Natalie was right. This was barbaric—at least the way Tiziani was doing it.
I will not allow him to hurt my mate.
“Cav, where are you going?” Drindl’s high-pitched voice followed me as began moving. I ignored her and strode to the door, throwing it open and breaking into a jog as I headed toward the game rooms.
Drindl and Plofnid gave chase, scampering around me like buzzing, squeaking, irritating insects—until I turned and snarled at them both. They both skidded to a stop and stood frozen in fear.
“Do not follow me,” I ground out.
They didn’t.
Good, I thought. No more interference.
Chapter Thirteen
Natalie
I could not believe this was happening to me. As they had coaxed me into wearing this ridiculous outfit and tried to tame my riotous curls, Plofnid and Drindl had assured me that the spanking ceremony would be fun. Entertaining. More a game than a punishment.
But here I was, bent over the knee of Banana-Man, enduring the most painful, humiliating thing that had ever happened to me.
Yeah, I had figured out his name. But after this bullshit? He was going to be Banana-Man forevermore. The next time Vos put me on camera, I was going to announce the obnoxious windbag’s name to the whole universe.
And I was going to make sure this motherfucker never touched me again. Just as soon as I got away from him.
His huge hand slapped down on my ass for a second time, and an unwilling scream ripped from my throat. Tears sprang to my eyes and I fought harder than before to get away from him. But my torso was pinned against his legs and no matter how hard I kicked, I couldn’t reach him with my feet.
Yeah. I was definitely going to have some choice things to say to Vos the next time he interviewed me. I couldn’t believe the Khanavai Bride Games Administrator had arranged to have me locked in a room with this monster.
Still, though, I was more angry than frightened. It would be bad PR for the Khanavai to allow me to be injured permanently.
Or worse.
Wouldn’t it? Surely they wouldn’t let him take this much farther.
Banana-Man’s hand lifted high above my stinging ass, preparing to deliver yet another blow. My shoulder brushed against his lap as I tried to push my way free, and I realized I had just felt his erection.
Bile rose in my throat, the acid taste of a sudden wash of true fear running through me.
The Human-Khanavai Bride Alliance Treaty said that no woman could be forced. Not to marry, not to have sex. We could only be convinced, either by individuals or during the Bride Games.
I was being convinced of something all right, but it wasn’t to have anything to do with this beast ever again.
I was trying to figure out if I could reach myself around to get my mouth close enough to any exposed skin to bite him. Preferably hard enough to draw blood. The threat of being hit again momentarily outweighed my revulsion at the idea of putting my mouth anywhere against Banana-Man. If I could bite him hard enough to distract him, maybe I could get away.
And go where?
I ignored the mocking voice in my head and kept fighting. I was still struggling, trying to find a way to get my mouth to his exposed calf above the top of his military boot when the door to the spanking chamber crashed open with the screeching sound of tearing metal.
I turned my head to the side to discover another pair of Khanavai military boots standing in the room.
“Help!” I screamed, before I even realized who it was. Some part of my mind remembered that in an emergency people responded more to cries of Fire! than they did calls for help, so I even threw that in. “Get me out of here! Fire! Help!”
That’s when I realized it was Cav. I followed the line of his legs up to his enormous muscular torso, until I met his gaze with my own, my eyes pleading.
The blue Khanavai warrior let out an inarticulate bellow. He dove toward me and with one hand, snatched me off of Banana-Man’s lap. With the other hand, he lifted Banana-Man out of the oversize chair and tossed him all the way across the room. The yellow alien hit the wall with a giant, metallic bang that echoed around us. His head snapped back and hit again, and Banana-Man slid down into a crumpled heap on the floor.
I wanted to cheer. Instead, I threw my arms around Cav’s neck and began babbling, alternately begging him to save me and pleading with him not to hit me. “Get me out of here. But don’t do the spanking ceremony. Please, don’t do that. I can’t take it. No more. That is not foreplay. Get me out of here.”
Cav lifted me to cradle me in his arms like a child. With one hand, he gently rubbed my back. “Don’t worry, little one, I will never let anyone hurt you again.”
He strode out into the hall and away from the scene of my degradation. To my utter humiliation, I burst into tears.
Cav continued whispering soothing noises to me, nonsense phrases that still seemed comforting in the safety of his arms, and kept moving.
“Please don’t take me back to any cameras,” I finally sniffled. “I don’t think I could stand it.”
“I’m not.” His deep voice rumbled in his chest underneath my cheek. “I’m taking you to part of the backstage area that never gets filmed.” He paused at a doorway. “But we’re about to go through the public area, just for a little while.”
I nodded and let my hair fall to cover my face, pressing my forehead against his chest to hide my face.
Part of me knew it was stupid to trust any of the Khanavai. At this point, I was convinced they were all brutish beasts. What kind of culture believed it was foreplay to beat their partners?
And yet I felt safe with Cav.
He carried me effortlessly through the space station, the noises around us getting quieter and quieter the farther we got away from the main thoroughfares and the filming areas.
By the time he took me into a quiet, dark stairwell, my sobbing had subsided to the occasional hiccup. When we got to the top step, he simply sat down, holding me in his lap.
A long moment of silence stretched between us until I finally wiggled a little to let him know I was ready to crawl off his lap.
This wasn’t an appropriate way for us to be sitting together, anyway. It was far too intimate for me.
I sat gingerly, my ass still sore from the beating Banana-Man had given me.
“I’m very sorry Tiziani hurt you,” Cav said. “That was dishonorable. He should never have been allowed to touch you without your permission.”
“They locked me in.” Even though I knew Cav hadn’t done it, I still sounded accusatory.
The giant blue warrior next to me nodded. “That was a very poorly done of them.”
“What the hell is wrong with your planet?” I demanded. “You beat your women for pleasure?”
Cav shook his head sadly. “When the spanking ceremony is done correctly, it can be very erotic—for both participants.”
“I don’t believe you. Anything that hurts is not sexy.”
One corner of his mouth tilted up, and that slightly wicked gleam reappeared in his eyes as he gave me a sidelong look. “If it hurts, it’s not being done right,” he suggested, his voice dropping even lower. “And I would never hurt you. Not under any circumstances.”
“I can’t go back into that room. I won’t.” My voice started to rise, beginning to turn shrill.
Cav reached over and gently grasped one of my hands in both of his, holding on loosely enough that I knew I could pull away at any moment. “I agree. That would be far too traumatic. I think we should find Vos and his people and let them know that we are requesting a different game.”
“Can they do that? Will they?”
He shrugged. “They can do anything they want to. It’s just a question of whether or not they will.”
“Whose idiotic idea was it to have all you giant alien men striking human women?”
“Certainly not mine.” He traced the outline of my hand with one of his enormous fingers, and his touch was gen
tler than I would have imagined possible.
We sat there for a long time in silence as I tried to regain my composure.
“Okay,” I finally said shakily. “Let’s go make the request.”
“Are you sure you’re recovered enough to deal with talking to the Games Administrator?”
“Oh, yes. I have a lot of things I want to say to him.”
A soft chuckle emanated from Cav. This was a completely different man from the one who had ripped me out of Banana-Man’s arms and tossed the other alien into a wall. That one had been enraged. Violent.
Protective.
This version of Cav was also protective—just not furious.
So maybe the two versions were not completely different.
He stood and held out his hand to help me to my feet. My legs shook, my eyes were puffy, and my ass still stung, but I would survive. I suspected I would feel a lot better after I had the chance to give the Bride Games designers a piece of my mind.
“I think maybe they were trying to inject some more excitement into the games,” Cav speculated as we made our way out of the stairwell.
“More exciting? Why would they want to do that?”
“The Bride Games have been getting more competitive every year. Initially, these games were simply a way to make sure the brides were matched with the best possible mates. They were not originally intended to be entertainment.”
“But once they became entertainment,” I continued, figuring out where he was going with the idea, “they had to keep viewers coming back year after year. So the edgier the games, the more viewers?”
“Exactly.” Cav led me down a series of long corridors decorated in the bright shades the Khanavai preferred. It took us quite a bit longer to retrace our steps than it had taken us to get there in the first place. I glanced down at Cav’s muscled thighs flashing out from beneath his kilt-like uniform. I had to take three steps for each one of his. And given how angry he’d been, there was no telling how quickly he’d been moving when he rescued me.
I also hadn’t realized that Cav had taken me through some of the most public areas of the station.
When we stepped out into a kind of food court, a wall of food scents hit me, and my mouth started watering. I hadn’t eaten much of my lunch, and I was beginning to come down from the adrenaline-spike of trying to fight off Banana-Man.
Cav glanced down at me. “You hungry, little one?”
“Actually, yes, I am,” I realized. “Thirsty, too.”
“Wait for me here. I’ll get something.” He ushered me to what was probably a cozy two-person table for the Khanavai but could have been a dinner table for four back on Earth. I dropped down into the oversized chair as Cav walked toward one of the stalls circling the central area.
He returned with another plate of the Khanavai noodles I had enjoyed at the luncheon. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised he had noticed which food I had liked.
“I will pay you back for this,” I promised.
“For that? You eat so little, I promise it won’t matter.”
He slid into the chair across from me, placing his own plate of food down. I was about to take my first bite when all the viewscreens in the courtyard came to life around us,. And they all showed the same scene: me, held down on Banana-Man’s lap as I struggled, and he slapped my exposed ass twice.
I sat down my utensils, suddenly not hungry anymore.
The scene played through twice, but the second time it kept going, right up to the moment Cav thundered into the room. The image froze on a close-up of Cav’s furious expression. Then Vos appeared in the frame. “Stay tuned for an exciting rescue attempt as Cav Adredoni attempts to rescue Natalie Ferguson from a spanking ceremony gone wrong.”
“Fuck.” The word whooshed out of me.
Cav raised one dark blue eyebrow at me.
“I guess you were right,” I said. “They were looking for better television.” I dropped my head into my hands, resting my elbows on the table.
“I think we should take this with us,” Cav said, gathering our plates and moving to a self-packing station.
God. This was humiliating. Miserable. Everyone back home would see it. Hell, probably every human and alien in the universe was watching it right now.
Could anything possibly make this any worse?
I should have known better than to jinx myself, even with a thought.
Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Cav
“Of course you can request a different game.” From behind his desk, Vos smiled brightly. Beside me, I felt rather than heard Natalie heave a relieved sigh.
“All you have to do is announce your engagement to one another.”
Natalie stiffened. “But we’re not engaged.”
“What happened in the game room yesterday was unfortunate,” Vos said, as if Natalie had never spoken. He stood up and moved around his desk to lean back against the edge. It was a calculated move designed to emphasize his power over us as we sat in the two chairs he had motioned us into when we entered the room, ushered in by his secretary.
I repressed the growl that threatened to escape.
“Cav coming in and sweeping you off your feet was a heroic move in any culture.” Vos picked up a small decoration from his desk, a painted metal rendering of Earth and Khanav Prime, with the Bride Games station in between them, providing a link between the two. “It made for amazing television. Our rates were incredible yesterday. Everyone in the entire known universe is pulling for you two kids.”
I bristled at his words. Vos might be older than I, but in Khanavai culture, I outranked him. It was all I could do to keep from launching myself over the desk and attacking him. Only the knowledge that it would not go well for me if I did kept me from it. When the military had seconded me to the Bride Games, they had essentially transferred command to him. I’d signed an agreement to treat the Games Administrator as if he were my commanding officer.
And I was nothing if not an obedient soldier.
Most of the time.
Vos continued talking. “What we need now is a happily ever after. Women on Earth will eat it up. The Khanavai warriors will look up to you, Cav, and Natalie, you will be the envy of every bride from here to Alpha Centauri and beyond.”
Natalie crossed her arms and glared at the Games Administrator. “And what if we refuse?”
Vos gave a delicate shrug. “Then the games will continue as scheduled. Including your roles in them.”
My stomach clenched at the idea of subjecting Natalie to another round in the spanking room. Besides that … “Will Tiziani be allowed to continue participating?”
Vos gave me a knowing glance. “That depends on what the two of you decide, I suppose. Every drama needs a villain.” The smile he gave us could have belonged to one of those villains.
“I will not accept Tiziani as a mate.”
“No one expects you to.”
“What if I don’t accept Cav, either?”
My stomach sank at her words. Having met her, touched her, I didn’t know how I could ever leave the space station without her.
I had never heard of a mate-match discovered during the Bride Games not working out. I had to wonder if it had happened, though. Vos’s devotion to creating drama and giving the viewers the happy endings they craved made me wonder how many times the truth behind the Bride Games had been covered up. How many other couples had been blackmailed into announcing an engagement or making a claim to romance that didn’t exist?
And how often had a Khanavai warrior met his mate, known that they belonged together the way I knew Natalie and I did, and gone home alone, without a bride, anyway?
How did someone even recover from that? The mere suggestion of it was enough to clog my throat with misery.
“In previous years, you have allowed brides to eliminate suitors,” Natalie pointed out.
“Indeed we have. But never under such dramatic circumstances.”
“So this is all ab
out getting the right ratings for your television show?” Natalie’s voice shook with barely suppressed rage.
“Not entirely.” Vos brushed nonexistent lint off his purple suit. “We work very hard to ensure that our contestants are happily matched.”
“As long as we continue to help you get good ratings, at least,” Natalie muttered.
“See? I knew you were a smart woman.” Vos pushed himself off the corner of the desk and strolled back to his seat—an oversized version of an Earth-style executive chair. “You have one hour to make a decision,” he said briskly. “If you announce your engagement, we will move to the wedding planning portion of the games.” His smile turned predatory. “Otherwise, you’ll be expected to report to the game rooms.” He glanced down at the epaper on his desk, shuffling through some of it. He flicked his fingers once, an obvious dismissal, and the door opened.
His secretary stepped in. “I’ll show you the way out,” the human male said.
We followed the secretary all the way out into the primary corridor. “Do you know how to get back to the games area from here?” he asked.
“I do,” I said shortly, not even bothering to thank him as he returned to his office.
Alone in the hallway, Natalie and I stared at each other for a long, silent moment, her eyes searching mine as if to find an answer there.
I knew what I wanted. But I couldn’t make up her mind for her.
She finally broke the silence. “What do we do?
“That has to be up to you entirely,” I said. “I would be thrilled if you decided to skip straight to wedding planning. But if you would rather return to the games, I will accept that, as well.”
“You will?”
All I wanted to do was bury my hands in her hair and pull her to me for another kiss. But I wanted her to want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her. “If we go back to the games, I promise I will not hurt you. And I will spend every second I have trying to convince you that we belong together.”
Entered in the Alien Bride Lottery Page 7