by Emma Vance
Rescued by the Dragorian
Pleasure Planet Series (Book One)
Emma Vance
EV Publishing
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Guarded by the Kenari - Excerpt
Chapter One
Beatrice
I woke, my skin coated with a thin sheen of sweat. The air was dense and hot, like I was laying in the Sahara in broad daylight. Which was strange for the middle of winter. Did I accidentally turn up the heat in my apartment before going to bed?
“I think she’s awake.”
I stiffened at the sound of a real voice in my room with me. A woman’s voice.
My eyes popped open and I jerked upright. Around me was darkness, like a thick blanket settled had over the room.
“Who’s there?” I fumbled around.
“Stay calm.” The woman answered with a drawled accent, her voice came from a few feet away from me, though I couldn’t make out anything in the pitch black.
“Don’t you know telling someone to stay calm never actually works? It does the opposite,” said another woman with a biting edge to her voice.
“We won’t hurt you,” the first voice responded.
Yeah, that statement also made me think the opposite. But there was something laced through both their words that made my hands shake.
Fear.
“Where am I?” I asked, trying to desperately control the tremor in my voice.
“We don’t know. We woke up like this too. We are locked in some sort of container or small room.”
“Who are you?” I reached my hands out tentatively.
“I’m Pippa,” said the second, bolder voice.
“Hazel,” said the first speaker with the southern accent.
“Bea,” I responded and then cleared my throat. “Beatrice, I mean.”
“Hi Beatrice,” answered Hazel.
“What’s happening?” I tried to still my hands by clenching them together. I inhaled deeply and the stench of sweat and body odor filled my nostrils.
“We don’t know,” said Pippa, exasperation coloring her tone. “Hazel woke up first. Then I did. And now you. There are other women around us, I’ve felt their bodies. But no one will wake up. Then we were moving, like we were in a truck or something. But now I think we’ve stopped.”
I looked around, my eyes blinking in the dark. I couldn’t see anything, even if I held my hand right up to my face. I reached out in front of me again but flinched back when my hand encountered warm, sticky, skin.
I yelped.
“You’ve felt the others,” Pippa said drily. “It’s all other women, I think, though I can’t be sure and haven’t checked them all.”
“The walls feel like metal,” Hazel said.
“And they are fucking hot,” Pippa added.
“So, we are a bunch of women, trapped in a metal container, and we were sleeping. I’m thinking we were drugged and kidnapped or something?” I said, the crack in my voice taking away from my false confidence.
I was trying to make sense of what was going on and thinking focused my mind. Trying to analyze the best solutions to hard-as-shit problems was what I got paid to do every day. Some people got panicked when things went sideways, but not me. That was where I shone. So, I needed to put on my problem-solving hat to get the fuck out of here.
“What, we were just snatched from our homes en masse and transported without anyone calling out our abductors?” said Pippa, her voice incredulous.
“You got any other hypothesis?” I answered, crossing my arms.
Before Pippa could respond the container gave a giant lurch. We pitched forward, bodies landing on bodies. I braced myself against the prone form of someone else. Light flooded over us from one end of the long metal container.
I winced at the brightness but inhaled the fresh air that gusted through the opening.
Bodies of women lay around me, unmoving. They looked unconscious. Or worse.
Two women were awake and huddled together and staring straight ahead. One had thick brown hair chopped at her shoulders, dark skin and wide eyes. The other woman was a mess of curly hair in an explosion around her head and green eyes just as wild. Hazel and Pippa.
I followed their gaze to the source of the light.
A woman stood at the opening of the container, sunlight illuminating her from behind. She was diminutive and wearing a flowy dress that fluttered in the small breeze.
“Excellent. Some of them are awake. That makes things easier.”
There was a rustle near the opening, and one of the sleeping women sat up. She screamed, the sound echoing off the metal walls.
“I hear you, girl,” muttered the curly-haired girl in the corner, who sounded like Pippa.
The woman kept shrieking until she stood abruptly, legs wobbling underneath her, and bolted for the open door. Before she crossed the threshold, a large man appeared and lifted a huge stick. He slammed it into the screeching, running girl and she froze as soon as it touched her and collapsed to the floor.
“Jesus.” I exhaled as the girl’s body fell on top of another one.
I clenched my fists together to still their shaking and forced my breath to slow. I couldn’t freak out. I needed to be calm to get out of here.
“They are disoriented.” The woman who stood at the entrance had a cold, flat voice. “Put them in the silk room and we’ll get started with the orientation.” The woman turned and began to walk away.
“Fuck that,” said the girl with the wild curls I assumed was Pippa. She pulled away from the brunette with the cropped hair and stood and leaning uncertainly against the wall.
The woman paused at the doorway. She was still illuminated which made it impossible to see her clearly.
“I won’t be ‘put’ fucking anywhere, bitch,” Pippa continued. “You’re going to take us home right now!” Pippa’s voice gave out at the end, taking away from some of her bravado.
The woman at the doorway slowly walked towards the three of us.
The dark brunette gasped at the same time I realized what was wrong.
This woman . . . wasn’t a woman at all. Her skin was bright blue, like pictures of Caribbean beaches. A gorgeous, terrifying blue. But the most alarming part wasn’t her skin.
It was that she had four luminous eyes staring at us along her forehead.
“Holy fuck,” whispered Pippa.
“I think you’ll find, humans, you won’t be going back home any time soon.” The blue female’s sickly-sweet voice poured out of her. A row of black jagged teeth appeared as her lips curved.
Chapter Two
Beatrice
I fisted my hands in my pajamas, the soft fabric bunching together. Large, silent figures loomed behind the blue woman, looking like a wall of WWE wrestlers dressed as Roman gladiators.
None of us, not even Pippa, tried to fight them as we were hauled to our feet and led through a long passage
. We were brought into a room covered in swaths of sheer amethyst fabric that reminded me of a giant tent from the Arabian Nights book I borrowed repeatedly from the library as a child.
The unconscious girls were carried in by the huge guards clad in golden gladiator costumes. The brunette, who must have been Hazel, walked beside me and we clung to each other as we took in the surroundings.
The blue. . . whatever she was . . . entered the room after us. So far, she was the strangest thing I’d seen, and I still wasn’t sure I trusted my own eyes. The guards were taller than any man I’d ever known and bulging with muscle. Their faces were covered by golden plated helmets, so I couldn’t tell if they had any extra features—like additional eyes. But their skin colors were more of the tans and browns I was used to—certainly not blue. The guards didn’t say a word as they deposited the bodies of the incapacitated human women on the ground around us.
One by one, the women woke up as each was injected with a purple fluid. The liquid must have been a drug because the women slowly woke up. They were calm, if confused. Even the screaming girl from earlier was docile.
The blue alien clapped her hands together, her nasty teeth spreading out across her face like a piece of split rotten fruit.
“Wonderful. Now we are all assembled, I am here to tell you that you have been chosen by his excellency the illustrious Bardoa the Eighteenth to serve as females in the most exclusive Stryxx pleasure planet in the Urythrian Galaxy. You must all be delighted.”
We stared at her. Even the drugged women were starting to look more alive with shock.
“Pleasure planet . . . like . . . some sort of brothel?” I asked, the knot in my stomach getting bigger.
The blue female frowned, the four eyes on her forehead crinkling together like squishy bubbles and it made me want to throw up. “I suppose it isn’t strange that humans do not know of the Stryxx pleasure planet, given your home planet is in a restricted section of the galaxy.”
Planet. Galaxy. The words filtered through my head as I stared at the blue female in mute shock.
I guess we had been abducted after all, just a little further afield than I imagined.
A lot further afield.
The blue alien left the tent, and we didn’t follow. I think we were all in shock. The humans just stood staring at each other, as if waiting to hear it was all a joke. Then, the tent flap opened and the blue female returned. Behind her three human women walked in. They were wearing the same strange see-through silk outfit the blue female alien was wearing.
Their eyes widened collectively when they saw us.
“The other humans have arrived to explain.” The blue alien female addressed the three human women who entered. “Do whatever is necessary to get them acclimatised to the situation. You will have full use of the guards to do so.” She gave a pointed look to the seven-feet tall Roman gladiators that flanked the edges of the room before leaving through the open flap.
I stared at the three human women who had just entered.
“Oh, shit,” said the one nearest to me. She had long black hair that curled at the ends, and lustrous brown skin that glowed with an innate shine. She was like a Bollywood actress come to life.
“Please tell me you know what is going on,” I asked, walking towards her.
“Please tell me we aren’t sex slaves,” added Pippa with a moan.
The woman’s mouth firmed into a hard line and her forehead creased. She exchanged a glance with the other two women beside her, before looking back at us.
“As much as I don’t want to tell you this, yes, you are sex slaves.”
Chapter Three
Mekvar
“How in Teraq’s name did we end up in this place?” Mal shifted uneasily on his feet, and we both stared at the reddish-brown planet below us.
Small and desolate, only a small corner of Stryxx was inhabited by actual life—the Pleasure Houses.
That was where he had to be. It was the only place he could be. And we were not leaving this planet until we found him.
I wasn’t going to fail my people again.
“These are the coordinates we were given. The scientist is down there somewhere.” I folded my arms across my chest, not liking this any more than the rest of my crew. But I masked my feelings better than the narrowed-eyed glances of the others. We were here to do one job and then leave. If we were successful, that could be a turning point in our war with the Wolgons. I didn’t have to like it, but I had to get the job done. Our entire survival depended on it.
“It’s going to look very suspicious if a ship full of Dragorians dock at a Stryxx pleasure planet and don’t make use of the place.” Mal growled, his fangs extending.
“The entire galaxy knows our people don’t use pleasure planets, Mal. It won’t be strange if we aren’t visiting the females.” I frowned, considering his words. He wasn’t wrong that we needed a cover. “There are the pits, too. You can’t say Dragorians don’t like a good fight.”
Mal made a disgusted noise and curled his lip. “It isn’t a fair match. Enslaved men fighting for their lives. They’ve no choice in the matter.” Mal turned away from the planet on the viewing screen.
“Well, we haven’t come to fuck or fight. We’ve come to do a job. The rest of the crew will stay on the ship for now, until we start looking for the scientist. Mal and Tsanel, you will come with me to handle Bardoa. Once we’ve got the all-clear, we’ll start searching this shithole planet for what we’ve come for.”
“You really think Bardoa’s not going to suspect anything?” Tsanel’s mouth twisted in disbelief, his brows drawing together.
I shrugged. “He likes being wealthy, and we can make him wealthier. Why should he care who comes to his planet if they all pay with the same coynes?”
It was like I was trying to convince myself at the same time as my crew. The truth was, if we didn’t persuade Bardoa we were on his planet for a legitimate reason, we would fail before we even had the chance to search for the missing Dragorian scientist. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Not this time.
“Ugh, it doesn’t sit right making a disgusting piece of unga turd like Bardoa richer. For what? So he can buy more females and use them like garbage? We should rescue all the females and blow this whole place up,” Mal said, his hands fisted at his sides.
Privately, I agreed. But that wouldn’t get us any closer to defeating our enemy. And right now, we needed all the help we could get. “Rescuing females won’t save our people from the Wolgons. And it won’t save our own miserable skins either if Bardoa catches us. We need to retrieve whoever this scientist is and bring him back to the Council. And I hope to the Gods he’s as important as the Council say he is.”
I faced Mal, the frown on his face mirroring my own feelings. Mal crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t have to like it.”
“None of us do,” I said grimly, as our ship pulled into the Stryxx docking station. “But we do have to do it if we want our people to live.”
Beatrice
We stared numbly at the three girls in front of us as they explained what our exciting new life was going to be.
And holy shit, it was bad.
“Wait, how long have you been here?” said a pretty African-American girl who was picking up things a little faster than some of the other girls who had just woken up.
“Three years,” answered Nisha, the brown-skinned Bollywood woman who’d been doing most of the talking. Nisha was young and looked to be in her mid-to-late twenties. But unlike most of the new women here, she did not have a look of confusion-panic-fear that contorted across most of our faces. Certainly mine.
She seemed complacent. The other two were the same. Calm. Still. Their faces blank, not anxious, or scared. As if this was all fine.
As if this wasn’t the end of the fucking world.
“Wait. Three fucking years?” Pippa asked, sounding like she was losing her mind. She repeated everything they said with an alarmed incredu
lousness. I would have laughed had we been in any other situation. But we weren’t.
And I certainly wasn’t laughing.
“You have been here for three years?” Pippa asked the three women again, the pitch of her voice higher the more she spoke.
“Well, there were more of us a few years ago,” piped up a curvy redhead named Kat who had, until now, not really contributed to the conversation. She reminded me of Tess Holiday with her voluptuous figure, and red curls—a plump fifties movie star.
“What happened to the others?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Most tried to run. But they were found, and they all went the same way,” said Nisha, her tone flat, matching the blankness of her face.
“And which way was that?” asked Hazel, her quiet voice echoing through the hushed silence.
“The pits,” Nisha bit off, like she was spitting the word. No one spoke for a minute. Kat, the redhead, looked particularly troubled and the other human girl who was with them, a stocky Asian girl named Mei, looked grave. I didn’t know what ‘the pits’ were.
“We don’t know anything about this world, or what we are doing here. Hell, some of us don’t believe this is even real. I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t want to just give in to whatever is happening. I want to fight. I want to run. I don’t care about these ‘pits’, I care about not being raped by a bunch of horny aliens.” My words were met by a chorus of nods and murmurs of agreement.
But the three women did not look impressed. Their eyes darted to one another’s. Nisha’s mouth flattened into a thin line.