"How bad can it be? I'll have you there with me, right?"
He nodded. "And I won't let anyone but me near you, that I promise. Some "owners" get possessive, so it won't seem too odd if I want no one near you but me, at first. I am supposed to be there to sell you." He cursed and ran a hand through his hair. "Owners don't care for their slaves, so using them and sharing them means nothing. Public coupling is a way of advertising.
"It isn't unusual to watch the owner and slave engage in intercourse, or to watch the slave pleasure her owner in other ways. There's also the option that the slave may pleasure anyone the owner chooses."
"What are you thinking to do?" She wished at that moment she could read his thoughts. His mood shifted from angered to enraged to aroused and back again.
"I won't let you do anything with anyone other than me, and only if it's absolutely necessary. As obsessed as Rorn is with you, he might want a private viewing. I could push for that."
"But with you there, right?" She tried to act professional, but thoughts of having sex in public shocked her. Temis did not consider herself a prude, but lovemaking was new to her and with Gren, utterly meaningful. She couldn't imagine dirtying it for the likes of Rorn Fenhal.
"Don't worry, sura," Gren murmured, reading the panicked look on her face. "I won't let anything happen to you."
She couldn't help it. She might be unnerved, hell, even frightened, but Temis fought her own battles. "I won't let anything happen to myself," she corrected, and saw an answering flash of heat in Gren's gaze.
"Then you'll be doubly protected, won't you?" His eyes glowed brightly.
"You still need to explain that," she said with a nod to his eyes. He scowled and immediately the aura around him dimmed. Pleased that she'd taken control of the tense situation, she smiled. "Don't worry, Gren. I'm a peacemaker, remember? We'll enter the auction, save the women, and nail Rorn Fenhal to the wall like the insect he is."
"Sernal didn't say he had to be brought in alive." The look on Gren's face froze her to her seat. She'd only seen him appear that deadly once before, when he took on a dozen peacemakers on Lady Justice. And then he hadn't been out for blood.
She felt uneasy about Gren's attitude, and decided it was time she talked to her superior to make sure she knew what he wanted. Until now she'd been content to have Gren exchange encoded messages with Sernal's contact, as he'd explained.
Peacemakers, however, had standards, and "dead or alive" didn't figure into the law.
"I need to talk to Sernal."
Gren glared at her, and she could almost see his body thrumming with energy. "Why?"
"Because he's my superior. I'd like to know exactly when and where he plans to arrive with back-up, and to hear him say it doesn't matter if Fenhal is brought in dead or alive."
Gren scooted closer to Temis, deliberately trying to intimidate her with his large frame. Instead of threat, however, Temis felt arousal.
He must have felt it as well for he cursed and moved back. "Look, once we land on Colony6 we'll have a few hours at most before the auction begins. At best, Sernal and the others will arrive during the auction. But most likely they'll arrive just as it's ending. In the time we're there, we'll have staked out the necessary extraction points for the missing women."
"But how are we going to drag fifteen, and possibly more women who've been drugged and Narok knows what else, amidst a crowd of murderers and slavers? Even you can't take on the dozens that will likely be there."
He smiled and she couldn't help the shiver that raced up her spine. Though she felt completely safe in his presence, she knew those at the auction would not be so lucky.
"I told you I'm different, Temis. Trust me when I say I can move the women to the extraction points. Drugged or not, as long as they're capable of walking, they'll be saved."
"Are you telling me you can control any woman's mind? Whether it be in passion," she paused and the heat rose in her cheeks, "to clear her head, or to simply order her about?"
He nodded slowly, his eyes fixed to hers.
She frowned. "But that can't be." He couldn't possibly be saying what she thought he was. "You can't control men, but women are virtually bound to your every thought, your every desire?"
"Let's save the rest of this discussion for after the mission," he said brusquely, not pleased at her questioning. "And if you absolutely have to talk to Sernal, come with me."
Chapter Thirteen
The morning spent on Colony6 made Temis more than glad she lived in the charted sector of the system. This small moon, if it could be called that, was more like an outlying tundra set apart from planet Jaron, and the sun, by mind-numbing cold.
Had Gren not outfitted her with one of his extra exploratory suits she would surely have frozen to death amidst the ice and snow covering the ground.
She hadn't expected such cold, especially considering the skimpy slave garments she'd been "forced" to wear. She could only hope the slave tents had heat.
They do.
She glanced up at Gren leading the way through the heavily packed snow. He had insisted they remove all inner shields to allow communication at all times, especially should something go wrong. She wholeheartedly agreed.
She still had a hard time believing she'd spoken to Sernal via Catam, translated from thought by Lurin. That had been the strangest conversation she'd ever experienced.
Talking with the Mardu brothers is always strange. Gren waited for her to catch up to him.
Temis curbed her grin and strode to the top of the hill. The rocks and fallen needles of the trees pricked at her feet, even clad in tough rak-hide boots. Winded, she couldn't help noting Gren breathed evenly. Envious and a little annoyed at his strength, she hurried to his side.
I'm bigger than you, sura, it's natural I can handle the cold better. His words were meant to calm, but the arrogant humor in his tone made her snap her teeth together.
You wait until we get back. I'm taking you to Chula for a proper fighting match. I'll have you flat on the dirt in no time.
Such a short memory, he chided, and a familiar vision of a fight with Gren surfaced, one that had already happened on Chula if in a dream.
"You know about that?" She flushed three shades of red. "Wait a minute. You were there? But it was my dream."
"Your dream that pulled me in, but my control of the outcome," he said with a husky voice, mentally broadcasting the memory of that first shared intimacy.
She was blushing hotly as she reached him. "I thought that a dream."
"It was," he answered aloud. "One I long to have again." He looked hopeful and she swore under her breath, ignoring the quickening in her womb.
"Just wait until I have you in a challenge ring on Zephyr, in my world, with my rules."
They continued down the hill into a thatch of trees, pausing when a crude looking village came into view, curls of dark smoke escaping the dismal houses dirtying the clear blue sky.
"I need you to stay here," Gren said in a low voice as he studied the stone dwellings before them. "I'm going to get us some answers." Before she could argue, he turned to her with a stern look in his eyes. "You can't appear until the auction. If Rorn's men see me, no one will think twice. I'm known for being cautious. I can't risk you being seen, sura."
She didn't like it, but she agreed. "I'll be with you every step of the way." She tapped her head.
He nodded and left. After what seemed like an hour and was likely no more than half that, she "heard" him talking with a woman, someone named Cherel.
I've an affinity for women, Gren's words rang in her mind, and she forced away the surprising surge of jealousy. When she clearly focused on Gren, she felt his disdain for Cherel. The tight band around her heart eased a fraction, startling her. When had she become so possessive?
"Tell me, Cherel, where does Fenhal plan to hold his party?"
The woman he spoke with was a barkeep who often worked on her back for extra coin. Per Gren's blunt thoughts, she had a pl
easant visage and a figure made for sex, but too much greed in her eyes to be truly attractive.
Cherel answered him with breathy phrases, pressing her breasts invitingly against his forearm.
Temis wanted to throw her through a wall. She felt Gren's warm amusement and wanted to throw him through a wall as well.
"Why don't we talk in a more private place?" he murmured in Cherel's ear. Temis heard his vague mental comparison of the woman's hair to her own, startled to find the woman was blond.
Have a thing for blondes, hmm? She couldn't help the heated comment.
Steaming, Temis waited in the cold, tall needle trees and large gray boulders her only companions, while Gren joined the blonde whore in a private room behind the bar. She felt him expel a ball of energy and listened in amazement to the woman moaning her pleasure. Oddly enough, Gren remained unmoved. What the hell was going on down there?
Remember, sura, he whispered to Temis, I can instill pleasure with a thought.
Slightly mollified but still not liking Gren's "quest for information," she impatiently awaited his return. When he finally appeared sometime later, he sparkled with vitality and amusement, she felt, at her expense.
"What was that all about?" She tried to hold onto her anger but knew he felt it all the same.
He chuckled and enfolded her in his arms. "Sura, don't worry. The woman was nothing more than a means of information. When she experienced bliss, she opened her mind to me. I know where the women are being held, and the layout of Rorn's estate."
Temis relaxed enough to look up at him. "I felt you doing something to her, but didn't recognize what."
"She is a sad example of the inhabitants of Colony6, castoffs from the system with no morals or ideals. She would as soon have slit my throat for a pocket of coins, or spread her legs for the promise of besting her competition across the road."
"Nice friend you made."
"Rorn seems to like her well enough. Apparently he's been building himself an empire for the last few years. When he visits, he brings women, drugs, and other illegal substances to Colony6. He uses the people here for work, binding their loyalty." Gren twisted his lips in disgust. "And the things he's done to that woman would make you cringe."
Temis didn't want to know. "You found the information we needed, but you took something else as well, didn't you?"
He looked uncomfortable with her question, piquing her interest.
"When a woman experiences bliss," he began slowly, "she produces energy. The energy is pure, despite the woman who creates it, and it enhances my abilities."
"What are you talking about?" She'd never before heard of such a thing.
"I absorb her energy. It's like the surge you receive after replenishing your body with food, only much more powerful."
He absorbed the woman's energy? Her eyes widened. She had heard about energy transference from the stories of her youth. Men capable of controlling a woman's mind, of making her do whatever they wanted while they stole the very soul from her being.
The legendary Thesha.
"You can't be!"
His eyes shuttered and she felt him erect mental walls. "You have such an imagination. Come on. We have a lot to do in a short time."
As they walked back to the shuttle hybrid they'd arrived in, Temis pondered Gren's heritage. Too many pieces of the puzzle pointed to the impossible.
A Thesha. Temis had met and bonded with an actual creature of legend.
I'm a man, not a creature. The heated reply shot through her system. And definitely not that nightmare you were thinking of.
Get out of my head, Gren. She pushed him out, aware he still had a small hold on her thoughts, but not enough to accurately read more than her emotions.
The Thesha were rumors, myths told during adolescence, when hormones ran rampant. She remembered her friends giggling about them in her youth while she'd been focused on learning to fight.
She could never have imagined they were real.
Theshas had the ability to control women, but more so, to pleasure a woman until she wanted to die of the rapture. Rumors still abounded throughout the system that the Thesha existed. And she knew the black market value for a real Thesha could be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions in currency.
Just a few years ago she'd heard of a rich woman on Jaron who had supposedly captured two Theshas. The story of not one but two legendary creatures even existing killed any speculations of truth about the rumor instantly. In actuality, the woman and her daughter had killed her daughter's betrothed, then kidnapped and tortured the victim's alleged murderer--the "Thesha"--and the bounty hunter who'd captured him.
Her eyes widened. Hadn't Sernal been on that case? She stared at Gren's broad back as they entered the ship.
Cari Elaran was a crazy witch, Gren growled. And her daughter was just as bad.
"It was true? You were there?" Her heartbeat raced.
"I was there helping a friend." He didn't sound pleased at her curiosity.
"Lurin," she said, seeing the face that popped suddenly into his mind. Then the connection snapped. "He's Thesha too?"
She heard Gren mutter something under his breath but he refused to answer her. The ship took off and she sat beside him, stunned. If he was Thesha, did that mean he'd been controlling her thoughts all along? She suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable around him, not the reaction most women would have, she knew. But then Temis' priorities had never been her own pleasure first, her responsibilities second.
"Just forget about it until we complete the mission, okay?" Gren sounded angry and she could feel his dejection like a heavy fog pressing down on her.
She wasn't quite sure what to do or how to make things right. The thought of losing her scared the hell out of him.
Losing her? She blinked, realizing she experienced his emotions.
Glancing at him in her periphery, she noted the stiffness of his shoulders, the resolute set of his jaw. Confusion pulsed in her but so too did concern and compassion, and the bead of arousal that never faded when in his presence.
Worse, she could feel his hurt and it gnawed at her.
More than bothered, she sighed and reached to cover his shoulder with a gloved palm. "We'll talk about it after the mission."
He relaxed at her touch and nodded. For the next few hours they marked outer extraction points while Gren shared information about Rorn's estate. Using the ship's advanced cloaking device, they were able to get fairly close to the estate, a massive conglomeration of native rock, Mornian steel, and Eyran technology. Obviously Rorn had currency to spend, and he'd clearly spent it here.
When they hovered above the estate, Temis saw the slave tents for the first time. At the rear of the estate sat a large rectangle of red material connected to a smaller square of red, both effectively hiding whatever occurred beneath.
"The tents are heated and lit from within, ensuring total privacy from outsiders. Not to mention they're easy enough to tear down when the auction is finished. They're standard among slavers," Gren explained.
"How do you know so much about the slave trade?" She had to know.
Silence fell heavily over the cabin until he sighed. "I lived with a slaver when I was young. My parents died unexpectedly." She saw his face tighten. "And before my relatives could collect me, a slaver stepped in and took me under his wing."
Shocked, Temis stared at him. "How old were you?"
"I don't know, eight or nine, probably. It doesn't really matter."
She felt the guilt bleeding from him and felt sorry he'd been forced to endure something so ugly at so young an age. "Did they ever, uh, sell you?"
He laughed, a harsh sound. "No. I had other talents better put to use. I didn't really understand my powers then, didn't know what I was. Neither did the slave master. But he saw my calming effect on the slaves and used me instead of expensive drugs to sedate them."
She didn't know what to say. How could he feel responsible for his actions as a young boy wh
en he was clearly as much a victim as the slaves? She knew nothing she said would make a difference to him, not now. He was wallowing in remorse and anger, and she knew how powerful those emotions could be. No, she'd wait for a better time to show him his innocence in the matter.
They traveled together in uncomfortable quiet. Temis dwelled on his tale, on his abilities and the slave auction forthcoming. The questions bouncing inside her head ripped through her mind like a sharp cleaver, the tension causing a roaring headache.
Suddenly her headache ceased, replaced by a surge of masculine warmth. She swiveled in her seat and stared at Gren. "You have healing abilities too?"
He nodded, his expression contained.
She shook her head, amazed at his gifts. She glanced at her timepiece and sighed. Releasing the inner shields she'd built, she tried to relax and open herself to Gren for the sake of the mission. But the more time passed, the more she found herself dreading the approaching deadline. It was time for the auction to begin. Time to adorn the slave's absent, drugged expression and don the silken rags that exposed more than they hid.
Temis and Gren shared an unhappy look of mutual understanding.
"It begins, Temis. Remember, despite what you may think, I do care. And I won't let anything happen to you," he promised. He might be a Thesha, way more than she could understand at the moment, but she felt his truth.
"I know. Now let's put this drun away before he harms anyone else."
Gren nodded, a familiar gleam in his eyes. The mercenary was back, and for once Temis was happy to see him both arrogant and deadly.
* * * *
When Gren entered the outer walls of Rorn Fenhal's sanctuary into the large slave tent, he looked like a "marble statue of sheer menace," per the woman flirting with the guard at the gate. After Temis had removed her outer cold-weather clothing and boots, he yanked lightly on her chain, pretending she was no more than chattel and not his bonded mate being paraded almost naked among the worst of the system's slavers.
She wore a dark violet top, so sheer her nipples showed through the narrow expanse of silk holding her breasts. The matching bottoms had a low-cut waist, her belly appallingly visible under the see-through silver wrap she wore.
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