Captured: The Xandari Chronicles (Book One) (Dark Sci-Fi Romance)

by Raven Dark

  “Hang on.” I stopped Z’pheer, hopping on one foot. “There’s a fucking rock in my boot.”

  “Move it, nayna,” Raul ordered.

  “Hold on,” I snapped. I sat down, taking off my boot and tipping it up until the rock fell out.

  “I wonder how many times you have to tell her to shut her trap before she gets the message,” Malek mused, taking the canteen from Raul and swallowing a drink.

  “So do I. Get your ass in here.” Raul snapped his fingers at the inside of the cart. Exactly as I’d seen him do with Tarku.

  Why his behavior now should piss me off so much now, I had no idea. Maybe it was because of the way he’d used and then dismissed me so easily on the way here. Or maybe it was his ridiculous comment about selling my body earlier. Whatever the case, I couldn’t take this anymore.

  A life trapped with these men who saw me as less than nothing stretched out before me, and suddenly it was too much. I’d had enough.

  I pulled my boot on and stood slowly, rage burning a hot path in my chest. “Okay, listen,” I said in my most level voice. “That’s it. I. Am. Not. A Fucking. Dog.”

  “Nayna,” Z’pheer drawled.

  Raul cocked his head at me, looking mildly surprised. He reached back into the cart and picked up the muzzle. “Z’pheer.” He tossed the muzzle to him, but he missed, and it landed on the ground in front of me.

  Z’pheer reached for it, meaning to slap it on me. That wasn’t going to happen. Not now.

  I snatched the muzzle up. Then I did something I’d been dying to do for the last three days. I stepped over to the nearest drill hole, and before Z’pheer could stop me, I dropped the muzzle into the hole right before Raul’s widening eyes.

  The muzzle dropped into the darkness, dropping so far I didn’t even hear it hit the bottom.

  Z’pheer closed his eyes and set his heavy hand on my shoulder, shaking his head. He muttered something that might have been an alien curse.

  Malek crossed his arms, cleared his throat, and looked at the ground.

  The ramifications of what I’d just done sank in like a cold steel blade, chilling my anger out in less than a second. I dropped my hand, closing my eyes, feeling like a woman who’d just signed her own death warren.

  Why? Why the hell did I do that…

  A growled sound from Raul made me open my eyes and jerk my head up.

  Raul hadn’t moved, but his eyes were locked on me like a hawk on a mouse. They blazed with something close to fury. When he spoke, his voice was a low, deadly rasp that sent a bolt of real fear up my spine.

  “Come. Here.”

  WhydidIdothat? WhydidIdothat? WhydidIdothat…

  I swallowed hard, feeling his anger close around me like a cage.

  “Now!” he roared.

  The single word jolted through me like a bolt of lightening. Breaths sawing in and out, I pushed down the urge to flee and made myself walk over to him.

  As soon as I was in reach, I thought he was going to grab my hair, smack me, paddle my ass, something, but he didn’t. His jaw hardened, his hands at his sides. It was suddenly painful to look at him.

  “Get on your knees,” he rasped.

  For one ridiculous moment, I thought he was going to make me suck him off. I sighed and dropped to my knees.

  Raul’s fist seized the back of my hair hard enough to make me yelp, only he didn’t make me get him off. Instead, he bent me over on my knees so that my nose was almost to the ground. I howled in pain and panic. He released my hair, only to grab the back of my nape. His thumb and fingers pinched my throat, almost cutting off my air.

  “If I were a different man,” he said loud enough for the others to hear, “I would throw Tarku’s ball and make you fetch it, then make you lick my boots, nayna. But I am not that man. Let us get one thing straight right now.”

  I huffed, instinctively trying to sit up, his hold tight and frightening. Raul dropped to his knees beside me and held me bent over, nose still nearly to the ground. He spoke close to my ear, his voice barbaric and as jagged as a razor’s edge.

  “You are exactly what we say you are. What you did carries serious repercussions, nayna, and I promise you, my men and I will enjoy exacting them.”

  His words and the implications in them slid through my veins like poison, the dark, threatening promise in them turning my blood to ice and making my heart pound. As horrible and humiliating as the spanking had been, I knew, from the deepest pit of my soul, that what was coming would make me wish an ass whooping was all he had planned.

  “For now,” he added, “you do anything like that again, and I’ll slap you so hard your head will spin. Is that clear, nayna?”

  His fingers had loosened, but panic had me hyperventilating.

  “I said, is that clear, nayna?”

  I nodded jerkily, my eyes blurring with tears. “Yes… I understand, Raul.”

  Yes, I was afraid of him, but I was far more terrified at the sense of hope of ever escaping my captors or seeing my home again slipping further and further away.

  Raul’s hand slowly slid from my nape. He gripped my hair and hoisted me to my feet, ignoring my whimper. Malek opened the door to the cart, and Raul marched me inside.

  “Sit down.”

  I dropped onto the bench. Only then did he drop his hand. He squatted in front of me. “Your mouth.” He put his finger slowly to my lips. “Until we get to camp, your mouth stays closed. Understood?”

  I closed my eyes and nodded, feeling too many emotions to name, none of them good.

  When I opened them again, I saw his curt nod before he straightened and answered something Z’pheer had said. He took the driver’s seat without another glance at me, his back stiff.

  Malek shook his head at me and crossed his arms. “You could have had as much fun as us tonight. Now…” He shrugged, shaking his head.

  Now…what? My mind screamed for him to finish, but the thought echoed into a void that provided no answer.

  The cart started forward. We were headed to see Raul’s father, wherever that was, but I couldn’t help feeling I was headed to a much darker place. A place from which there would be no escape.

  15

  The Heart of Darkness

  Alright, so I knew my actions back there at the pit stop had been the worst mistake I’d made since I’d come here. I wasn’t stupid, much as part of me screamed silently that I was, but here’s the thing.

  I’d always had a bit of a temper. Xandar house staff had tried to fix that, and most of the time, it worked. Their rules, their strict punishments, usually they curbed my urge to—what did one of the staff call it… brat out. But apparently, they hadn’t been as effective as anyone hoped. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done something as catastrophically idiotic as toss that muzzle away.

  Raul had just…pushed me one step too far. Malek and Z’pheer’s egging him on and their attitude to the whole thing only fueled the rage that had built in me until I snapped.

  Now, as the cart made its way toward wherever the men wanted to set up camp, the ramifications of what I’d done sank in until they permeated my every thought.

  I refused to be sorry. It was the principle of the thing. I was a human. A woman… And yet those facts seemed to shout at me in a still small voice, one that was being gradually drowned out by the dark, heavy cloud of dread that grew heavier with every mile down the track.

  Fear gnawed at my gut, but I pushed it down, letting a sullen equally heavy anger bludgeon it into silence. Feeling sorry, feeling bad about what I’d done would have been like saying Raul was right. He wasn’t, and I wouldn’t allow myself to even think anything different. I wouldn’t be broken or cowed that way.

  And yet another strange emotion ate at me, one far more frightening than anything Raul or his men had planned to do to me when we reached camp. It tried to seed itself deep and push its way up through the bedrock of my anger like a poisonous weed.

  Put simply, it was the sense that I’d disappointed these three
men on a level that went deeper than any insult or shame I could have brought them.

  That made zero sense, but there it was. I closed my eyes, refusing to think about it too closely.

  An hour or five might have passed since we’d left the pit stop. I was too keyed up to be able to tell how long it was. No one said a word to me, all three of the men ignoring me. Every once in a while, Z’pheer or Malek nodded off while the other drove. Raul petted Tarku and fed him one of his packets of food. I had the feeling he was deliberately lavishing attention on him to drive home some point for my sake.

  Watching them pretend I wasn’t there dug a hole in my heart, leaving behind only a deep, raw shame.

  Z’pheer and Malek talked, but I didn’t hear a word of their conversation.

  I saw and heard almost none of what anyone did on the trip.

  At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I heard Raul’s voice drift out of nothingness.

  “We’ll camp here for the night,” he’d said.

  Someone was shaking me. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and looking around. Z’pheer squeezed my shoulder. “Wake up, nayna.”

  Raul stood, stretched and yawned, looking like he’d just woken up. Z’pheer took his bags from the back of the cart. Raul grabbed his and climbed out, Tarku following him. The dog spun and jumped, happy to be out of the confines of the cart.

  My heart rate sped up. We were here.

  My time had come, hadn’t it?

  “Come on, you, out you come.” Z’pheer touched me under the chin.

  I sat there, blinking up at him, unable to move. Once I got out of the cart, I’d be stepping into a darkened place I didn’t want to be.

  I searched his face for any hint of what might lie ahead of me, then immediately wished I hadn’t. His lips quirked on a mischievous smile, his eyes burning with silvery anticipation. He took my hand and pulled me to my feet, opened the door and waited for me step out.

  I gave a shaky sigh and stepped out onto the ground.

  There was no getting out of this now.

  My hands were trembling. Z’pheer lifted one up and pressed his lips to it, his eyes smoky. He took the rest of the bags and then nodded for me to follow Raul and Malek who were headed toward a large cavern well off the track.

  Knees weak, I headed after them.

  The cavern they’d chosen was twice the size of the cave we’d stayed in last night. A few old tools from the men who must have once worked the mine lay scattered about, canteens and food wrappers littering the dirt floor. Someone had left a moth-eaten bedroll in one corner. Stones had been set up for a cook fire, and whoever had stayed here before had left a metal plate over it for cooking on. Everything in here was covered in what had to have been several years of dust, including benches someone had set up along the walls. A long metal bar had been nailed to the walls so that it extended the length of the chamber near the back, several hooks for clothing and supplies jutting along it.

  It was crude, but serviceable.

  As soon as we got inside, Malek sneezed.

  Z’pheer unwound the slack of my leash from his wrist, but kept it tethered to him. “Clean this place up while I start a fire.” He nodded to the debris on the floor and the dusty benches.

  I dropped my shoulders but started picking up the litter from the cavern floor.

  The men hung their weapons, bags, and supplies on the hooks. Z’pheer set about starting a fire, and Malek lit several torches already in brackets on the walls. I looked around for Raul, but didn’t see him, or Tarku. His axe stood against one wall, but I didn’t see his bow and arrows, so he must have had them with him.

  I lost myself in the monotony of cleaning. Cleaning up the floor, dusting the benches with a rag from Malek’s pack. Easier to think about that than to focus on what was coming.

  Once the floor was cleaned of debris, Z’pheer laid out the bedrolls. I noticed there were three, one for each of the men. Clearly I was expected to spend all my time with one of them, since there wasn’t a bed for me. The thought made my stomach clench, but it also made my pussy tighten.

  With the cavern now clean, Z’pheer sat me on one of the benches near the firepit. He unclipped my leash and hung it on one of the hooks above my head, and then squatted and removed my boots.

  “Stay put.” His eyes sparkled as he straightened and touched my nose with his finger.

  Malek grinned at him as he stoked the fire.

  Raul returned with Tarku at his side. He held up a… Jesus, what the heck was that?

  It was a snake. Huge, thick, and almost as long as a python. Its coat was a shiny, jet black. There was an arrow through it’s middle.

  “Oooh.” Malek straightened. “A Corian viper. Where did you find one of those down here?”

  “In one of the tunnels.” Raul glanced at the catch. “There is a nest of them not far from here. Tarku found them.”

  Malek grunted. “Guess he’s not useless after all.”

  Raul pushed him over with his boot.

  I shivered. A bird was one thing, but I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him skin that thing. Or eating it.

  Raul turned the snake upright, grabbed one of Malek’s knives, and sliced off the snake’s head.

  “Hey!” Malek roared. “Those are my good knives!”

  Raul shrugged and handed the knife back, covered in blood.

  “Asshole.” Malek wiped the blade furiously on his poncho.

  I turned my head and tried not to retch.

  While dinner cooked in a pot over the fire, Z’pheer laid down with me on his bedroll. He turned on his side and put his leg over mine. Trapping me against him. One of his fingers traced my cheek.

  “Scared, ra alia?”

  I heaved an irritated breath, unwilling to admit the truth, looking up at the ceiling.

  “You should be, you know.” He leaned over me, kissed my nose, then my forehead. “Raul enjoys punishing his women, and Malek likes pain.”

  I swallowed and made myself look at him. “And what about you?”

  He smirked but didn’t answer.

  Raul called us over for dinner, and we ate around the fire in silence. I’d never eaten snake before, and if I hadn’t known what was in the pot, I’d have thought it was chicken. Raul had added a broth to it from his pack and a few spices. It was delicious—not that I’d ever admit it to anyone.

  A large piece was cut for Tarku, and the animal sat in the corner, chowing down. The food did nothing to quiet the mounting unease that chewed at my nerves. The men took their time eating, and I couldn’t help feeling like they were dragging out whatever was coming.

  Keying me up.

  Across the fire now and again, Raul glanced at me, the growing excitement in his eyes making me squirm. Z’pheer was right, he liked punishing his women.

  His women. Why the hell would the thought of him touching another woman make my fists want to clench?

  Once everyone had eaten their fill, the three of them lounged on the blankets for a few minutes. No one touched me or looked at me.

  Until Raul set down his plate on his bench and rubbed his huge hands together.

  “All right, let’s get this thing started, yes?” He stood. Z’pheer and Malek did the same.

  I sat up slowly. The three of them started undressing as if it were nothing, taking off their pants and boots, tossing them aside. Muscles rippled everywhere, sculpted and frighteningly huge in the firelight. My toes curled, watching these barbarians disrobe like beautiful gods. Beautiful, evil, demon gods.

  “Come, nayna.” Raul snapped his fingers at the ground in front of him.

  I licked my lips and stood, too afraid to be annoyed at his gesture.

  My legs felt like lead weights, ones that got heavier with every step I took toward him. All three men’s eyes were glued to me, watching my every move as if mesmerized.

  The questions in my head wouldn’t let me wait to find out what they had planned, wouldn’t let me stay silent.
>
  “What the hell are you going to do?” I looked around, the question meant for all of them.

  My captors said nothing. As soon as I was a foot from Raul, Malek moved in behind me, but kept three feet or so back. Z’pheer stayed at the same distance on my right, where the rest of the room spread out.

  All three of the men had hard-ons, massive cocks pointing to the ceiling.

  The beginnings of panic raced down my spine. I was penned in with three very horny alien men. It felt like I’d been caged by three hungry wolves.

  I licked my lips again. “A free-for-all then, is it?” I tried for casualness. For all my bravado, my voice shook horribly.

  Raul stepped forward, jerking my face to his. “You will shut your mouth now. It’s caused enough trouble for you.”

  I opened my mouth again but closed it as soon as I saw the light in his eyes. They burned like golden flames, raw with hunger. He loomed over me, a wall of power and strength no human could hope to stand against.

  I lowered my eyes, unable to bear looking at him.

  Feet scraped the ground behind me, but before I could look over my shoulder, Malek grabbed my hair and yanked my head back just far enough to force my eyes up to Raul’s.

  “Eyes where they should be, nayna,” Malek ordered.

  Shit. This wasn’t good. With my head craned back and my eyes trapped by Raul’s unrelenting gaze, Malek released me and stepped back.

  I expected Raul to remain in front of me, staring me down like a lion with his prey. Instead, he prowled around me, slow and predatory. My skin prickled with fear. I started to turn, tracking him with my eyes, but his hand clamped on my shoulder, holding me in place as he stepped behind me.

  “The rules of this world are there for a reason, nayna.” His palm slid down my back and cupped my ass, his chest pressing against me. I jolted at his touch, at the heat of him. His voice was a low, slow, growl beside my ear. “Do you know why?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  Raul brushed my hair from my shoulders and slid his hand around to my belly. His palm took up the whole span of it, making my breath hitch. “Following the rules keeps everyone safe. You and us.”