game then—everybody knows that. ‘Sides, he’ll probably be too busy breedin’ some other girly he’s had his eye on to bother with you. He can have you any time, same as I can have Shurla. But once a Public Breeding is announced, well…” He winked one slitted yellow eye at Penny. “Then it’s time for fun.”
And tucking the two blood-stained loaves under one muscular arm, he stumped off down the street whistling between his crooked teeth.
Penny stood and watched him go, feeling like she’d just been punched in the stomach. The message was clear—she was safe until the next Public Breeding was announced and that could happen at any time.
Oh God—what was she going to do?
Forty-Seven
Now, as Penny stood in the shower, reliving her awful day, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Was there any way to ask for a transfer to another job, somewhere else on the Compound? Not from the way Claudette had talked about it, she thought bitterly. She remembered her friend’s words—“If there’s a Public Breeding, you’ll just have to stay there and take it.”
But Penny was damned if she’d just stand around and let herself be raped by the horrible Skrug or any of the other males who happened to be in the Market Place the next time a Public Breeding was announced. She had to find a way out of this—but how?
Only one answer presented itself—escape. She remembered that V’rex had hinted about having a plan to get out of the Compound this morning. Penny hoped that whatever it was, it could be hurried along. She resolved to ask him about it at dinner that night.
Isn’t there something else you ought to be asking him too? whispered a little voice in her head. A pressing problem no one else can help you with?
Penny winced, as she looked down at her swollen breasts. The little white bandages Claudette had given her to wear over her nipples had worked, but not by soaking up any leaking nectar. Instead, they had kept it from leaking out in the first place. Which meant that now she had two whole days worth of the sticky sweet liquid built up in her breasts and she was in serious pain.
But how can I ask him to help? Penny moaned to herself. How can you ask someone you’ve only known a day to suck your nipples to get the weird syrupy nectar out of them? That’s so embarrassing.
But embarrassing or not, she was going to have to find a way to broach the subject. It was, as Claudette had pointed out, a dead giveaway that V’rex hadn’t actually been breeding her. And the little white bandages were no longer useful—they wouldn’t stay in place anymore. In fact, they had barely lasted until she got home. So it was either ask the big Hybrid to help her or…
“Maybe I can take care of this myself,” Penny muttered, looking down at her breasts.
Experimentally, she took one swollen breast between her hands and squeezed. This resulted in a few viscous drops of nectar leaking out…and a bolt of pure agony rushing through the affected mammary.
Penny gasped and stopped at once, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes.
“And m-maybe not,” she whispered in a trembling voice. Somehow she was going to have to work up the nerve to ask V’rex to help her.
Penny just didn’t know how she was going to manage that.
Forty-Eight
By the time V got home—he’d had to stay late, trimming the other fucking trees to match the first one he’d messed up—Penelope had already put Last Meal on the table. It included an array of grilled vegetables, some kind of thin gruel-like soup, and a fresh loaf of the pale purple bread they baked here at the Compound.
The meat was conspicuously absent, but he didn’t blame her for that. Though he still wasn’t sure if the rumor she’d heard about where it came from was true, he would rather not risk cannibalism, just in case.
“This looks delicious, thank you,” V said, taking a seat across from her at the small, two-person table. “But you don’t have to cook every night if you don’t want to—we can trade off,” he offered. “Seems only fair since you have a job now too.”
“Thanks.” Penelope smiled briefly up at him and then went back to poking listlessly at the grilled vegetables on her plate. Her long chestnut hair was damp as though she’d recently showered and V thought she
looked beautiful but miserable.
Her whole posture spoke of depression. She was hunched over in her seat, her elbows planted on the table and her chest low, almost as though she was trying to hide something. Also, she was keeping her eyes down, not looking at him.
V wanted to ask her what was wrong—since something clearly was—but he sensed he’d need to take things carefully and slowly. First, however, he looked up at the ceiling. To his relief, the little red light centered over the table was dark. At least they had privacy.
“So, speaking of work, how was your first day?” he asked, taking a bite of a grilled green tuber that had a fleshy texture and a bland taste, though Penelope had obviously done her best to add flavor with salt and powdered cheepa peppers—some of the few spices that were available at the Compound.
“Oh, you know…the usual,” she replied evasively.
“The usual? Sweetheart, nothing’s usual in this fucked-up place,” V told her. He raised his eyebrows. “So what happened?”
Penelope sighed.
“Well, first I met my new supervisor, who hated me on sight. She gave me to someone else to train and told her that if I messed up, she should send me over to the butcher shop because they needed someone and—”
“Wait—wait a minute. The butcher shop?” V interrupted. Fucking Skrug worked there—V had seen the big asshole chopping meat with a cleaver out in front of the shop every damn day.
“Don’t worry—I didn’t end up there,” Penelope told him. “I’m only right beside it, at the bakery. But not in the bakery itself, because I ruined a whole batch of bread dough by forgetting to put in the yeast and adding too much water and not melting the butter and mixing up the salt and the sugar and…and…and just generally screwing everything up.” She sniffed and V saw there were tears standing in her big brown eyes.
He wanted to comfort her, but he was so disturbed by her news that he had to stand up and pace.
“You’re in the bakery? As in the Marketplace?” V ran both hands through his hair. This was bad, bad news. He couldn’t count the number of rapes he’d seen during the “Public Breedings” the “Glorious Leader” periodically and randomly announced and almost all of them took place in the fucking Marketplace!
Of course, it wasn’t the only public place where females were considered free game during a Public Breeding—there was also the park and the Amphitheater. But neither of those was ever very busy. The Amphitheater was mostly deserted because it was only used for public gatherings and ceremonies and the park was sparsely populated because—V suspected—unaccompanied females stayed away from it on purpose, so they wouldn’t be targeted.
“This is bad,” he said out loud, still pacing. “This is really, really bad. The Marketplace is where every horny male in the whole Compound heads the minute the fucking ‘Glorious Leader’ announces a Public Breeding!”
“You think I don’t know that?” Penelope flared, glaring up at him. “I was told already that it’s a punishment assignment—probably for the way I acted during that stupid Unification Ceremony. Oh, and that’s also why they turned up the hypno-whispers—to keep me in line. So I can’t promise not to do anything stupid and embarrassing again tonight, all right?”
“Look, I never said…” V shook his head. “I’m just worried about you being at the Marketplace, that’s all, sweetheart! I especially don’t like you being so close to the butcher shop!”
“Why, because Skrug works there?” The flash of anger was over and V felt a wave of hopelessness coming from her. “Don’t worry,” she said dully. “He’s promised he won’t rape me until the next Public Breeding. Which could be any…any time.” Her words ended in a sob and she dropped her eating utensil with a clatter and buried her face in her hands.
“He what?” V was so angry he wanted to go find the big blue bastard and rip his head off. How dare the big fucker threaten his bride? How dare he threaten to rape Penelope and scare her and make her cry? How fucking dare he?
V could feel the Rage rising in him—it was a dark red haze that threatened to roll over his vision and erase his reason in the relentless need to maim and kill whatever or whoever had threatened his female.
With difficulty, he got hold of himself. Giving in to the Rage and going to kill Skrug now would only get him either killed himself, or at the very least incapacitated by the pain square imbedded in his neck. Though part of him felt it would be absolutely worth it to die as long as he could kill the big blue asshole who had threatened his female first, V forced himself to remember that Skrug wasn’t the only threat.
As long as she worked in the Marketplace, any male could be a threat to Penelope and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except try to be on the alert until they could get out of this fucked up place.
V took a deep, calming breath, trying to force the overwhelming Rage away. He had never felt this strongly for a female before so it was an unfamiliar emotion. Slowly, he succeeded. He didn’t need to kill Skrug—at least not right now. Right now, he had to comfort Penelope.
He wanted badly to gather her into his arms and hold her, just as he had when he was carrying her home from their Unification Ceremony. But the tense set of her shoulders and the way she had drawn in on herself, let V know this would not be well received.
Instead, he knelt in front of her and tugged gently at her hands, which were still covering her face.
“Penelope? Sweetheart?” he murmured gently.
Finally, she let him pry her hands away from her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her big brown eyes were suspiciously bright but somehow she was keeping herself from completely breaking down, V saw.
He wished she wouldn’t try so hard to hold back her emotions. He knew some males who hated it when females cried, but he wasn’t one of them. If she’d actually started sobbing, he would have felt like he could gather her into his arms and hold her, as he so badly wanted to do. But he didn’t feel free to do that when she was holding herself in so tightly.
“I’ll be all right,” she whispered, her eyes flicking up to his and then down again. “I’ll manage somehow.”
“No, we’ll manage,” V said, frowning. “We’re in this together, little girl—or did you forget?”
She glanced at him and then up at the ceiling, where the red light was still dark.
“I know we decided to, uh, work together to try and get away from here,” she said in a low voice. “But I didn’t think our, um…partnership extended any further than that. I mean, you don’t have to feel like you have to protect me or—”
“Of course I’m gonna protect you!” V looked at her intensely. “I swear by the Goddess, if that fucker Skrug gets anywhere near you, I’ll fucking kill him—that’s my promise to you, okay?” He lifted her chin gently with one finger so that she would look in his eyes again.
“That’s very sweet of you, V’rex,” she murmured. “But you don’t have to do that—don’t have to put yourself on the line for me.”
“Of course I do! You’re my bride—my mate—remember?” he reminded her.
She sniffed again.
“Only because stupid Colonel Sanders put us together.” Which was the name of the human male she’d said the “Glorious Leader” looked like, V remembered. The one who sold some kind of fried food that tasted good but was bad for you.
“He didn’t put us together,” V told her softly. “I asked for you.”
“What?” Penelope’s eyes flew up to his again. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean what I said,” V said simply. “When they figured out I was immune to their fucking hypno-whispers, the GL came in to talk to me and offered me a deal. He told me that if I stayed in the Compound for a little while—just long enough to leave some of my ‘genetic material’ as he put it—he’d let me have my pick of females.” He shrugged. “And I chose you.”
“So you picked me so you could breed me?” she demanded, her eyes flashing.
“No, no!” V held up his hands quic
kly to stop her. “No, I picked you because I could tell by your eyes you weren’t hypnotized either. I thought that maybe between the two of us, we could figure out a way to get out of here.”
Which wasn’t exactly the whole truth, he had to admit to himself. He’d picked the little female because he wanted her—hell, he’d wanted her from the first time he’d seen her wearing that skintight black suit in the Lucky Lounge.
But after facing the threat of being raped or worse during the next Public Breeding, he didn’t think Penelope needed to hear about his sexual desire for her right now. He could feel pain and misery and shame rolling off her in waves—better to keep it to himself.
Luckily, his words seemed to have a positive effect on her.
“Yes—a way out.” Her gorgeous brown eyes were suddenly sparkling with hope. “You said something about a plan this morning—did you come up with anything more?”
“Maybe.” V cast a look at the red light in the ceiling again. It was still dark, but he still didn’t feel exactly comfortable discussing escape plans around it, even so. “C’mon,” he murmured, rising and holding out a hand to her. “Let’s go to the fresher to discuss it.”
“Okay,” she agreed and stood up to take his hand.
When she did, her chest—which she had been hiding by hunching over all this time—was suddenly revealed. V’s eyes widened as he took her in.
Holy Goddess—her breasts are almost twice as big as they were!
He could tell by the way the top of her over-the-shoulder dress thing was fitting her. The one she’d put on this morning had been a little tight across the front, but nothing unreasonable. This one, however—which he knew was the same size, since he had picked both of them out at the Marketplace in preparation for Penelope coming to live with him—was fitting her much differently.
Her breasts were crammed into the blue top which was bulging as it tried to support and cover her. The blue fabric was stretched so tightly across her front it looked like it might pop or tear at any minute. And on either side of the strained fabric, V could see the reason for the problem—two large wet spots right over the sharp points of her nipples.
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