“Please just kill me,” she choked.
He raised one sleek black eyebrow. “And waste a perfectly good piece of ass?” Setting her down, he shoved her toward one of the guards and zipped up his suit. “Don’t let her out of your sight, Zannen.”
The instant he disappeared in a flare bubble, Jasmine swayed, rubber-kneed and shaking. Only the grip around her abused arm kept her upright. Tears of shame streaked down her cheeks in cooling echoes of the rivers drying on her legs.
“Miss King.” The minister’s tone was flat as he approached. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him but she could just imagine the expression of scorn on his face. God knew she’d seen it often enough on her father’s.
“You will remain here,” he continued, “under guard until my daughter’s status has been determined. Do not create any further difficulties for yourself.”
“Your daughter!” Her eyes jerked up to his and suddenly the ambassador’s true motive for spiriting Monica away from the ship slammed into her—he planned to forge a political alliance with their leader by claiming the man’s only living daughter.
And she had helped him do it.
Jasmine felt sick. When Pret had come to her, she’d considered the possibility he wanted Monica for himself and immediately dismissed it. He was a fussy old diplomat who exhibited none of the brooding sexual hunger all the other Garathani males radiated, while Monica was a belligerent little Goth doctor who loved nothing more than letting the air out of pompous windbags with her verbal darts. She’d drive him crazy within five minutes.
So much for her powers of deductive reasoning. The idea that Monica might be fighting Pret off right now just about killed her. Thank God the doctors hadn’t removed her biometric implant yet so Kellen and Shauss had a chance to find her before it was too late. The man was old and thin but he was Garathani-tall and he hadn’t just gone through a life-threatening physical transition. If anything happened to Monica, she’d never forgive herself.
“Yes, my daughter—whom I may never have a chance to know now, thanks to you. I suspect she would die before submitting to Pret. So you understand,” his pointed look became even more pointed when it drifted below her waist, “why I’ll be disinclined to protect you should anything happen to her.”
A tremor shook Jasmine as sharp prongs of awareness penetrated her shock. She was mostly naked in front of a bunch of seven-foot-tall aliens who hadn’t had sex in over a decade. If Cecine chose to withdraw his protection, Shauss would probably order them all to fuck her to death—after he’d exacted his own personal revenge.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, quelling the urge to slide a palm protectively over her crotch as more tears rolled down her cheeks.
After staring at her for another agonizing moment, Cecine snatched a roll of fluffy white material out of thin air and handed it to her.
“Clean and compose yourself as best you can.” He turned to Shelley. “Nurse Bonham, do you require a physician?”
“No!” Still sitting at the table, Shelley kept her arms wrapped over her bulging stomach. “I just want to go home.”
“In due time.” He sent stern a look Jasmine’s way. “Zannen, see that she conducts herself appropriately until I return.”
“With pleasure, Minister.”
She pressed her lips together, not daring to look up at the source of the growl as Cecine stalked out.
“Jasmine, what did you do?” Shelley whispered, leaving dark mascara smudges as she wiped her eyes with unsteady fingers.
Jasmine couldn’t speak around the tears. And what could she say that she hadn’t already? That she was trying to think for herself, to do the right thing, to prove that she wasn’t just Daddy’s little embarrassment? Her father would say that’s where she’d made her first mistake—thinking for herself. She hated that he was right. If she’d just stuck to the mission, none of this would have happened.
But if she hadn’t acted, she would have spent the rest of her life wondering if she’d deprived Monica of her one chance at freedom. That was a burden she couldn’t have lived with. Period. She’d made the best decision she could based on the information available to her at the time, and now she’d just have to live with the consequences.
Unfortunately, so would everyone else.
She stood up straighter and swiped eyes with her free hand, determined not to act like any more of a victim than she already had. After all, Cecine hadn’t withdrawn his protection just yet.
Taking a deep breath, she glared down at the long, hard fingers clutching her arm. “Do you mind?”
“Not very well,” came the gravelly reply.
“Listen, you…” She glanced up and gasped, instinctively trying to pull away. Jesus, he looked like Mr. Clean’s evil twin, with flat black eyes, bushy black brows, a big pitted bowling ball of a head, and a grid work of scars ringing his thick, tanned neck. She hadn’t even realized there were bald Garathani, much less ugly ones, but this guy was all that and more.
Her eyes widened—he even had a shiny black ring in his left ear.
“I’m listening, but I’m not hearing anything,” he informed her with a smirk.
She jerked her arm. “Let go of me.”
His grip tightened for an instant before he relented, and she flexed both arms gingerly. She’d be one big bruise tomorrow. Assuming she was still alive tomorrow.
Taking a deep breath, she unrolled the spongy fabric, which turned out to be a large towel of some sort. She looped it over her hips and then hesitated, glancing around at a half-dozen chiseled faces. They all just stared at her like stray dogs at the butcher shop window, so even though it went against every instinct, she turned her back and leaned over to pat her legs and feet dry, making sure her rear stayed covered. Everything else could drip-dry—there was no way she was wiping her crotch in front of all these males.
When she rewrapped herself and tucked in the corner of the towel at her waist, a guard she recognized from the compound, Ensign Verr, scooped up her skirt and held it out to her. It was completely ruined, the back seam ripped from top to bottom, so she folded it and set it on the table.
Another guard handed over her flats, which she stepped into gratefully. The biologic pad lining the ship’s interior was a brilliant innovation, absorbing biological byproducts and returning oxygen and nitrogen to the atmosphere, but she’d had enough of its squishy moistness under her feet.
Of course the bald one tried to hand her what was left of her underwear. The tattered scrap of lace looked ridiculously tiny in his gigantic fingers.
“Keep them as a souvenir,” she snapped.
“Thank you.”
Her eyes widened when he raised the fabric to his nose. “No! I was—”
Zannen inhaled so deeply she was surprised it didn’t disappear into one of his nostrils.
“You’re disgusting,” she told him.
He grinned widely, baring enormous white teeth. “You’re the one who just pissed herself.”
Flushing scarlet, she turned away, knowing there was no comeback cutting enough to top that.
“You may as well be seated,” Ensign Verr suggested. “You’re not going anywhere until we know Dr. Teague is safe.”
Jasmine sat, keeping the towel securely around her while avoiding Shelley’s reproachful stare. The scissors still lay on the table, a stark reminder of how ineffective she’d been. Why hadn’t she stuck those back into her skirt pocket when she was done cutting Monica’s hair? She still wouldn’t have posed much of a threat to Shauss, but she might at least have been able to take her own life before he outed her as something other than human.
Maybe it wasn’t too late. After all, no matter which way this went down, she came out the big loser. She’d either suffer and die at Shauss’ whim, and possibly take her father down with her, or go home with her tail between her legs and suffer her father’s undying contempt for the rest of her life.
All it would take was one good, hard jab straight up between—
“I’ll take these.” Zannen’s hand covered the scissors and slowly slid them off the side of the table. “Little girls shouldn’t play with sharp toys.”
Damn it, couldn’t she catch just one break today?
Keeping her eyes on the table, she muttered, “Bastard.”
“You have no idea. Yet.”
Her breath caught at the silky insinuation. He was just waiting for Shauss to come back in a rage and turn them loose on her.
Another tremor shook her. She wanted to stay strong, to face whatever happened to her with courage and dignity, but she didn’t know if she could. She’d just about lost her mind when Shauss jumped on her earlier, and she hadn’t even really believed he would obey the commander’s order, or at least not at first. Now that she knew what was coming, she might be able to handle it if he came back and finished what he’d started. She’d earned his wrath, and the idea of being punished for her sins was somehow acceptable. Honorable, even. If her father became a target as a result, he’d just have to roll with it—he’d known the risks going in as well as she had.
But there was no honor in ending up a piece of ass for this ugly brute. The degradation would be unbearable.
He trailed a fingertip along her jaw and she jerked her head to the side, glaring up at him. There was no way she’d let him have her—she’d tear his eyeballs out first.
“Lieutenant,” the other man said in a warning tone.
Zannen just smiled and resumed a watchful stance over her.
Too discouraged to deal with Shelley’s condemnation, Jasmine rested her forehead on her crossed arms and started praying in earnest.
Please, God, let Monica be okay…
* * * * *
Three days later she was still praying, though her tone had gone from plaintive to aggravated.
God, please let me out of this hellhole!
Ignoring the burning in her biceps and abs, she clung to the bar and pulled herself up in another gorilla chin crunch, and then another, and another, blowing out with every one.
Three whole days! It was just unbelievable. Monica had been rescued, the ambassador was in custody, and the Garathani had to believe that Jasmine had been duped into cooperating in the abduction…and yet she was still a prisoner in her own quarters. Why?
All she’d wanted when Zannen and Ensign Verr shuttled Shelley and her back to the surface was to pack up her stuff and watch the Beaumont–Thayer compound disappear in her rearview mirror along with the rest of snowy Montana. Instead, the bastards had ransacked her room and confiscated her laptop, her extension phone and even her cell phone, which was lying dead in a drawer because there was no reception out here anyway. She’d screamed bloody murder the whole time, but they might as well have been deaf for all the attention they paid her.
When they were done pawing through her belongings, they’d locked her in. From that point on there were two guards posted outside her door at all times and her meals were delivered like clockwork by said guards. Except for Noah Beaumont, who’d dropped by to personally deliver her pink slip that first day, she hadn’t seen nor talked to another human being since. It was depressing and frightening. What motive could the Garathani possibly have for detaining her?
Shaking with the effort, she finished her last few crunches and dropped to the floor. Thank God they’d left her workout equipment and DVD player or she’d be out of her mind by now. As it was, she was starting to feel like Sarah Connor after her stay in the mental hospital—lean, mean and a danger to herself and others. If they didn’t let her go soon, she was going to go Terminator on someone’s ass.
Jasmine scowled. After her performance on the Heptoral, the Garathani would probably laugh themselves silly if she put up her dukes.
She unhooked the pull-up bar with a sigh and shoved it under the bed. Peeling out of her shorts and athletic bra, she eyed herself critically in the bathroom mirror. She was lean and mean, more so than she’d ever been in her adult life. Though she hadn’t intentionally set out to lose weight, her mother’s death had killed her appetite for weeks, and then once she was over the initial shock, she’d decided now was as good a time as any to get back in shape. Isolation and loneliness had become her friends, driving her to move and keep moving, rain or shine. When the weather was decent, she ran for a couple of hours on the compound’s quarter-mile track, and when it wasn’t, she ran on one of the treadmills in the exercise facility. She’d ordered a BowFlex and the pull-up bar and made it a point to use one of them whenever she watched TV.
Of course she’d eventually had to order a whole new wardrobe to go with her new body, but such were the hardships of getting in shape.
Now three sleepless nights had created dark circles under her eyes and anxiety was etching permanent frown lines on her forehead. She may not intimidate the Garathani, but her biology students back in Denver would probably back slowly away at the sight of her.
The bruises on her wrists and upper arms still stood in stark purple relief against her pale skin, and she rubbed the thumbprint on her left biceps with unsteady fingers. Shauss was the one element of her ordeal aboard the Garathani vessel she had yet to work through. She’d had no trouble consigning Lieutenant Zannen to her mental File Thirteen—she hated him, period. The minister and Commander Kellen had been harder, though she’d eventually accepted having wronged them and paid the price, thereby compartmentalizing her encounters with them.
But no matter how she approached it, she couldn’t even begin to sort out the conflict with Shauss. There was simply too much to process and she got agitated every time she let herself think about it. Just trying to reconcile that hate-filled snarl with his typical coolly amused expression made her stomach twist with dread. It would have been horrifying enough to see such a transformation as an innocent bystander, but to know she was the cause of it…
Jasmine dropped her hand and turned away to start the shower, putting him firmly out of her mind. Time enough to plow through all that emotional crap when she was well away from here.
The hot water felt good while it lasted, which as usual wasn’t nearly long enough. Afterward she blew her hair dry and pulled it up in a ponytail then dressed for comfort in thin thermals, blue jeans and a baggy ski sweater. Not that she was going anywhere—she just couldn’t stand to open the door to a Garathani warrior in her nightclothes. Plus, it was freaking cold on the north side of the building. The Garathani must be hogging all the heat—the offices were always unbearably hot.
She pulled on wool socks and her sheepskin slippers and then glanced at her watch. Almost three hours to kill until dinner.
Sighing, she pulled a DVD out of the rack and popped it in. Independence Day—that was a good one. If she couldn’t whip some alien butt herself, might as well watch Will Smith do it.
While the previews were running, she grabbed her nasal spray out of the bathroom and stuck it in her pocket so she didn’t have to get up for the next dose. She pinched a few dying leaves off her plants and dropped them into the trash can on the way back to the bed. Then she closed the blinds to cut the glare of sun on snow, kicked off her slippers and stretched out to watch the movie…
Coming to on her stomach, Jasmine grabbed wildly for the bed. Adrenaline pounded through her, leaving her shaking. God, she hated waking up like that!
She stiffened as several things hit her at once. She couldn’t reach the edges of her mattress. It sounded as if half the candidates were holding a rally right outside her door. The air was suffocatingly warm and humid. And her bed smelled strangely earthy, kind of like—
Her eyes popped open. Biologic pad.
Gasping, she pushed up on one elbow and gazed into a forest of ankles. This time she had to be dreaming. There was no way in hell she was back aboard the ship.
Someone staggered and she rolled backward in time to avoid getting stepped on before springing to her feet. Holy crap, she was aboard the Heptoral, in the cavernous transport bay—only this time it was bursting at the seams with
women.
What in God’s was going on here? The candidates weren’t supposed to be beamed up for weeks, and she sure as hell wasn’t a candidate.
Grabbing the first arm she saw, she asked, “What happened? Why are we here?”
The boxy blonde looked frightened. “The compound was under attack, so they evacuated us.”
“Under attack! By whom?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t you hear the jets?”
“No, I…” Jasmine frowned. Yes, she’d heard jets, but she’d been dozing off and thought they were part of the movie.
Well that was just fabulous. Was she ever going to get away from these brutes?
She made her way toward the edge of the bay, taking note of her surroundings. There were a dozen or more guards lining the bay’s upper tier, watching over the crowd like long-haired cowboys minding a herd of cattle.
She shuddered. Cattle. That was an apt analogy for what these women were to the Garathani, who were paying eight-figure settlements to the families of every candidate who accompanied them on the one-way trip to Garathan. Most of them had been selected for their ability to bear the aliens’ extra-large offspring, and the rest for their ability to accommodate the aliens sexually. Garathani males couldn’t ejaculate unless both their primary and secondary sexual organs were buried to the hilt in a female, which was why they’d come to Earth, looking for women when most of theirs were wiped out by the Narthani biowar virus. While human females didn’t have corresponding nooks to accommodate the spurs like Garathani females did, their anuses had proven an acceptable alternative for receiving the finger-sized secondary projections.
Deliberately blinking away the memory of Shauss’ spur emerging above his rampant penis, she stood up on tiptoe and looked over the sea of feminine heads for Dr. Snow’s white pompadour. The idea that all these women were basically selling their bodies to aliens made her skin crawl. It would be different if they were doing it for love—love made even the oddest matches acceptable—but they weren’t. They were letting a computer and some alien committee determine which males they wound up with almost sight unseen. God only knew what the rest of their lives would be like.
Enemy Overnight Page 2