Joyzal’s Prize
Michele Mills
Contents
Summary
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Newsletter
Acknowledgments
Rayzor’s One
Excerpt
About the Author
Also by Michele Mills
Summary
He’s found his mate and he’s keeping her.
Jacole is supposed to leave in the morning to start training at Quantico. Instead she’s been kidnapped by asshole space pirates who are about to sell her and the other women they’ve captured as sex slaves to the highest bidder. Oh hell, no. Jacole vows they’ll soon realize they’ve caught the wrong damn human. She organizes a mutiny to take down the f*kers who’ve kidnapped them…but the plan is interrupted when someone blows a hole in the side of the ship.
A seven foot tall lethal warrior emerges from the rubble with a weapon in each clawed hand. Jacole is speechless before this display of manly glory. This Bounty Hunter is easily the handsomest man (alien) she’s ever seen. Her panties are instantly wet. He touches her, kisses her, throws her on his ship and claims her, and vows she’s the female he’s waited all his life to find. His Bride!
What the hell?
Well, he might be a lover like no other and an aggressive and driven male she could actually…admire, but Jacole doesn’t do forever. In order to earn her love, he has to earn her trust.
Copyright © 2017 by Michele Mills. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email to [email protected]
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover art by Meljean Brook
Edited by Aquila Editing
To Laurann Dohner and R Lee Smith whose kickass science fiction romance inspired me to write my own.
Chapter One
Jacole sat on her side of the cage and listened to the eerie, echoing splat of water on the metal surface. Strange considering she was on the cargo bay of a spaceship. You’d think they’d have leaky pipes worked out by now. Lizard Lady, her cell mate and fellow prisoner in this hellhole situation, caught her gaze for a moment and then turned her iridescent green head, staring off into the middle distance.
Jacole fisted her hands, digging her nails into her palms. “Crap,” she muttered.
It was fucking hard to devise and coordinate a decent escape plan when she couldn’t talk with the other prisoner in her own damn cell. And forget trying to communicate with the females in the other cages scattered around the cargo bay either. The asshole space pirates had a rock-solid plan—kidnap females of varying species from all over the universe, throw them together during transport, and never worry about an organized resistance because the women couldn’t fucking talk to each other.
Or, well, she couldn’t talk to anyone else. She’d heard whispers from some of the other cages, noises that sounded like speech patterns. Or maybe it was crying and whimpering. She couldn’t be sure.
Oh hell. She turned her head back toward her “roommate.” Giving up would get her nowhere. She had to communicate with the female who was now slumped next to her on the filthy floor of their shared prison cell. At least she assumed Lizard Lady was a female. There were twin swells that looked suspiciously like breasts on its green, scaly chest, and it seemed delicate despite the abnormally long limbs and clawed toes. Basically, this alien looked humanoid, a very pretty and brilliantly colored lizard of similar size and weight to a human female.
Their communication so far had consisted of grunts, head nods and hand gestures. Jacole was hoping for something more. Maybe they could at least learn each other’s names. That would be a good start. She caught Lizard Lady’s cool gaze again and pressed her hand against her chest. “My name is Jacole. Juh-col,” she sounded out slowly. “Jacole Walker. What is your name?”
Lizard Lady tapped her own chest and hissed in response.
Jacole dropped her hand and shook her head.
I can’t understand a word this woman is saying. I don’t speak hiss.
Lizard Lady let out a sharp puff of air and looked away, obviously annoyed at their lack of communication.
Who was she kidding? She’d tried this before and it hadn’t worked—tried pointing at objects and repeating the name, but each time Lizard Lady hissed, Jacole became further frustrated. She couldn’t physically form the other woman’s language with her own mouth, or vice versa. Everything Lizard Lady said sounded to her ears like one long hiss. No pauses, no deviation in tone, nothing to distinguish words or patterns to emulate. The two of them were going to have to create some sort of sign language to understand one another; they’d have to do the Annie Sullivan-Helen Keller in Miracle Worker routine in order to finally converse. Fuck. She should’ve taken American Sign Language instead of French in college. That would’ve come in handy right now.
And what sucked was Jacole could understand every word the freak-ass alien space pirates who’d captured them said to her just fine. She glanced at the group of guards who stood nearby and glared at them with every ounce of energy left in her body, wishing laser beams could magically shoot out of her eyes and decimate them all. They’d kidnapped her in the middle of the night from her cozy apartment, and when she awoke in this filthy cage and the aliens had spoken, she’d found she could understand what they said to her. The movement of their lips didn’t perfectly coordinate with the language she was hearing, sort of like listening to closed captioning on TV. They must’ve implanted some sort of translator device into her head so she could understand their language, but the females they’d penned up like cattle were left on their own when it came to understanding each other. The guards had only bothered to implant the language they used.
So, unable to communicate with her fellow prisoners and not wanting to chat with the evil guards, Jacole sat brooding on the floor of the cage, hour after hour, day after day, analyzing minutiae and trying to figure out how to get the fuck out of there…because she had to get the fuck outta there.
She returned to watching the guards, which was her favorite pastime. Try to figure out the guards: Level Ten. They’d make an error eventually, and when they did, she’d be ready, because she knew every fucking thing they did, every tiny routine.
The aliens that’d kidnapped her weren’t all male. A few of them were female, which always angered her more. Some of the guards that rotated in and out of the cargo bay were tall, thin, and purple. And not a pretty purple, but a dark, malignant purple, like a scab or a wound. But they weren’t all the same species. There was one alien that was green but otherwise looked very human and a few others that looked like giant insects. They all wore a mismatch of clothing with bits of light armor. This wasn’t a tight, professional military organization. They seemed more like the dregs of whatever societies they’d come from. Sh
e’d dubbed them “space pirates” —the alien equivalent of a low-level street gang, drug dealers, or maybe even slavers. The guards’ favorite pastime was boasting to each other about the fortune they were going to make selling this particular group of women to the highest bidder as sex slaves. Apparently this was a special sale.
She took another deep breath and slumped against the bars, resting her head and lifting her chin, trying to get comfortable, which was impossible when you felt, looked, and smelled like crap. Holy shit. She was living out the plot of a sci-fi horror movie. The cute pajamas she’d been wearing when she’d been snatched were now tattered and filthy. The first day she’d woken up in her cell, Jacole had immediately noticed the smell—it hit her like a million porta potties. She’d gagged; her nose and eyes watered. And she’d looked up, only to have Lizard Lady hiss at her with a forked tongue.
It had all been pretty hellish.
She’d scrambled to a far corner of her cell and cried and screamed until a purple alien had come by and given her a shot in the arm with some type of small pressure gun and she’d passed out again.
The second time she’d woken up she’d cried some more, but did so quietly, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face.
She’d always prided herself on her composure, on her resolve. Other women cried. Not Jacole. Jacole was hard as nails.
But yeah, being kidnapped by aliens broke her.
On that first day, Lizard Lady had kindly passed her a snack bar of some sort. Since she’d been starving, Jacole had tried to eat it. It was almost like eating dirt, but she was desperate, so she’d choked it down. There was water to drink and a bucket to piss and shit in. But at least she’d had Lizard Lady’s quiet presence there in the cage to help her through those first few days. That had been a plus. If she’d been alone things would’ve been a thousand times worse.
Loud language suddenly rang out, startling her. Each time that happened, it reminded her of high school classrooms, everyone quieting down to listen to announcements. The guards paused, pointed ears perked up. Jacole listened, too. It was just a notification from an alien voice of the changing of the guard. The aliens started moving. She turned and met Lizard Lady’s inquisitive gaze. She blinked, which meant a veil of film slowly slid down her large, bulbous eyes and back up. Jacole was getting used to it. It was actually kinda pretty.
Dammit, if only they could talk, plan…devise.
Jacole clenched her jaw and turned back, counting the other cells again, something she did on a daily basis. The alien cages were just standard-issue steel with bars and a locked door, nothing fancy or “alien” about them. There were fifteen cells with two or three females per cage. The aliens had captured a total of forty females. The spaceship hummed around them in its techno glory, and there was the constant clanking of boots on alien metal. Guttural announcements would sometimes be made. Since she knew every word, it helped her to understand the expected length of their trip and the aliens’ intentions. Still though, it was damn creepy.
And as a daily reminder of the terror of her situation, there were the screams and the shrieks and the crying when the male guards dragged a female out and raped her on the expansive floor of the cargo bay.
The raping started on Jacole’s second day in the hole. Four aliens pulled a female out of a cage nearest the entrance to the cargo bay. The woman was human-like but bald, and her skin was blue. They’d thrown her flailing, struggling body to the floor. Three of the guards held the thrashing female down and tore her pants off, and the fourth got busy setting himself in position for the rape. Jacole had rushed to the front of her cage, clutching the bars, white-knuckled, her eyes wet with the knowledge there wasn’t a damn thing she could do. This couldn’t possibly be happening, these aliens weren’t built the same, they weren’t really going to… But one of the guards looked like he was adjusting himself, pulling something out. He shoved between the woman’s legs and began thrusting. The woman let out a gurgled scream.
At that point Jacole had put her face in her hands and turned away, unable to watch, trying to give the woman some dignity. And the tears had started all over again. She’d cried the whole time, hearing it go on and on as the guards took turns with her. Damn motherfucking, aliens.
The guards hadn’t beaten the female. Hadn’t marked her, hadn’t killed her. Just used her, because why would they damage the commodity they were going to sell? And they continued to use the women in their captivity day after day. She heard them talking amongst themselves, chatting about trying out the goods before the final sale.
Assholes.
Monsters.
She watched as the day shift left and a new set of guards entered the cargo bay. She took a deep breath. The four rapists. The shift she dreaded the most. The morning shift had a few females and wasn’t as bad as the second shift. The second shift had the concentration of rapist pigs. It was all so fucking tragic. She heard the change in tone around her as the other females shifted in their cages, their eyes wild with fear as the four guards entered the cargo bay. How could she live like this, waiting for her turn to be raped, listening to other women being raped and not being able to do a damn thing about it? And then what was next? What would happen when they reached their destination, the new masters, the men they’d been sold to? Was this just a prelude to more horrors to come? Was this the calm before the storm?
In her mind she replayed the movie Roots, remembering how women had literally jumped to their death off slave ships crossing the ocean and drowned, preferring this end they’d chosen for themselves to the future of rape and slavery spread out before them. Jacole knew she wasn’t there yet. She still had hope that she could find a way out. Her life, her future, wasn’t out of her hands yet.
But when things got really bad, she pulled that idea out and petted it. For some strange reason, having that “out” in the back of her mind comforted her and helped her to go on.
She watched the aliens pick woman after woman for their daily sessions of gang rape. The females weren’t beaten or bleeding, but they sat in their cage afterwards crying, or sat stone cold like a statue.
Early on, a tall, foreboding alien had entered the cargo bay. She’d assumed he was the captain, the head of their fucked up organization. He’d spoken to them all in a booming voice, letting them know they’d all been sold and earmarked to the highest bidder. They were being delivered to their new masters, a race he called Hurlians. From the gasps and tears of the other females and the way Lizard Lady stiffened and looked scared as shit upon hearing these words, Jacole had surmised this was a bad thing. A really fucking bad thing.
She had to get the fuck out of there.
Her lips thinned. Today, finally, there was a ray of light. A tiny beacon of hope. The aliens had made a mistake.
Finally.
Jacole looked over at the cage next to hers, trying to make eye contact with the female next door. The female was humanoid, too, but with a sheen of tiny gray feathers that covered her back and the top of her chest. Bird Lady lay quiet this morning, nibbling on a meal bar with her beak mouth. She’d been gang raped two days ago, and her whole demeanor had changed from scared to pissed the fuck off. Jacole had noticed the guards had barely been able to keep Bird Lady down because she’d come out swinging—and there were four of them. In fact, the whole group hadn’t been able to rape her—she had a deadly kick. Only one of them had been able to finish before they’d given up, cussing, and shoved her back into her cage. Yeah, Bird Lady was Jacole’s go-to for escape. She was super strong. A total badass. Lizard Lady wasn’t too shabby, either; she looked like a woman who’d make it through Navy SEAL training. Most of the other females seemed to be trying to sleep off the worst of the imprisonment, or crying, but Jacole had to believe that given the chance they’d fight for their lives, too, with vicious zeal.
Really, this was a good group for a prison break and mutiny. They just needed opportunity. They had to get out of the cages and take over the ship. If they didn
’t do this before they reached their destination, they were screwed. Literally.
And for Jacole, time was ticking because today was either her or Lizard Lady’s turn for the gang rape. It was obvious the guards were going down row by row, picking the next victim in an orderly fashion. Except when they got to a cell, it wasn’t apparent which female they’d pull out of the cage first. It could be the closest one by the door, or the female shoving herself into the farthest corner, or the one spitting and kicking. Totally random. Yesterday they’d raped the second female in Bird Lady’s cage, and there wasn’t a third, so yep, today it was either Jacole or Lizard Lady.
Jacole turned to Lizard Lady. She gestured to get her attention and showed her the shank she’d fashioned out of a tiny piece of mystery metal. A guard had accidentally dropped it after delivering their meal bars that morning, and Jacole had immediately reached a hand out through the bars, scooped it up, and slipped it into the folds of her clothes. The guard had heard the sound of something falling and had turned around immediately, scanning the area. Jacole had studiously stared in the other direction. The guard shrugged and moved on, and she’d blown out a breath and wanted to cheer like a madwoman. But she’d keep it all inside, escape plans buzzing in her head. She didn’t know what the small hand-size piece of metal was used for, but darn if it didn’t make a perfect shank.
Lizard Lady’s bulbous eyes widened at the sight of the tiny weapon. Her features curved into a malicious grin. She crossed her arms and leaned back. She jerked her chin, letting Jacole know it was on.
So the plan was ready. Jacole prayed Lizard Lady understood her part. They were going to jump one of the aliens at the same time and take his blaster away. Number one priority would be releasing Bird Lady, too, because she was so strong and Jacole figured she’d be a huge help. From what she’d gathered, there really weren’t that many aliens running this ship. She’d only seen nine. There were forty females. They could do this. This wasn’t some fully fitted military operation. The captives outnumbered the aliens. If they could break free and get to the bridge and hijack the ship… One of these females had to know at least the basics on how to fly them all home. Hell, maybe she could figure it out herself.
Joyzal's Prize (Alien Bounty Hunters Book 2) Page 1