by Raven Dark
My life, as I had once known it, was over.
16
Sick
I woke to the sensation of someone licking my face.
Malek’s heavy arm was around my waist. Why the fuck was he licking… Wait. The unmistakable smell of dog filled my nose. It wasn’t Malek.
“Tarku, fuck off.” I turned my head, pushing at the dog’s snout.
He went right back to running his big tongue over my cheek.
I sat up, shoving him off. “Get off, you have dog breath. Yuck.”
Tarku wandered over to Raul, sleeping a few feet away, and laid down beside him.
Malek mumbled in his sleep, something that sounded like a reprimand, and rolled onto his stomach, his arm sliding away from me.
For some ridiculous reason, my body shivered, mourning the loss of his warmth.
What the fuck? After last night? I shouldn’t have wanted him within ten feet of me.
I glanced over at him. Malek’s dark hair was mussed, a few strands of it sticking to his cheek. He was nude, his tanned, sculpted body gorgeous in the light from the nearby fire, like a tanned Greek god. His impressive cock hung down between his legs, making my mouth water.
He really was an Adonis. If not for the memory of last night, I’d have reached out and swept his hair off his cheek. As it was, touching him felt akin to touching a—what was it called?—a Corian viper.
The last thing I wanted to do was wake him and end up with a repeat of last night’s sexcapades. I was already having enough trouble forgetting the feel of his fist in my hair, the sound of his gruff cursing, his vicious pounding.
And let’s not forget the easy way he’d made me almost come on his tongue before he and the others had used me.
Used me just like the whore he and Raul said I was.
Anger burned a hot path through my blood at the memory, and I let it scorch away his effect on me.
Fuck, I needed to think, and to do that, I needed to get as far from these men as possible.
I stood up and winced at the burn between my legs.
Would I wake up every morning like this, feeling like I’d been used roughly and put away wet?
Raul rolled over on his stomach, catching my attention. Fuck me sideways. The position gave me a perfect view of his huge, wide back, bare and smooth in the firelight. My unwilling gaze traveled down his back to the curve of his perfect, firm ass cheeks, bared shamelessly to the open air.
I shook my head at the ceiling. Did these men always have to sleep in the fucking nude? I glanced over at Z’pheer, curled up on another blanket on the other side of the fire.
Yup, naked as a jaybird.
Z’pheer lay sprawled on his back, one muscled arm over his face. His giant cock lay across his washboard abs. I swallowed. He had a massive hard-on. I jerked my eyes away before the heat in my cheeks could get any worse, praying to hell he wouldn’t wake and expect me to relieve him.
I took a few steps and the collar tugged on my leash. I groaned and lifted the long string, following the length of it across the cavern to where it hung on a hook on the wall. The hook hung too high for me to reach it. It was also caught on something. I tip-toed across the cavern to where the string traveled from the hook to the floor.
Damn. It was pinned under one of the men’s packs that leaned against the stone wall. I reached for the pack, and froze, then glanced back at Z’pheer, the closest one to me. His big bare feet, more than twice the size of mine, were less than two feet from me.
I bent and lifted the pack as quietly as I could off the leash, picked up the slack and set the pack down just as carefully. Then I dropped the leash, grabbed Raul’s poncho from the floor near him, and wrapped it around me as I made my way to the opening of the cavern.
Or I made my way as close to it as I could.
This cavern was bigger than our last camp, so a few feet from the entrance, the leash ran out of room. I looked back at the hook where it hung. The hook was over two feet higher than I could reach. Easy for any of the men to remove it, but high enough to make escape impossible.
My eyes widened. Shit, I hadn’t even thought of escaping. I’d been standing right under the hook, and I hadn’t even thought about how to take the leash down until now.
I dropped my shoulders and looked out at the darkened mineshaft in front of me without really seeing it. Had I already given up? Had these men already fucked with my head that deeply? Or had last night broken me so much that I’d accepted them, this world, my role, as my life?
Hell, I knew I couldn’t run. Even if I could have gotten the leash off that hook and reached the cart, taking off in it down a shaft before the men woke or Tarku sounded the alarm, it wasn’t an option. Running was even less of an option now. This mine was a maze of tunnels, and I didn’t know where any of them went. Some of them led nowhere, caved in or blocked off. To say nothing of what might be waiting for me on the surface if I did find a way up there to begin with. Still, my mind should have immediately started considering my options before discarding them before now.
Not only had I not done so, but now that I was, all those avenues met with something far scarier than practical dismissal.
A frightening acceptance of the situation settled over me, heavy and oppressive.
Fuck, I really needed to think.
I sat on the ground in front of the entrance and drew my legs up, folding my arms around them. Looking out at the mineshaft, the cart a dark shadow on the track twenty feet away.
Could I do this? Could I spend my life with these men? They weren’t so bad, were they? I’d heard about stories of women on Earth who’d ended up in situations comparable to this. These men didn’t starve me. They didn’t lock me in a dungeon, chained to a wall. They didn’t beat me black and blue. They could have. They could have, but they didn’t. Instead, they clothed me and fed me, and even protected me to a degree.
Fuck!
I dropped my forehead on my knees, spiraling into a familiar pit of despair. I couldn’t be there already. I couldn’t be in that darkened, abysmal place I knew so well, where escape was so beyond reach that all that remained was to accept the situation and make the best of it. I was stronger than that!
“I’m stronger than that,” I murmured into my knees. “I am.”
Loneliness seeped in, threatening to drown my fading resolve.
“God, Danika. Pathetic.”
“You should be asleep, nayna.”
Raul’s voice drifted from the back of the cavern so suddenly I lifted my head with a start. When the hell had he woken up?
I looked behind me. The giant of an alien was bending over the cook fire, spooning left-over snake stew into a bowl. He was also still naked.
“Oh. You’re awake,” I muttered. So much for being alone with my thoughts.
His teeth flashed on a knee-weakening grin. “I’m starving.” He held the bowl up. “Hungry?”
I was, but some stubborn part of me wouldn’t accept food from him. I shook my head and looked back out at the tunnel.
Feet stirred across the dirt floor behind me. Raul’s hand settled on my shoulder, fingers massaging slowly. “Why aren’t you asleep, woman?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Mm.” His fingers massaged my nape, almost wrapping around my neck like a collar. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were sitting here contemplating escape.”
I jerked my head up at him, my heart quickening in my chest. The mocking light in his eyes didn’t make it beat any slower.
That was just it, I’d been trying to figure out why the hell I wasn’t working on a way to get out of here. And why staying with him and his men was starting to look like the better fucking option.
“I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that.” I couldn’t keep the bite of sarcasm out of my voice.
“Good.” He squeezed my nape. “I wouldn’t want to have whip you.”
Jesus, the jerkoff meant it, too. He’d said it quite casually, the same way a man would talk a
bout putting on his shoes, but there was something in his tone that suggested he’d do it in a heartbeat if I crossed a line. There was also a spark in his eyes that made it one hundred percent clear that, far from regretting it, he’d enjoy lashing a whip across my ass.
Or my back.
The blood drained from my face. I quickly put a good whipping into the minus column of the list my mind was making. And then forced myself not to think about the way my pussy came to life at his words.
“Like I said, wouldn’t dream of it,” I rasped.
Raul searched my face, and his lips curved up, as if whatever he found there was amusing. He held out the bowl of stew. “Eat up, Vahashatai. You need your strength.”
I lifted my eyes back to his face, my mind immediately filling with images of all the things this son of a bitch barbarian could think to use me for that would require a woman to maintain her strength. My stomach rumbled as if it sought to make the decision for me.
As if he read the conclusions I was making from my expression, he said, “It’ll be morning in a few hours. You will be starting the day early.”
I glanced out at the mineshaft. It was still night? How could he tell? There was no way to see the sky down here.
“There is only enough stew left for me in that pot,” he added when I didn’t take the bowl. “Tarku will end up eating this if you do not.”
My stomach gave another unforgiving rumble. I sighed and took the bowl sullenly from him.
It would have been so much easier if he’d behave like a goddamn kidnapper instead of feeding me his yummy viper stew.
One for the plus column.
He stretched his big arms with a yawn and went to the entrance, looking out at the tunnel. The top of the cavern opening was two and a half times as high as me, but he rested his hand on it easily, his huge back and shoulders blotting the mineshaft from view almost entirely. Shit, the man stood there as if the woman sitting only a few feet from him, naked except for his poncho and collared at the neck, was an everyday occurrence.
It was. I knew that now, but it still baffled me the way these men accepted it.
“How long will we be down here?” I asked, spooning the stew into my mouth. It still smelled and tasted so much like chicken that if I hadn’t seen what had gone into the pot, I could have forgotten the white meat chunks in it were snake.
“This mine leads all the way to my father’s private bunker.” He walked across the cave again. I heard him spooning the last of the stew into a bowl for himself, indeed scraping the bottom of the pot. “We’ll be there in two days if there are no surprises.” He returned to my side, bowl in hand.
“Your father has a private bunker?” The thought raised about a million new questions.
He nodded, leaning against the cave wall near the entrance. He took a bite of stew, once more looking out at the shaft. Exactly like a man with his morning coffee before work.
I shook my head. “You really are okay with this, aren’t you?”
“Hmm?” He turned his face to me.
“Owning a slave. Treating women like chattel.”
He dropped his hand and shrugged. “What is it that slave told you at the tower? Way of the world, nayna.”
“That almost sounds like a good excuse, Raul. Men say that on Earth, too. Usually when they know what they do is wrong, but they don’t want to admit it.”
In one stride, Raul crossed the space between us and cradled my chin, a smile tugging at his beautiful mouth. Then he backed up and sat against the cave wall.
“You will learn to accept it, one day.” He crossed his huge legs. Before he set his stew on his lap, I caught a glimpse of his cock, hanging thickly between his legs, half hard.
“Couldn’t you have at least put pants on?” I muttered.
He smirked and settled his naked self more comfortably against the wall, eating more stew.
I forced my eyes down to my bowl, focusing on the meaty, spicy smell of the stew. I wanted to tell him to go away, but I knew better. If I did, he’d only stay longer just to piss me off. I spooned some of the stew into my mouth, wishing it didn’t make my taste buds sing.
Besides, his presence made me feel…safe, chasing away the loneliness that skittered just beneath the surface of my thoughts.
Questions whirled in my head, still so many unanswered. Wrapping his big poncho closer around me, I crossed my legs, set the stew on my lap, and scrunched my brows, trying to make sense of what my life had become. Of the conflicting feelings that swirled in me like a storm.
“You have questions.” His voice drew my eyes up to his. He was watching me in the darkness, his golden eyes like amber pools in the near blackness where the light of the fire barely reached.
There was no point in lying to him when he could obviously see the questions plain as day, even with the lack of light. “Too many to name.”
He wouldn’t answer them. Anytime I tried to ask, he shut me down.
Raul put his head back against the wall. When he spoke, his voice was soft and low. “Ask them.”
My mouth made an “Oh.” Never mind that, once again, he wasn’t behaving much like a kidnapper—this alien was the last one I’d expected to invite my questions. Usually it seemed to piss him off when I did that.
All the things I’d wanted to ask raced through my mind, competing for first place. Where did I start?
“What does that word mean? The one you call me? Vah-hash… something?”
Why I was asking that when there were so many other much bigger questions that needed answering, I didn’t know. Maybe I was chickening out, the others so big it scared me to voice them.
“Vahashatai,” he corrected, delight sparking in his eyes. He didn’t answer.
Goddammit. I had a feeling he liked my not knowing.
“Okay, here’s a better one for you. Who the hell are you?”
His brow rose in obvious confusion. Yeah, I hadn’t articulated that one very well.
“I mean, what are you? On this world? Who are you, here, that you need a bodyguard? And a personal physician. Only billionaires and rockstars and presidents have those on Earth. Besides, the Rith wouldn’t want you that badly if you weren’t someone important.”
His lips split into a huge grin. “Smart little nayna.”
I cocked my head at him in irritation. “You’re not going to answer that one, either. What the hell is the point in letting me ask questions if you won’t answer them?”
His shoulders shook with laughter before he took another bite of his food. “Ask another one, Vahashatai.”
He meant for me to ask one he wanted to answer. Anger made my jaw clench.
I sighed, forcing myself to be brave. “All right. Tell me why I’m here, Raul.”
He shook his head, scowling into his bowl. “You know why you are here.”
“Yeah. For sex,” I snapped.
His eyes lifted to me, shining with a hint of mockery.
“Oh come on, there’s more to it. I know there is.”
He said nothing, eating more, but I could see it in his expression, he wondered exactly how much I’d figured out.
I pointed to my head. “Smart nayna, remember?”
He made an agreeing sound and put his head back against the wall again. “You will have your answer to that one when we see my father.”
“Oh, for fu—Fine. At least tell me how this works. What is this Order you mentioned? And the Home. It’s a fucking group home. The club. Blackwell. One minute I’m singing in a nightclub owned by a billionaire. You’re there. But you turn out to be an alien. The director of the home I’ve lived in for four years drugs me, and then I’m here, on an alien planet, collared as a slave. Put the pieces together for me, Raul, because I don’t get it.”
Raul looked at the ceiling, seeming to think. “I guess it can’t hurt you to know now, since you won’t be leaving this planet again.”
Sighing, he returned his gaze to me. “The Xandari Order is…you might say, a faction of
our government. Among other things, they ensure that the people of this planet obtain what they need. Food and other supplies traded from various parts of this world and brought in from other planets. But the Order’s larger purpose is to keep this world safe. Certain men are chosen from birth, or enlisted into the Order later in life, to fight for this world and protect it.”
“Against things like the Rith?”
“Yes.” He ate the last of his stew and set the bowl beside him.
“They're soldiers then. This Order, they’re Warriors.”
He nodded.
“And you are one of them? You and Malek and Z’pheer?”
“We are.”
I could hear the pride in his voice. It was almost… patriotic.
“But why do you take slaves? And why from other worlds like Earth? Don’t you have planets that are closer?”
Not that I wanted women from other worlds to be kidnapped and sold into alien bondage instead of Earth, but why would the Order bother with a planet so far away when there had to be closer systems with women for the taking?
“Men who are enlisted spend their entire lives training and then fighting for this world’s safety. It is their entire purpose. When they sign on, they are expected to give up their lives if they must. In exchange, the Order supplies us with certain rewards.”
The implications hit home. “Women,” I said tightly.
“Among other things, yes. And as to why they put Earth on the list… G’erthling women are everything we need. Beautiful. Fertile. Fragile.”
My fists clenched, and I set my stew down slowly, trying to grasp what he was telling me. “So, I am a reward? I’m payment from the Order for a good job done?”
The Xandari Order thanks you for your service, Mr. Sauders.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
I sprang to my feet. Paced the cave, arms crossed.
The thing was, as indignant as I was about this whole thing, the idea that I’d been brought here as some prize for three huge alien warriors made me feel…
Fuck, it made me hot as hell.
“Okay.” I stopped pacing and glared at him. “So tell me how this works. What about the Home? How is it connected? And the club. Is it part of it?”