"No jokes," Honey said as she stood to stand beside me. "This is serious, Kash. If we are underground the others will have a hard time finding us. Our ship's sensors won't be able to penetrate. Hopefully, a camera recorded which statue covers a tunnel. Or someone came outside in time to see us being pulled under."
I thought back to the last thing that I remembered before falling asleep in the tunnel. Sage saw us. But she did nothing, I'm betting. Even if the camera did reveal where we went, she'll likely use this opportunity to be rid of us. She could find another pilot and another mechanic at the first station that she visited.
I believed that the reason for her being outside in the first place was to find a way to eliminate me. Monsters dragging me below the surface was an incredible strike of luck for her.
CHAPTER NINE
Not long after the sexy demon girl Mavdaios walked away, the large room outside our cell went dark. Not completely black, but the light was even dimmer than it was above us. I wondered if that meant that it was nighttime on the surface. We spent the entire afternoon and early evening unconscious.
"Can the ship take off in the condition that we left it?" I asked Honey as I sat on the bed beside her. She was depressed over the situation, but still holding onto the possibility that the crew of the Arketa Moreta could rescue us.
"Why do you ask?" When my only response was to shrug, she said, "They wouldn't do that. We are valuable members of the team."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Honestly, they could do without a pilot. No offense. Sage could make do until she finds a replacement. But none of them can handle the serious repair and maintenance work. They take a chance on being stranded somewhere if they leave me behind."
"You mean like we were back in dragon land?" I asked. "We already believe that Sage sabotaged the ship to cause that. What makes you think she won't do it again?"
Honey's unusually attractive green rimmed white eyes looked horrified by what I was telling her. I felt bad for scaring her like that, but there was no sense in pretending.
"So, the ship can't take off in its current state," I said. "Is that what you are telling me?"
"No," she answered after a somber pause. "I was done with the repair. The last parts to be put back in place were superficial. They won't prevent take off or flight."
I placed my arm around her shoulders and pulled her to me. She didn't cry like I expected. Cinnamon would probably be in tears. She reached for my hand and held it loosely. She was sad but not completely lost.
"I wonder what they want with us," Honeysuckle said in a low tone. "Are we food? Prisoners? Slaves?"
"Sex slaves, maybe?" I suggested with one eyebrow raised.
Honey looked at me like I was crazy. "Are you ever not horny?" she asked.
"What? I'm just saying that it is possible. I'm not praying for that to be the case. Though it wouldn’t be the worst scenario."
Our yellow light dimmed a moment later, supporting my idea that it was now nighttime for these people. "I guess it is bedtime," I mumbled.
"I'm not sleepy," she said defiantly. "I feel like I might have been knocked out for a while. How long were you awake before me?"
"Just a couple minutes," I answered, hoping she wasn't going to bring up the dream of being molested again. I felt pretty bad about that. "I don't know what got into me, Honey. But I need to apologize just the same."
"For what?"
"I was honestly trying to wake you earlier by shaking your leg. But you didn't respond. I was still very weak, so I moved over here to your bed so I could reach higher. Somehow, I got distracted by your wonderful body. I may have been groping you harmlessly for a few seconds just before you woke up."
"What did you do?" she asked. If she was enraged, she was doing a great job hiding it. Maybe once she heard the details her temper would let loose.
"I squeezed your butt cheeks a couple times."
"Is that all?"
"Ummm," I was debating on saying anymore. By the look in her eyes, I could tell that she already knew there was more. "I'm deeply sorry, Honey. It was terribly wrong for me to do it. I felt like I was drugged somehow, my inhibitions..."
"What did you do?" Again, she seemed too peaceful, like the calm before the storm. Or a trap to attain my confession.
"I got one finger under your shorts in an effort to touch your pussy. But you woke up. And I'm glad that you did," I told her. I couldn't read her emotional state very well and that made me nervous. When nervous, I tended to talk a lot. "You didn't let me touch it before, and your ass was right there begging for it. My hand just did what it..."
"Your hand?" she asked. "Are you telling me now that your brain didn't want to touch me there?"
What kind of tactic was this?
"I'm not mad," she finally revealed. "It was wrong obviously. And you shouldn't do it again. Honestly, I wasn't sure that you were still interested in me anymore. You had Coffee already. She is hard to compete with. And I know how strongly you feel about Cinnamon. Once Strawberry got in on the action, I figured I was at the bottom of the list. Or completely off it."
"What? No! I... I..."
"Don't tell me that you love me, Kash," she said with puppy dog eyes. "I know better. I'm not that inexperienced, you know."
I wasn't going to say that I loved her. I also didn't like her calling me out like that. I have a decent capacity to love, I thought. I just never lived up to my capabilities in the past. But this is a new life. A new opportunity. And I was trying to make the best of it until these monster girls got involved.
"What defines love?" I asked, like some philosophical nerd. The smile she gave me suggested that she was thinking the same thing. "What I mean is this. If I'm willing to give my life to save yours, is that not love?"
Honey stared at me with caution in her eyes. Or maybe it was disbelief. Actually, I had seen that look before. She was thinking that I was playing her.
"I'm not trying to get in your pants with this line of thinking," I explained. "I'm being serious."
"You would give your life to save mine?" she asked, looking a bit more hopeful than previously.
"Yes, Honey. I would. And I still will, if it comes down to that." When she leaned in for a hug I continued. "We're going to get out of here together, though. The time will come when they parade us out of this cell for some reason. To be put to work, or maybe to plead for our lives in front of their ruler. That's when we'll make our move. You can count on me."
In my heart I believed that to be true. Then I considered the fact that I had no weapon. Both my sword and pistol had been taken from me. And there was nothing in our room except the two beds, and a hole in the corner that must be for relieving ourselves.
I walked over to stare down into the opening. It was too narrow for either of us to fit through, should we actually want to escape through the shitter. Darkness veiled what might await us down there if we could. I felt a slight breeze and heard the gentle sound of running water. Natural plumbing, perhaps.
Eventually we did get sleepy. The ebbing pain in my chest finally faded away, as did the skin irritation. Dim light and nothing to do had that effect of the human mind. Honeysuckle invited me to share her cot. The cell wasn’t cold, but there was an instinctive tendency to huddle together when trapped in a scary place.
We spooned peacefully as we drifted off to sleep. I couldn’t tell how long we were out, but the light was brighter again when I reopened my eyes. A noise had caught my attention. Then a smell. Looking toward the door I saw a new object in our room. There sat a large bowl of food that could feed three or four people.
I caressed Honey's hip as she laid motionless just where she fell asleep hours ago, pinning my other arm down. She didn't respond. My hand made a larger circle, spanning from her waist to her ass cheek. I wasn't planning to do anything like before.
"I'm awake," she whispered. "Please don't violate me."
Oh, shit.
Then I felt her body shuddering. She was
laughing at me.
I playfully pulled on her shoulder to look at her face. Her smile made me feel good, like I was home. The same way Cinnamon could make me feel.
I rolled her to me and kissed her on the lips. She was surprised at first, then intrigued. It wasn't long before she was kissing me back with more passion than I had planned. When I felt her legs wrap around mine, I ventured my free hand down her back to that tight little ass. When she giggled, I stuck my tongue into her open mouth.
"How cute," the voice said from the doorway. It was Mavdaios again. "The captives are getting frisky. Well, lover bugs, you only have a few chotts left before I take that bowl of vittles back out of there."
Did she refer to the food as vittles? And what the hell was a chott? Apparently, a measure of time.
"How long is that?" I asked as I pressed myself up on one elbow, yanking my arm free from my cellmate’s cooperative body.
"Ooooh, about five times as long as our conversation before," the devilish temptress said. "If you start eating now you will be able to finish your meal by then."
Honey slowly detached herself from our entanglement to get her first look at the serving dish. "That whole bowl?" she asked. "Are we expected to eat all of it?"
"No, dear," Mavdaios responded like it was a sultry invitation. "Only eat what you want. It is a courtesy on our part to provide you any food after all."
"What did we do to deserve this treatment?" I asked. I got the impression that she felt we needed to be punished for some infraction of their rules. The dominatrix vibe likely had something to do with that.
"You violated our sacred ground, of course."
"Huh," I responded with a smile. "That is the second time that I've been accused of that today."
Honey swatted at me, knowing that I was referring to her pussy as sacred ground. "Stop with the jokes, Kash. Let's eat. We might not get anymore for a while."
We grabbed the bowl from the edge of the doorway and took it back to the bed with us. There were no spoons so we would have to eat with our hands. It was almost finger food anyway, so that wasn't even disgracing. Large yellow leaves. Flimsy crackers with seeds. Roasted round beans and tiny red fruit like cherries for salad. It could have been poisoned, but what would be that purpose of that? If they wanted us dead, they would have killed us already. Though it was still possible that our bodies could react poorly to food that they consumed regularly. I surmised that there was no sense in starving ourselves over that possibility.
"Ooooh," Mavdaios said as she was registering my joke. "A sexual reference. Nice. I like it. Were you two about to have sexual intercourse?"
"No!" Honey replied instantly as I shrugged and replied, "Maybe."
"Haaaa," Mavdaios purred. Then a moment later, "I'll be happy to help you finish it."
Honey and I both paused with food sticking out of our mouth. Did we just hear her correctly? Was she planning to jump in to form a threesome just as we were ready to climax?
"The food," devil girl clarified. Our facial expressions were easy for her to read apparently. "Not the sex. Just place the bowl by the door. Your rations are the same as mine, you see. Be nice to me, and ... we'll see."
CHAPTER TEN
The food was quite tasty. Honey and I both ate our fill, leaving less than half of the original contents in the bowl. We debated on saving the rest for later. We had no idea when we would receive more vittles. However, Mavdaios suggested that sharing with her would be beneficial to our future. So, we placed the bowl by the door just as she requested.
"What are we going to do, Kash?" Honey asked me as we sat side by side on her bed with our backs against the cold stone wall.
"The way I see it," I answered, trying to keep my voice low. Other than the magic crystals they used, these women appeared to have primitive technology, even from my standpoint. It was unlikely that we would be overheard if we stayed quiet. "We have a few options. One, I get a running start and jump through the red light of pain in the doorway. Once outside this room, assuming I remain conscious, I'll have a good look at our opportunities after that."
"That doesn't sound like a good plan to me," Honey responded. She was probably worried that I'd get myself killed and leave her all alone.
"The second option is that we befriend this black devil girl, Mavdaios. Maybe she'll create some escape options for us, either voluntarily or by letting her guard down."
"That sounds better," Honeysuckle said. "But still not likely. What else do you have in mind?"
"Give in," I answered.
"Give in?"
"Yes." Then I clarified. "We give in and happily go along with anything they want us to do, as long as it isn't too terrible. We earn their trust by not looking suspicious all the time. Then, after a while, we'll take a high percentage chance and get ourselves out of here."
Honey shook her head. She obviously didn't like the options that I presented to her. "That plan might have a better chance of succeeding, but it won't matter if the Arketa Moreta has already left this planet. We'll be stranded here!"
"True," I told her. "But there is still a chance that we'll get rescued."
Honey looked me in the eye to gauge how much faith I had in that possibility. I wanted to keep her spirits up, but my eyes had a hard time lying. That must have been what made me a poor poker player.
When she sighed in despair and leaned against me, I pulled her to my chest in comfort. We might be doing that a lot for a while. On the upside, it was a good opportunity to get to know Honeysuckle, my second favorite crew member now that Coffee was gone.
"So, you were born and raised on Infinity Station Vega?" I asked to make conversation to pass the time. I kept myself facing the doorway to see when Mavdaios would retrieve the feed bowl. "I'm assuming that station circled the star named Vega."
"No," Honey answered, looking up at me. "It circles one of the planets that revolves around the star. You know about Vega?"
"Not much. Just that it was a star that wasn't too far from the solar system. They also named a kind of shitty car after it."
"A car?"
"Yeah," I laughed despite our dismal situation. "A vehicle with wheels and a motor to travel across the ground. I'm kind of surprised that the Arketa Moreta doesn't have one."
"Our ship wasn't intended for planetary missions," she told me. "Some merchant ships our size have them, but not many. Larger vessels usually do. But we call them transports and rovers. They come in a variety of sizes."
"Ours, too," I told her. It was calming to have something to talk about other than our predicament. Taking my mind back to old Earth was strangely comforting as well. As much as I loved being with these sexy bod-mod women, I missed a lot of things about my home planet. "Some cars only had two seats, but there weren't many of them. Most had at least four. Buses could carry dozens of people. We called that public transportation."
"Wasn't all transportation in public?" Honey asked.
"I mean, the bus didn't belong to individuals for their own purpose. Anyone that could pay to ride got to get on. There were routes so people knew where the bus was headed. They stayed on schedule for the most part. Most vehicles on Earth were owned and kept at their personal residence."
"How did they have room for a transport at their quarters?" Honey asked, wrinkling her pretty little green nose. "I don't understand."
"Most people lived in single-family homes," I told her. "A building with private land around it. The people that lived in apartments or condos, that was like a building with a bunch of private quarters, only everyone had their own galley and bathroom. Those people parked their cars in a parking lot, or a garage which was often underground."
"Like we are now," Honey said with a thoughtful look. I waited for her to ask me a question. I could see one brewing in that pretty head of hers. "If these people have cars underground, would you be able to drive one?"
"Well, first of all, I seriously doubt that they have cars based on what I have seen so far. Their technology is lim
ited or virtually non-existent except for these magic crystals. That bowl by the door is the most impressive thing they’ve made from what I’ve seen. Other than the statues by the ship. Even their homes are burrowed into stone and dirt instead of constructed. Secondly, it is highly unlikely that they use the same controls as the vehicles on Earth."
Honey puckered her lips as she thought. It was an attractive and somewhat distracting mannerism. Her facial expressions made conversation more enjoyable. "Did your cars have controls similar to our ship?"
"What?” I had lost my focus. “No, nothing like that."
"And yet you were able to quickly learn how to fly the Arketa Moreta. You even did a good job of it."
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