I jerked. “What?” I remembered nothing of this little tale.
Is that why my muscles twitched and I felt so spacey?
“I suspect you fell asleep, and it took advantage of his distraction when the Zozon died.” Pincers bracketing his mouth clicked. “It is what I would do. Your mate did not want to give you up. It was best. The L’Odo would not let him return you to his lair. Not that that would have kept you safe long.” Yofk sounded pleased. “I expect this will be a longstanding arrangement.”
My mouth dropped open with a soft pop. “He had no right to offer me for sex without my consent. None whatsoever.”
Twitching antenna drooped. “You will not honour the trade?”
“No, I bloody well shan’t. He had no right. None.”
Awkwardly gaining his feet, Yofk itched his trunk segment. “But female, Venomous One will be distraught if I set you outside to be harmed.”
“I’ll wait here.” I glanced around. Dark, dank, but enclosed and safe. “They haven’t bothered me yet. I’ll just wait patiently until he comes for me.”
Yofk again clicked the hard appendages at his mouth. “You expect protection for nothing in return. Why? You are not my female. I have not offered my mound to you free of trade.”
My eyes rounded. “You won’t let me wait here?”
“Do people give things of value away for free on your planet?”
I opened my mouth to confirm that yes people most certainly did, but then stopped.
That would be an outright lie.
Even if I dismissed my own low opinion of fibbers, and lied my ass off, what if the alien detected the untruth by scent, or some other sensitive sense?
It wouldn’t respect me if it thought me untrustworthy.
I choked out a few nonsense syllables before quieting.
Standing outside the safety of this burrow would be astoundingly unwise.
I looked away from the alien, afraid he’d glimpse my terror. “There must be some other way....”
“You want to open a trade exchange for protection?” asked Yofk in an odd tone.
He placed his scraggy arms one on top of the other in a dominant gesture reminiscent of arm crossing.
“Yes!” I jumped at the offer. “Let’s trade. Agreements made about my body should be made by me and me alone.” I lifted my chin. Temporary or not, Venomous trading me for sex was wrong. It disgusted me beings who were slaves themselves would stoop so low. “I am not a thing to be passed around.”
“Fine.” Yofk opened his long, thin arms and proffered his seven-fingered hand. “What do you offer?”
I blinked.
Trade; an exchange of valuables.
The only thing I had was my tunic, but if I used that I’d be down to panties again.
Then I remembered Venomous’ deal with Kilboh to hurt this alien.
What would happen if I traded with that, persuaded Venomous not to hurt Yofk in exchange for protection?
Kilboh will be pissed if Venom reneges.
A refund to that alien meant I’d have to give back the tunic, so once again, I ended up disadvantaged.
Why am I always the one to suffer?
I didn’t want to be the whiner that made everything about them, but fate had it out for me big time, and must have put a bounty on my head misfortune and serendipity were hell bound to collect.
Part of me wanted to say fuck Venom, and let him deal with the fallout, but my practical side knew even though he’d made a serious judgement error, Venomous was my best shot at surviving.
He wouldn’t have made the choice to trade me lightly.
Was it stupid to defend him?
Surely I should at least give the male himself a chance to explain before I went off all half cocked and stopped trusting him.
“Well, Human?” Yofk’s warbling drawl filled with pity. “What have you to trade?”
It was humiliating how he eyed me as if I were pathetic.
“Can’t I owe you a favour?”
“What good does that do me here? You might die tomorrow. What returns would my expenditure afford me then? Each span you are here I risk my life.” Bulbous eyes blinked. He buzzed high in his chest segment. “You have nothing but the cloth on your back and your body. I do not need coverings. I need the clasp of a female.”
I shrivelled inside.
Out of options, I resorted to begging and met his gaze, bottom lip trembling. “Please don’t ask this of me.”
“Why? It is an arrangement as old as time.”
“I’m mated to Venom,” I hedged.
“You are loyal. Commendable, but you forget who gave you to me. This is not infidelity. It is a concession to your circumstance.”
“We’re not compatible,” I blustered. “You have no penis.”
Nothing dangled between his legs.
Yofk made a sound of relief as a cluster of fleshy, moist rods appeared from behind a soft flap at his lowest segment to thrust at the air.
Squalling, I plastered myself to the wall, dropping the branch in my haste then too scared to bend over and pick it up.
“You have a vent.” Yofk stared at my groin as if he could see the space between my legs through the tunic. Who knew, maybe he could. “This will work.”
“I’m not having sex with you,” I snapped my fear deteriorating into fury. “I’m not attracted to you. Even if I was, I already said, I’m mated and will not sleep with another alien for safety that should be offered out of common fucking courtesy. Been there, done that.”
“I don’t want to sleep.” His stiff, beetling brow pulled lower. “I want to enter you.” He inhaled. Downy appendages on his hands uncoiled. “You are in heat, but there is nothing I can do about that. I would think Venomous One has planted his seed, but if I breed you, it only ensures my protection for life.”
Horrified didn’t begin to describe my thoughts on birthing a child in this hellhole.
I got that’s what Venomous assumed would happen, but I clung to the feeble hope we were too different to conceive.
I pressed closer to the wall, sticky with a sour, whitish secretion I didn’t look too close at. It stank. “I won’t do it. Don’t come near me. I’ll scream.”
He screeched laughter. “Go ahead. Waste your breath.” He studied me. “Some females are difficult. I will touch you until you need release. My female considered me skilful until they killed her. I was a great favourite of hers.” Yofk lowered himself to his knees. “Come.”
I lunged for a dark hole that just had to be the exit.
“Have you seen the Vudwani? She was not always Grol’s property.”
A flash of memory; the leashed female pinned between two rutting males.
I slammed to a stop.
Satisfied he had my attention, Yofk carried on. “She ran from her protector too. She once belonged to the Verak Venomous One bested.” Buzzing in a sigh of irritation, Yofk inelegantly rose and strode to a rocky slab that jutted from the wall, his waist high. The spotted shell of his back to me, he chopped something I couldn’t see. It smelt herby. “By the time the Verak tracked her to the inner tunnels where she fled, she had been taken by three males.” He paused then added matter-of-factly, “He didn’t want her after that. Verak are territorial and possessive of their harems. They do not share. Once a concubine is soiled they cast them aside.”
“Venom,” I whispered, “isn’t Verak.”
“It is much the same with his species. They set their damaged females aside,” he explained and continued to hack up food.
My stomach rumbled.
“So now the Vudwani services the males in this place,” he continued. “Lines and lines of males per rotation. They would eagerly welcome a new female.”
A high keen strangled from my throat. “Right.” I dragged in a ragged breath. “So it’s better to only whore for you and him?”
“Venomous One is your mate,” he reproached. “He did not agree to this without personal cost. It damaged his honour to giv
e you to another. He did so to spare you worse.” Yofk plated a portion of the raw food on a leaf then placed it near the mound of dry leaves that made up his bed. A lure. “On his planet, he would be considered weak for sacrificing honour to spare your life.”
Anger tore through me in a jagged spike. “Spare me?”
“If you stayed in the pit bad things would happen. Understand the outcome for you would have been the same no matter what he did. Venomous One would have fought to protect you from the next male that tried to grab you. He would have been subdued by the L’Odo, and you would be ravaged by any who could get hold of you. They would not be patient. They would fill any orifice yielding enough to take them. Brutally. Without care of killing you.”
“The guards would have stopped them.” I wrapped my arms around my middle. How sad imagining the best was my only comfort. “They want them to work.”
“The frenzy that would begin when word spread the warrior Rä’s female was unprotected would have been fierce. You are more attractive to them because you are his. All want the female of a strong male. They would wonder what you had that was special enough to ensnare such a male as he.” Yofk sent me a gloomy look. His antennae wiggled. “No, small one, the L’Odo would not save you. They would let the slaves take their fill until you expired.” He paused. “Do you believe your dead are sacred? Some species do. Many here do not. They would mount your corpse, or simply touch your sex to gather your pheromones and expend over you. Venomous One would rampage, but they would subdue him. In the end, you would be a sad memory. Maybe even a source of sorrow to him as the solars wore on.” Yofk sighed. “The next rotation the desperately hungry would eat small one stew. That is if your meat was not carried off to be eaten raw by the more savage creatures.”
“Stop.” Broken, I fisted my hands in the fabric of my tunic. “I’m well aware the only thing standing in the way of those monsters is Venom.”
“Is that all you see him as? A shield?”
I shrugged, lifeless.
“Then why deny me? I am the second strongest slave. Only the Verak and Yoni come close. I can protect you as well as Venomous One can. Why may I not exchange protection for mating when the Rä can? What did he say or do to garner your approval?”
“He didn’t–” My mouth clicked shut.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Ah, he did not ask did he?” Yofk’s stare became piercing. “He took.”
Shaking, I glared and stood my ground.
If he jumped me what could I do?
When Venomous had done so there was no escape, and I doubted the outcome with this alien would differ.
This time I have a voice.
Yofk understood me.
Would Venom have stopped if he’d understood me?
“Hate you forever,” I mumbled.
“You have a high opinion of yourself to assume I care what you think.” He rubbed his chest, eyeing me with amusement. “Your planet must be a proud place.” His hand dropped to his side and his fingers clenched. Amusement faded, replaced with anger. “That male would die for you because you are his, yet you speak of him with scorn. You are naïve. Set aside this past life and expectations. Realise how lucky you are.”
I stumbled on the spot. “Lucky?”
“You were abducted from your home by a superior species that might mean to enslave your people. You were bought by a violent slaver species then thrown into an arena with sex-starved gladiators that have not known softness for solars, only to rouse the interest of the strongest. You see how the Vudwani is used, still, you show no gratitude. The Rä sacrificed his personal honour to ensure the flame of your life burns bright, and you piss on his offering thinking yourself above the natural order.”
Oh, no, he bloody well didn’t.
“Being forced to fuck anything that moves is not the natural order of things.” Incredulous, I jabbed my forefinger at the floor, steaming mad. “Fuck you and fuck your fucked up world.” All but hopping now, my head shook with the force of my words. “I didn’t ask for this.” My pitch climbed. “I don’t deserve this shit. I’m doing the best I can. You’re judging me for trying to maintain a modicum of pride, so I don’t lose all will to live.”
“I hear nothing but whining, female. It is not attractive.” He looked me up and down. “You ask to trade? Well, what can you offer? What skill of the mind? What strength of the body?”
The callous words knocked into me like blows from his thorny fists.
“You are weak. You should be on your knees begging to receive me.”
Breathing hard, I backed up and twisted my face away. “I’m physically weaker than you, so what? If I were male you wouldn’t expect me to do this or back down.”
An amused whirr contracted the segments of his long neck. “You are not male, and if you were, I would break you for entering my territory.”
“It’s not okay for people to assume I lack a sense of worth, and can be used and abused because I don’t have a dick. I won’t accept it. I won’t make it easy for you people to act heartless, to act like my choice doesn’t matter.” I thumped my chest. “I matter. My feelings are not irrelevant.”
“Feelings? I want to stick it in.”
Words spoken to me by another alien echoed in my brain.
‘You were made a battle prize by the L’Odo.’
Was my resistance to bartering my body impractical when I was considered a prize by, hands down, the scariest male in the place?
‘You are mine to protect, mine to shelter, mine to feed, and mine to cover.’
A striking realisation tore through my fear of the mauling I believed imminent.
As much as he talked the talk, Yofk hadn’t touched me.
“You want what this female refuses to offer?”
“I do.”
“Then take it by force like the monster you choose to be. I won’t let you scare me into spreading my legs, just so your conscience lets you sleep at night.”
Yofk recoiled.
Damn straight, I called him on it, and I was right to.
He didn’t want to force me, wouldn’t, or Venomous had warned him not to, and he tried to bully me into offering myself.
‘Sickly, weak, pathetic, worthless creature.’
The L’Odo were wrong.
Yofk was wrong.
I might not be the strongest creature on the planet, but that did not make me weak.
True strength came from making sacrifices and beating the odds to survive.
It didn’t come as a happenstance of birth.
Bulging eyes frosted over. “I no longer desire the clasp of your hole, female. Ungratefulness is ugly.” He retreated. “You turn my stomach.”
Spine straightening, I crossed my arms over my breasts. “Right back at you.”
He spat phlegm at my feet, but he let me stay.
And he laid not one feeler on me.
CHAPTER NINE
Batting aside a vine, Venomous stooped and thumped a fist against the hard earth above the tunnel leading into Yofk’s mound.
He wanted to tear the crude structure to pieces and rage at the male within.
That would be dishonourable.
Venomous swore, if the Krael had hurt her, he’d break his chitin in half.
He wondered if she’d bared her back, and gazed at the male in the same soft way she did when he pleased her with the gift of cloth.
No trace of her pheromones hung in the misty air, did that mean her body did not dampen for Yofk?
Bizarre as he found the notion, he wanted her to react that way to his body alone, yet surely to be otherwise would mean it was painful for her?
Would she understand this was the best he could do in the place of a trusted clan male as her lesser mate?
A globular head popped from the hole, and furious, bulging eyes met his. “At last. Take her before I do something I regret.”
Anger surged within Venomous’ blood, and burned his insides.
He had no reason t
o strike the Krael for taking what he’d been owed.
And yet....
“I owe Kilboh,” he rumbled waving the male forward.
“Not now.” Yofk clicked a series of ear-splitting trills. “You do not want to fight me. I am enraged.”
Lumen pushed past the male then climbed from the tunnel looking flustered.
She spun once she’d cleared the threshold and they locked gazes.
Her lips thinned to a bloodless slash. “Gratitude.”
Snorting, Yofk dismissed her brusque parting and shot Venomous a look of sympathy. “I do not envy you. Bring her to me if you need someone to watch her. Another would tear her limb from limb.”
Lumen said nothing in retaliation, only watched as the Krael disappeared into the dark recesses of his mound.
She stared at her grubby feet as they squirmed, and dug furrows into the soil.
Venomous tasted the air, but could not gather the potent musk she emanated during clutch.
To his shame, his hearts lifted.
Yofk could not coax her into mating.
Then why did she avoid his eye as if disgraced?
Disquieted she thought he would reject her, he reached for her. “My Rä’Na–”
Flinching, she shied away. “Cold. Go back Venom’s lair now?”
Why does she put emphasis on my possession of the space? “It is our lair.”
“Whatever you saying.” She peered into the dark spaces of the jungle then shivered. “No safe. Us go?”
The journey back to the lair was fraught with quiet.
She would not let him help her, and struggled over the craggy, mountainous terrain, often falling to her knees, or bashing her legs until he saw bruises staining her flesh.
Venomous became convinced the Krael had harmed her.
Once he got the ragged covering off, he’d inspect each speck of her flesh for damage then take reparation out of the male’s hide.
When she slipped on a steep incline, and fell flat onto her front, he rushed to help her stand.
She shoved at him. “Let go.”
“I will carry you. There are no healers here. If you harm yourself–”
“Fine.” She folded her arms and hid her face. “Do whatever. Me no stop. Me no have choice!”
Venomous: Erotic Science Fiction Romance (Alien Warrior Book 1) Page 13