by Jayne Ripley
The big alien who had caused so much chaos by cutting her free stood from the couch. He loomed. There was no other word for it. This palace suite had high ceilings and lots of space, but this guy made the place look small. She swallowed hard. He was easily over seven, maybe even eight feet tall. His shoulders were so broad that she could probably land a plane on them. He looked like he could bench press tractors if he felt like it. He was staring at her with an intensity that made her a little afraid. It was so fierce, so…hungry. She didn’t know why he was so interested in her. It made no sense.
But there was no denying that he had tried to help her, was there? Both of them had tried to help her, risking their lives, even if she didn’t understand it. For that, they would always have her deepest gratitude.
Administrator Bevelle turned to face her. Her expression was so placid that Jennifer found it irritating. Her life was in pieces right now, and this robot-cyborg-whatever couldn’t be bothered to look like it meant anything.
“This is to be your residence for the time being,” Bevelle told her. “You will serve these two arena fighters.” She pointed to the huge one. “This is Nahkar Ka-Razal, an Ikestran from Quasarask Station.” Then she pointed to the leaner, blue male in the strange and fancy clothing. “This is Darkon Trava from the Lau System.” She indicated Jennifer, looking at them. “This is Jennifer Smith from the Sol System. Formerly, she was the property of BioVerge Acquirement.” Bevelle met her gaze again. “Nahkar Ka-Razal and Darkon Trava were both owned by other corporate entities until recently.”
“Does that mean they are slaves too?” she demanded with more boldness than she actually felt.
“We are,” Darkon answered before Bevelle could reply. His voice was smooth and melodic. It was an easy baritone that simultaneously soothed her and stirred something inside her.
“That is correct,” Bevelle said. “They are a specific kind of slave. Biological property of the highest level. They outrank you. You are here to serve them.”
“What do you mean serve?” she managed to ask, her voice breaking on the last word. She was afraid of the answer she would get, but she’d forced the words out of her mouth anyway.
“You will stay here in this suite with Nahkar Ka-Razal and Darkon Trava,” Bevelle answered. “You will provide interesting conversation. You will compliment them on all relevant skills and at all necessary times—”
Darkon burst out laughing. The sound startled Jennifer because she’d been so focused on what Bevelle was saying. Oh, and she was trying to ignore the sudden sick feeling in her stomach.
Darkon smiled at her as if to say: Isn’t this crazy? She felt her cheeks flush and the back of her neck get hot. She looked away quickly, unsettled by how strong her reaction to them had grown. She hadn’t been this flustered around guys back on Earth. Not since getting out of middle school anyway. What the hell was wrong with her?
“You will ensure their each and every need is met,” the cyborg continued as if Darkon hadn’t laughed. “You will attend arena fights and cheer for them. You will dress as instructed for a fighter concubine since the audience has certain expectations.”
“I’m sorry, did you say concubine?” she asked in a voice that was little more than a squeak.
Both aliens were now staring at Bevelle. They appeared as shocked as she felt. Or that was what she assumed. She was no expert on alien body language.
She had to bite her lip to stop a wild burst of laughter at her crazy thoughts.
“Yes,” Bevelle said. “Your biologies are compatible for intercourse. You will be their pleasure receptacle.”
Pleasure receptacle. Good God. The blood was roaring in her ears. “I think I need to sit down.”
“Don’t just stand there, you big, dumb razor-dreng,” Darkon said to Nahkar. “Be a prince and get our guest a chair.”
The big alien named Nahkar grunted. He effortlessly lifted a large chair and brought it over to her. The chair thudded against the floor when he set it down, making her think it had been really heavy. He gestured toward the chair, implying that she should sit. The expression on his broad, blunt features was very serious. His eyes though… They kept her heart beating fast. She saw no aggression or anything that made her fear for herself in his eyes, but she did see what could only be desire.
Desire for her. Their new concubine.
Oh, God…
“Don’t worry, little Terran,” Nahkar told her gravely, apparently seeing her distress. “We will not harm you. We are not like the Jandami.”
She guessed the Jandami were the lizard aliens who had stolen her from Earth. She bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Nahkar’s voice was deep and strong. She could feel the deep vibration of his words through her body. It was as if he was touching her with his voice.
Nahkar turned back to the cyborg female. “Why is she being ‘given’ to me? How did this happen?”
Darkon folded his arms across his chest, a humorless smile on his face. “I was asking myself that very same thing. I was sure I’d wake up on a prison ship headed to one of the mines. Instead, I wake up in the palace, on the levels where the rich and powerful live.”
“All three of you have a new owner. This is what he wishes,” Bevelle answered calmly. “She is a gift. For both of you. Your new owner purchased her from the BioVerge Acquirement Corporation because you both seemed so interested in her.” She stopped and tilted her head as if listening to something Jennifer couldn’t hear. Then her eyes focused on them again. “It will be better to let your new master-owner explain this as he wishes. He has just now contacted me on a subsonic frequency. He wishes to speak to you directly. I will patch him through.”
Bevelle raised her hand. Something happened with her robot arm—a flash of light traveled along her sleek, metallic limb and projected against the far wall. An advanced computer system in the wall came to life.
“Are you there, sir?” Bevelle asked, looking at the softly glowing ceiling. “Can you see and hear us?”
“Yes, administrator. Thank you,” a vaguely mechanical but definitely male voice said. The voice spoke to them through hidden speakers in the ceiling. A distorted voice but no face. “Greetings, Nahkar Ka-Razal, Darkon Trava, and Jennifer Smith. I wish my face to remain anonymous, so I will not be using holo-screens. I’m certain that Darkon can appreciate this. You usually choose to wear a mask when you fight on holo-camera, don’t you?”
Darkon frowned. “That was true until this morning. Who are you? A name would be nice.”
“I am your new owner. The name on the contracts is simply one of my companies. Again, I prefer to maintain discretion and privacy, but you may call me master.”
“Master?” Darkon crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I wouldn’t bet on hearing that from me anytime soon.” His expression had turned dark. Those silver eyes seemed worried. “I prefer speaking with someone who isn’t afraid to reveal his face.”
“You do not need to see my face,” the voice replied. “Important persons are safer when we remain anonymous. If you need proof that I am your new owner, I am happy to provide it.”
Several floating holographic screens appeared in mid-air, projected from lenses in Bevelle’s arm. The glowing screens showed a bunch of symbols and characters that she didn’t immediately comprehend. But as she stared at them, the symbols suddenly took on meaning inside her mind. She could understand them as if they were English words in a book.
The words were about contracts. Specifically, they explained how she now belonged to the Revista Corporation, apparently the company owned by some a-hole who wanted to be called “master.” She’d been sold to him by the shady-sounding corporation BioVerge Acquirement for twelve hundred credits. The other screens had a bunch of complex legal language explaining how Nahkar and Darkon both belonged to him as well, sold for sixty-seven thousand credits and fifty-three thousand credits respectively.
Nahkar stared at the screens. He grunted. “You bought out my contract.”
“Looks like you bought mine too,” Darkon said. He looked grudgingly impressed and more than a little annoyed. “I can’t believe you paid more for him than for me. That’s insulting. And those figures sound low to begin with.”
The voice sounded amused. “I negotiated a good deal. After the disturbance you caused, your former corporate owners were eager to offload you, even at a loss. You put several hundred citizen’s lives at risk. You also killed several licensed and bonded slavers working for BioVerge. ”
“No one will miss them,” Nahkar growled, his huge fists clenched. He looked like he wanted to kill a few more, just to make a point.
Jennifer couldn’t say that she believed any killing was a good thing. But on the other hand, she had lost almost all hope that she would ever get home again. And that was all because of those lizard bastards who had abducted her. They’d taken her from everything she’d known and loved. So if the big guy wanted to punch a few more of them in their ugly lizard faces, she wasn’t going to complain.
“Even if a few slavers aren’t mourned,” the voice continued, still sounding amused, “the havoc you caused lowered your value as an asset. The credit balancers ran their numbers, and you both had lost considerable worth. Human Terrans might be rare, but BioVerge is eager to offload the female as well. They dislike the attention focused on one slave by imperial citizens who saw the holo-vid footage.”
Nahkar’s scowl deepened. His deep voice held a clear note of warning. “What are you going to do with her? The cyborg says you’re giving her to me.”
“Let me explain. I too saw the footage of both of you fighting. It touched my heart. That holo-vid is now famous throughout the systems. It might surprise you to learn that, but it’s true. With that in mind, I am giving her to you. You wanted her badly enough to risk your lives to get her, so she is now yours. Do what you please with her. Consider her a perk.”
A perk. She was going to become a “concubine” for two aliens, and this bastard smugly referred to her as a perk. God, she was so afraid. She was so exhausted. She wanted to go home more than anything else in the universe.
But “perk” or not, she couldn’t deny that her body also reacted to both of them, to how close they were, with her blood heating, her heart pounding, and her thoughts spinning. She felt like she had swallowed a dozen butterflies, and they were all zipping around in her stomach. Lower, her pussy ached and tightened with raw need. It was a primitive reaction by her body. A stupid biological response to attractive males who were very strong, very…confident.
Nahkar was big, powerful, blunt, but she couldn’t forget how it felt to be in his arms. Or that he’d risked everything for her, all for some reason she did not understand. That left her emotions in a tangled heap, but when he looked at her, she didn’t feel afraid. At the same time, she felt aroused, raw, filled with a desperate need she didn’t want to acknowledge. Because his looks were so intense they set flame to her blood, making her feel as if she were burning up inside. Whenever he looked at her, it seemed as if he was barely holding himself back from pulling her into his embrace. Touching her. Kissing her…
Darkon was built more like a football quarterback, athletic but smaller than Nahkar. She remembered how fast he’d been when fighting alongside Nahkar. Fast and graceful and skilled. He didn’t look at her with quite the same raw intensity that Nahkar did. Not exactly. Not with the same barely controlled passion. But was she just seeing things, or was there something in the way he watched her too? Yes. It was in the flash of those silver eyes, the warmth of that charming smile.
Jennifer didn’t know what she’d done to earn the help of these two aliens, but right now, she could use some friends.
She blinked back tears. She could really use some friends.
Of course, she wasn’t ready to be a concubine either. She enjoyed sex as much as the next girl, but her new “master” had just given her to them as if she were a prize you could win on a game show. She knew humanity had been terrible about slaves in its history, but her brain was having a hard time believing that all her rights as an American citizen meant absolutely nothing now.
She had been taken. She could not get home. Nothing would ever be the same again, and that was a terrifying and lonely feeling.
Jennifer lifted her head and took a deep breath. This was no time to be demure or prudish and straight-laced. She needed to do whatever she had to do to survive. To live. She wasn’t a little wilting flower. It had been hard keeping herself together, yes, but women were tough too. She would show them all how tough she was.
Maybe if she made them happy… She hesitated, surprised by the raw force of the thought that had occurred to her. Maybe if she played her cards right, she could get these two men—no, these two aliens—to help her return home. Somehow. Maybe all three of them could escape together.
Even if that wild fantasy could come true, what then? Was she going to hide them in her small apartment back in Los Angeles? Sure, Hollywood was wild, but even Tinseltown might notice an eight-foot-tall alien built like a train and a blue alien who looked as if he’d escaped from the set of some Star Trek show.
The voice spoke again, jolting her out of her spinning thoughts. “Feel free to thank me at any time.”
Great. Now their owner sounded peevish.
“What do you get out of all this?” Darkon asked quietly.
“An interesting question,” her master—she couldn’t use that word without her thoughts turning bitter and venomous—replied. “Administrator Bevelle, you may leave. I’m certain I have it from here. Thank you for your assistance.”
The black-eyed cyborg left the big luxury suite without saying another word or giving a look backward. Jennifer watched her go, suppressing a shudder. Bevelle was kind of creepy, she wasn’t going to lie. Far too robotic and detached. She preferred Nahkar’s bluntness and intensity or Darkon’s smooth charm. Bevelle was a little too alien for her.
Or maybe Jennifer was simply two steps away from a personal mental breakdown of epic proportions. That was as good an answer as any right now.
“Good,” their mysterious master said when she had gone. “Now we can talk freely. Station administrators serve a purpose if you pay them well, but they can be unpredictable.”
Darkon tilted his head, his silver eyes flashing dangerously. “Exactly the same thing can be said about arena fighters.”
The voice chuckled darkly. “True, but that isn’t anything to be proud of. That is exactly why you’ve ended up owned by me. Not only has your unpredictable, dangerous behavior convinced your corporate owners to offload you at a loss, it has also led to rumblings from the imperial court that arena fighters should be locked away completely. For the protection of imperial citizens, of course.”
“So you’re locking us away?” Nahkar demanded in his deep voice.
Again, Nahkar’s voice seemed to vibrate right through Jennifer’s body. In her chest, through her sternum, lower into her belly, and lower than that, making her pussy muscles clench. No man on Earth had ever turned her on with just the sound of his voice. What the hell was wrong with her? When had she turned into a lust-crazed bimbo practically coming her brains out at the sound of a few words? Was this some kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Or the alien abduction equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome? Was she crazy after all? These weren’t even human men. And now certainly wasn’t the time to be feeling anything at all for males, alien or not.
“The two of you are being locked away…in luxury,” their new owner replied. “Until the next arena show, all three of you will be confined to this exclusive suite in the palace sky-tower. All your costs will be covered by me as a matter of course, but try not to destroy the place.” He chuckled. “Or I might send you the bill.”
“And after the next arena battle?” Darkon demanded. “What then?”
“After you prove yourself obedient, you will be allowed the freedom of Quasarask Station again, provided you continue to behave. Promoters want you to be seen, to bring in the wagers
and draw the crowds. Especially after that escapade against the slavers.” A warning note crept into the voice. “You are investments for me. Yet, this is an incredible opportunity for both of you, so do not scorn it. You will be treated like princes. You will have food prepared and brought to you. These rooms will be meticulously cleaned and cared for. You will be pampered like honored guests.”
“Guests who can’t leave,” Nahkar growled.
“You will survive, I’m sure.”
“Why is Jennifer Smith being punished with us?” Darkon asked. “She didn’t hurt anyone.”
“She was involved in the start of all the trouble,” the voice replied carelessly. “I think it was very generous of me to buy her to service all your needs. I’m trying to make you happy. All you must do is behave until the next arena battle. That isn’t much to ask.”
I did not start any trouble, you faceless, dickless, son of a snake! Jennifer thought, outraged to the core. And I will not be servicing anyone’s needs but my own!
But she couldn’t exactly scream that right now because she knew the owner of the voice wouldn’t care. He might even laugh at her. So she bit her tongue—for now—even though it nearly killed her to keep quiet.
“We need to train,” Nahkar said, glowering at the dimly glowing ceiling where the voice seemed to be coming from. “For the arena fights. We can’t train while trapped in this fancy room.”
“That’s right,” Darkon chipped in. Sarcasm lingered in every word. “If we don’t keep in fighting shape, your new investments will not last long in the arena.”
As they talked to the voice, she took the opportunity to really look hard at the aliens she was going to be living with. As a concubine apparently. The two of them were as different as night and day.
Nahkar had blunt, rough features, a scar on his forehead, and a nose that had been broken more than once. His jaw was like a shelf of granite. Those features were very different from Darkon’s handsome face with its perfectly balanced features and the intricate patterns of silver lines on his hairless head. Frankly, Nahkar looked scary. It didn’t help that he was glaring at the ceiling where the voice was coming from. That glare was scary enough to give any biker-gang tough guy second thoughts about messing with him. And then third thoughts. And then send the guy running.