by Alyx X
I squelched my rising revulsion. “I’ve been busy.” I bit out the words and his eyes widened.
Immediately, his whole demeanor changed. “You’ve done it?” Surprise sounded in his tone.
“You sound like you didn’t believe I would.”
He blustered a little, huffing over his words. “Not everyone is cut out to be a black-market trader. Some are meant to be scrap merchants forever.”
I forced a casual shrug. “You paid for black-market; you get black-market.” I shoved away thoughts of the human female in my sick bay.
Just cargo.
“Well.” Satyan wobbled with impatience, his emotions obvious in the vibrations of his skin. “Where is she? Show me. Did the cage work? Did you buy the right size?”
I rubbed my hand over the back of my neck. “I’ve got her sedated.” I patched the feed from the sick bay into our video call.
Satyan shook his head. “You picked up a broken one?” Then he leaned closer to the camera like he was examining his screen, and I got a close up of the wide ridge of fat under his jaw. “I don’t pay for damaged goods.”
“Hey.” I held up my hand, but he still wasn’t looking at me.
“Why isn’t she moving?”
“I said I have her sedated.” I spoke loudly and slowly like I was explaining it to a child. Maybe I was. “It means she’s asleep while her body heals.”
“I don’t want a broken one.” He sat back; his expression almost petulant. Then his eyes turned colder and calculating as he narrowed them again. “You need to fix this, Lyx.”
I looked down and blew out a sigh out of his view. Hopefully my future clients would be better than this shitstain.
“She will be absolutely perfect by the time I reach you. My tech is doing its job. I am selling you a perfect human specimen.” I almost gagged on the promise I was making.
“She should be perfect already.”
“You know what?” Some of my irritation slipped out. “You wanted feisty. Well, you got feisty, because she damaged herself evading capture and hunting wild animals and shit. She’s pretty much your whole wish list.” She was perfect. “And a few scratches can be fixed.”
“You see that they are. She needs to be one hundred percent whole and functioning for my needs when you deliver her.” He smiled, a horrible, awful manipulation of his lips. “She needs to be trained and ready to work.”
I nodded along to his words then stopped as apprehension rippled through me. “Trained and ready to work? What do you mean by trained?” Training hadn’t formed part of our negotiations before.
Satyan’s laugh coughed from him, like he’d dug it up from his intestines. “What exactly did you think your job was here, Lyx?” He laughed again, and goosebumps rose on my skin. “You catch them, you train them, you deliver them. Get your sequences straight, and I’ll pay.”
I thought he was going to leave it there. Hoped. Maybe I hoped he’d stop talking, but he didn’t, and his next words brought a wave of horror washing through me.
“Feisty or not, she needs to be able to take a cock down her throat without biting it off.”
I said nothing, just watched my screen. I don’t think I even blinked.
He raised his hand and flicked his fingers up, numbering a list as he spoke. “Cock down her throat, cock up her ass. I want to be able to get my fist so far up her pussy I can clean my fingernails when I put my tongue in her mouth. And I want her to be able to take a good fucking in both holes at once. I understand it would be difficult for most men to train her that way…” He paused and swept his slobbery tongue over his rubbery lips. “But I understand Tryonians have special talent in that area.”
I must have looked blank.
“I mean your tail,” he prompted.
Hell, no. I wanted to shake my head, but it nodded itself. Just another day at the office.
“I mean it, Lyx.” His voice became deadly serious, flat and lethal. “One bite, one touch of those tiny little human teeth on my big, hard cock, or one hesitation or flinch from her when I ask her to show me all she’s learned, and I’ll take my money back. I’ll come after you for more than just my money, and you will never work in this industry again. Whatever you end up doing with the rest of your miserable existence will be without your tail.” Holy fuck. Where had this come from? I tried to remember more of Satyan’s dealings with my father, unable to remember him being this vile with Dad. He just continued on, oblivious to my discomfort. “Let me recap: she needs to be able to take cock whenever I say, eat from my lap without question or refusal—and swallow deep. She also needs to be able to do the other usual things—bow to me, wear a collar, speak only when spoken to…I’m sure you know what to instruct her in.”
I waited a beat, grinding my teeth, my jaw tense. I wanted to call him out on his complete lack of information when we made our deal, but he had me wrapped around his slimy finger. That’s what happens when you’re broke and dependent on a creep like this. I couldn’t do a fucking thing. I had his cargo aboard my ship. I was halfway to him for fuck’s sake, and he was changing the rules.
Nodding my head, I forced my mouth into a grim smile. “Consider it done.” Then I leaned forward and terminated the call before he could further disgust me. I slumped in my seat, letting out a defeated sight. What have I gotten myself into? There was one major problem with the new deal.
I dropped my head into my hands. I should have known. I should have known there was more to it than just bringing a wild human to Satyan for money. I hadn’t signed on for any training, but I should have known the old man would have expected more from me than just a transport.
I mean… I couldn’t train the human. My experience with Tryonians was limited to images left under mattresses by passing nomads—I’d built up quite the collection—and talk I’d eavesdropped on or joined in with as if I knew all the moves. That was if I didn’t count information I had read in the name of science when I’d studied in school.
Being onboard my parents’ ship nearly my whole life hadn’t left much room for building my experience with females. And that was before I even considered humans and their differences from my own species. Without wanting to, my gaze flicked to the woman, her image still filling half my screen.
I didn’t have the expertise to train her. I hadn’t even fucking trained myself. And that damn Vextrane female hadn’t been any help. There was more to fucking a woman than simply docking—Satyan had just said as much. And it wasn’t like the actual captive aboard my ship would agree to any training—mine or hers. I sighed. I’d already lost this deal.
Surely Satyan knew? Surely he’d heard that Tryonians only engaged in sex with one person—their life partner. I didn’t know whose mind he’d take the most pleasure in messing with—mine or the human’s. No wonder Dad had always warned me to be careful of him. My chuckle rang hollow. No wonder Dad had always taken such pains to keep him happy. ‘Best customer’, my ass.
I sat back and leaned over to open the drawer with the booze stash I kept close to my desk. Ah, yes, the sweet taste of the one thing I had trained myself to do while out here in space all alone—make my own alcohol and drink it.
I’d spent many a lonely night with a bottle in my hand. It looked like I could look forward to many more, flying around deep space with an unwanted female in my sick bay.
It was the story of my whole fucking life.
5
Piper
My head pounded, and my eyelids were impossibly heavy. I gasped, but I didn’t make a sound. The chidders. The lions. I rolled instinctively away, but I didn’t move. Maybe I’d been knocked out by a solar flare? But... the sun wasn’t burning me as I lay on a smooth, soft surface that didn’t make any sense. I felt a light breeze stir across my face. It was cool, almost refreshing.
Something was clogging my thoughts. I wanted to sink back down into the blackness. Somewhere I didn’t need to think, didn’t need to be afraid.
Panic flashed through me, and I focused
on my eyelids. They were small, so I could move them, but it took effort. Apparently they’d turned into heavy rocks. What the hell happened?
When I finally cracked one open even a little bit, bright light flooded my senses, and I released the effort of holding it open.
It slammed shut and pain boomed around my head. I tried to moan, but that sound didn’t make it past my lips, either.
Fear joined my panic. Something was wrong. What did I remember? What had I done? There were paw prints, big ones. And now the light was blinding. Was it the sun?
I cracked my eye open again. There was so much light. I rolled my eye slowly from side to side. Light and lots of metal. But it wasn’t rusted metal, so I wasn’t at home. It was bright shiny metal, smooth in a way I’d never seen before.
The effort of using my one eye overwhelmed me again and I retreated back into my head, to the smoky thoughts I could barely sift through. Shit. I wanted to shake my head, but it wouldn’t move. I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know how I’d arrived here. The panic and fear were slowly subsiding. My mind was foggy, but at least it worked.
Foggy like the smoke produced by the white powder the elders put in their pipes to smoke at coming of age ceremonies in our tribe. Those ceremonies ended when our young people returned with their first kill. I took that memory of my tribe and I held onto it. It was all I had. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew where I’d come from.
I drifted back into the darkness, and when I awoke again, something felt different. The heaviness had vanished from my head, and it no longer weighed the back of my skull to the bed beneath me. I tried to twitch my fingers, and they moved. Then my arm, and it brushed across the fabric beneath me. My skin tingled at the unusual contact, and I shivered.
My nose twitched. The room smelled funny… not like SanFrisco. My eyes flashed open as a fresh surge of panic washed through me. I barely had time to be grateful I could move again.
I was in a room I’d never seen before. Hell, I’d never even seen anything like it before. I lifted my shoulders off the bed and glanced around. Strange things beeped and flashed near me, and I instinctively pulled away from them. Then I spotted a door. At least, it looked like a door. Okay, where there was a door, there was a way out.
I hunted chidders on an almost daily basis. Earlier, I’d been on the trail of desert lions. Leaving a room should be easy in comparison to that danger. I leapt from the bed, only my legs didn’t receive my brain’s command as quickly as the rest of my body, and I more slid off the side. I landed on the floor in a tangle of the white fabric that had covered my body and the lengths of rubber that connected me to the boxes that blinked and flashed. They clattered over, and I rolled out of the way before they could land on me.
Fuck. I was naked. My nose twitched again. Now that I could see my skin, the source of the unusual smell became clear. It was me. The usual dust and grime was gone from my body, taking with it my familiar, earthy smell. Someone had washed me clean, but that made no sense. Well, no more sense than any of the rest of this.
I ripped the strange, soft tubes from my arm and leg, and tied the sheet around me in the style of traditional dress Father favored. I almost laughed. I didn’t know where I was, and for the second time my culture had saved me. I was no longer naked.
Aware I was making quite the clatter, I stayed where I was, tucked out of sight, waiting. It was almost like chidder hunting, waiting and watching the landscape around me, hyper alert for movement or sound. But nothing changed. The room remained exactly as it was. Too still, too quiet.
I reached behind me and wrapped my hand around the first thing I found, holding it as I would a spear. Then I glanced down. I was gripping some sort of metal rod, but it was a support or a leg, still attached to a flashing box. I couldn’t use it as a weapon, no matter how ferocious I felt holding onto it. I chuckled quietly at my own ridiculousness, sitting on the floor dressed in a sheet and preparing to defend myself with an object I couldn’t wield.
I tried to move my legs again, but they were resistant to the idea, so I closed my eyes and concentrated on my toes. When they wiggled, I moved higher, trying to twist my ankles in a circle, then my knees and hips.
I scooted my way over to the door, sliding on my sheet-covered butt, pushing myself backward with my feet flat against the floor. Reaching a crouch was tricky, but I managed it because I’d spotted a window in the door and I wanted to stay below it in case anyone peered in. The room on the outside looked just as blindingly made of silver metal as this one. I reached for the handle, and when I tugged on it, the door slid away from me, starting to disappear into the wall. I stopped the movement when I had enough space to see out, and I pressed my eye to the crack, still assessing, still hunting.
Instinct took over, and I opened my mouth to shout an alert, to scream for help, as fresh panic that I needed to tell others I’d been taken washed through me before I could clamp down on it. It didn’t matter. My voice grumbled out from my chest, and my tongue moved slowly as I tried to form familiar words and failed.
Everything I wanted to say came out fuzzy and ill-formed as my tongue stuck to the dry roof of my mouth. I licked my lips, trying to moisten them.
Then, still seeing no one in the corridor beyond this bright room, I opened the door farther, pushing it fully away into the wall. It slid soundlessly, and I breathed a sigh of relief, before sucking in another deep breath, filling my lungs with the clean tasting air. I hadn’t breathed air without grit in it for as long as I could remember. I breathed in again, just for the novelty.
Taking strength from the clean air, I gripped the edge of the doorframe and pulled myself to my feet before staggering out into the corridor. I crashed into the smooth wall opposite the room I’d just come out of and waited a moment, willing my knees to strengthen enough to support my weight.
As I waited, I looked around the new space. The words on doors in the corridor were written in a language I didn’t understand. It was a scrolling, cursive script I couldn’t even begin to separate into letters. It didn’t look like any Earth language Father had ever told me about, and he’d spent much of my younger life teaching me all he knew, preparing me to lead.
I traced one of the words with the tip of my finger. The shapes pleased me, but the lack of familiarity left me cold. My chest was hollow as I sucked in another breath, trying to fill it, trying to drown out the unease.
I liked to have the advantage in any of my hunts, but that wasn’t the case here.
I tried to filter through my thoughts, formulate an idea. It was possible there were tribes living farther into the city, tribes we had no knowledge of. We travelled, and that made us known across a wide area. We met many people year after year who knew us or who had heard of us. But we never ventured far into SanFrisco. Even I stuck to the safe areas, my regular hunting spots.
What if… Maybe another civilization had evolved deep in the heart of the city, and somehow I was there? Perhaps they’d kidnapped me? Holding me for ransom was a possibility. If that was the case, things weren’t as damaged and ruined this far into the city. Damnit. I knew my plan to stick around the city and burrow deeper in with my people could have worked. This proved it.
So, now I knew where I was, I had to get back out. Simple, right?
I started moving, slowly at first, my legs still unsteady, but they strengthened with every step. I had to find the way out, get myself home. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I ran into anyone. I was in no shape to fight.
As my walking strengthened, some of the fog in my mind cleared, and I slowed. I couldn’t just leave. Somewhere in this building, there was a fucker who’d taken me and rendered me immobile. Likely that was the only way they could ensure I wouldn’t escape. Whoever it was, was clearly dangerous, and I couldn’t leave before I made them pay, even if that scenario ended in his death.
I reached to my hip, looking for the comforting presence of my knife and sighed when I didn’t find it. Then I straightened my shoulders.
It didn’t matter. I was resourceful.
Well, at least I thought I was. Fuck it all. Every corridor looked the same. The swirling script on the doors changed, but I couldn’t read any of it, and the rooms on the other sides were all dark when I tried to peer through the little windows. It wasn’t getting me any closer to either leaving or taking revenge. I touched the walls as I went along. They were always cold and smooth.
An unfamiliar wailing sound echoed down one of the corridors as I arrived at a fork, freezing me in my tracks. It sounded like a cross between a sob and a cry, but the heavy beat that ground in my brain reminded me of the pounding of my people’s feet as they accompanied our chants and communal words of thanks in our ceremonies.
The unfamiliar human noise didn’t remind me of that, though. It sounded like it had been wrenched from someone’s chest, and I almost turned away from it, but it was the first sign of life I’d heard since I’d woken up. It both energized and frightened me.
I’d been in worse situations.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I walked in the direction of the sound, listening as the wailing rose and fell in pitch. The noise steadily increased in volume until I stood right in front of a windowless door. This room. The sound was coming from here. I pressed my fingertips to the metal, and it vibrated with the sound.
This door was different. The writing was red against the silver metal, and it was chipped and faded in parts, like it was old and the door was well used.
I reached for my knife again. Fuck. I drew in a breath. Okay. So, I didn’t have any weapons. I still had my mind and my skill. No one could match both those things. I hoped.
I realized a good part of this was bravado. My desire to make someone pay for kidnapping me overrode my sanity that whispered I could just leave. If I walked out right now, I could go home. But something else drew me to the door, an urge I couldn’t control, and I had to see this through.