As he dragged her deeper into the shadows, even her horror faded and everything went black.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Schneider. Didn’t expect to ever hear from you again, my friend.” Pierce gave the furry face in his monitor his most sarcastic grin, wondering what had possessed Leita’s best friend/pet to contact him. The wide golden eyes narrowed and Schneider laid his pointed ears flat back against his little round head in what Pierce assumed was an expression of annoyance.
“I never expected to be calling you either, Pierce,” he said, his high voice slightly tinny coming through the Jaunter’s sound system.
Pierce raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “What? You call me by my name instead of Captain Dildo? To what do I owe this honor, fur ball?”
Schneider bristled, his tan fur becoming visibly puffier. “I supposed I deserved that,” he said stiffly. “But I didn’t call to trade insults with you, Pierce.”
“Then why did you call?” Pierce demanded. He desperately wanted to ask if Leita had put her best friend up to calling but he didn’t want to sound, well…desperate.
“First tell me one thing,” Schneider said. “Did you mean everything you said right before you left? About Leita being important to you? About your time with her being the best time in your life?”
“Aw, hell.” Pierce ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah, of course I meant it. Haven’t been able to get her out of my mind since the day I left. Or should I say the day she made me leave.” He rubbed his chest reflexively. There was still a little bald spot right between his nipples where she’d shot him with the tazer and his chest hair hadn’t grown back. “Why do you ask?” he asked Schneider, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Because she’s missing.” Schneider began grooming his long whiskers nervously. “Kidnapped, I think for who knows what purposes.”
“What? Where? By who?” Pierce sat bolt upright in the Jaunter’s captain’s chair he’d been lounging in to get a better look at the monitor.
“She was taken in the Galleria ship almost two days ago now,” Schneider said, still grooming almost obsessively. “I didn’t get any names—just images from the watch-me she was wearing.”
“If she’s wearing a watch-me, the authorities ought to be able to get a lock on her,” Pierce said. “And if she’s been gone almost two days…why the hell haven’t they located her yet?”
“They—” Schneider started but suddenly there was a loud sound behind him and another face shoved its way onto the screen.
“How may I service you, Mistress? Let me drop to my knees and worship you with my tongue!” a garbled voice begged.
Pierce jumped back in surprise before he saw it was just the blond man-whore sex robot the For Her Pleasure company had sent to Leita. “What the hell?” he growled as the Companion 2000 began humping the screen. This was definitely not something he needed to see right after breakfast. Or any other time of the day, for that matter.
“No, Horny—no!” he heard Schneider say in an exasperated voice. “Go back to the couch—the couch needs your attentions. The mistress wants you to lick it all over. Go, go!”
“Yes, Mistress!” The jumbled images resolved into Schneider’s furry, whiskered face again as the Companion ran off-screen, presumably to go molest the sofa.
“That is why the authorities haven’t located Leita yet,” Schneider said with a weary sigh. “They think I’m joking or making prank calls because that damn walking dildo won’t stop acting the fool.”
“As I recall, I was the walking dildo not too long ago,” Pierce drawled, frowning.
Schneider swished his tufted tail in agitation. “I’ll apologize any way you want me to, Pierce—later. But right now, Leita needs help and no one else will listen to me. Did I make a mistake calling you? Were you just pretending to care about her?”
“No. No, I wasn’t pretending.” Pierce shook his head. “And I just happen to be in your sector.”
What he didn’t tell the furry Tarbian was that he was headed back to Leita’s life pod with a shipload of supplies for her. The way Pierce figured it, he owed her for the food and resources he’d consumed the month and a half he was staying with her. And if she happened to have a change of heart and invite him in for a hot cup of caffeine brew, well, so much the better. It was a desperate move on his part, though he didn’t want to acknowledge it, but in the month since he’d left her, he hadn’t been able to get Leita off his mind.
“Send me the coordinates of her watch-me,” he told Schneider. “I’m only a few hours’ superlight travel from the Galleria ship right now. Is she still there?”
“I don’t know,” Schneider said grimly. “The man who took her found out she had the watch-me on and crushed it. All I have is the last vidstream it sent right before it was destroyed.”
“What?” Pierce ran a hand through his hair. “Then she could be anywhere! Why the hell didn’t you call me sooner?”
“I tried to—I’ve been spending the last two days and nights tracking you down,” the Tarbian snapped. “You’re not exactly in the galaxy’s Who’s Who, you know.”
“Well, send me what you have, anyway,” Pierce said tightly. It was true that he’d been making himself scarce since he left Leita’s life pod. He still had Dal’s enormous bounty hanging over his head and Shie-lu and others like him were no doubt looking to collect.
“Sending.” Schneider’s furry face disappeared to show a waist-high view of a storefront filled with gold and silver boxes wrapped in bright red bows. Leita must have been wearing the watch-me in a bracelet, then. Pierce watched as she walked in to the shop, catching the name on the holo-loop above it as she moved her arm. Xander’s Gourmet Chocolates. Uh-oh, he already had a bad feeling about this. The store seemed too flashy—too tempting, especially for women living on the rough outer frontiers of the system and longing for little-seen luxuries. It was like a honeypot, drawing them in.
Pierce knew that Leita loved sweets, especially chocolates, though she almost never got them. In fact, he had a two-pound box somewhere in the supplies he was bringing her. Now he might not ever get the chance to give it to her. A surge of protectiveness rolled over him and he watched with helpless rage as Leita was first drugged, then dragged to the back of the store by the oily-looking clerk with shifty black eyes. He couldn’t be sure because the stream was shaky and he only caught glimpses of his face, but he thought the weaselly little bastard looked familiar.
The kidnapper said something about no help coming for her and then the transmission ended in a blur of static as the watch-me was destroyed. Pierce clenched his hands into fists. Damn it, Leita, why did you go in there by yourself? Don’t you know the Galleria is full of slavers and organ snatchers just waiting to catch their next vic? He felt a rush of guilt. If he had told her who he was instead of keeping up the ridiculous charade until she found out on her own, he might have been there with her. Everyone knew the slavers looked for lone, unattached women who no one would miss. Leita had been a perfect target, despite her watch-me.
Schneider reappeared on the monitor, looking as grim as a furry-faced Tarbian could. “Do you think you can find her?”
“I don’t know.” Pierce sighed and slumped in the Jaunter’s pilot’s chair. “I need to do some checking and see what this Xander’s Chocolates outfit is a front for. Probably a slave ring of some kind.” He didn’t like to tell Schneider or admit to himself that if it was organ snatchers that had gotten her, she was probably already dead. In the back of his head, a memory tickled. The man who had kidnapped Leita—where had he seen him before?
“I told her I didn’t like her going on her own.” Schneider’s high piping voice sounded truly anguished. “I usually go with her just in case. But this time she left me here to baby-sit that idiot Companion until the drone ship comes to pick it up.”
“She’s sending it back?” Pierce asked, somewhat surprised. Despite the thing’s irrational behavior, he’d assumed it was what Leita wanted—it was after all
what she had ordered in the first place.
“It’s insane,” Schneider said, laying his ears flat against his head again. “It’s ruined most of the furniture and broken our vacuum as well. I think Leita scrambled its brain when she shot it with the tazer.”
“Good thing she didn’t scramble mine,” Pierce muttered. “Listen, Schneider, I have to make some calls before I go superlight. I’ll be in touch, though.”
“Just bring her back, Pierce.” Schneider’s wide golden eyes looked suspiciously wet but that might just be a coincidence. Pierce didn’t know if Tarbians could cry or not.
“I’ll do my damnedest,” he promised and clicked the call off. He sat musing for a moment, then reran the vidstream frame by frame until he got to the shot where Leita had reached for the first chocolate. Her wrist had been up, almost at eye level to take the sweet from the tray and it offered the best view of her abductor. Pierce stared hard at the monitor, eyebrows pulled down in a frown of concentration.
Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair. Yes! That was it—it had to be! The last time he’d seen those shifty black eyes they’d been topped by a tangle of long white-blond hair. It was the hair that had thrown him off. But this was the man—the one he’d been looking for before he ended up with Leita. The bastard who had kidnapped Leita was the same man who had passed him the bad extensor chips for Dal.
Pierce knew what he had to do. Putting a tracer lock on the monitor, he typed in the Pteregoid crime boss’s contact coordinates and waited until Dal’s slimy, tentacled face appeared on the screen.
“Well, Pierce,” Dal burbled through the blowhole in his throat that served as a mouth. “I did not expect to hear from you until some enterprising bounty hunter brought you in to collect the reward I posted for your return.”
“I didn’t take your chips but I know who did.” Pierce frowned at the monitor.
“You have said as much before but I have seen no proof.” Dal’s bubbly underwater voice sounded skeptical.
“I can get you proof,” Pierce told him. “As much proof as you need. But first I need some information.” Inwardly he prayed that the Pteregoid was in a good mood. Dal could be surprisingly malleable if he was bored enough and looking for entertainment.
“Very well,” Dal burbled after a long pause. “What is it you wish to know?”
Pierce breathed a sigh of relief. Dal would deal. And hopefully he’d be able to find Leita’s whereabouts in time to save her. If she was still alive…
Chapter 9
Leita was in hell. Bargain basement hell. Not only was she being sold as a slave, she was being sold at half-price, just like the damn chocolate that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
She was chained to a small platform in the back of a large auditorium wearing a thick black leather slave collar and an outfit that not even For Her Pleasure would have sold. Or maybe they would have, but Leita wouldn’t have bought it.
The top consisted of thin scarlet straps attached to a pair of gold rings that fit around her nipples, keeping them in a constant state of arousal. That was it—no other coverage, not even a fringe to cover her breasts. But as bad as the top was, the bottom was worse. A thong-like contraption made of the same scarlet straps went right up her butt and was bad enough to make Leita vow to wear granny panties for the rest of her life. But the front of the thong was the ultimate indignity. Two scarlet straps ran from low on her hips down to her crotch where they held her pussy lips open, displaying her hot pink interior for any prospective buyer that cared to look. A small gold ring identical to the ones that held her nipples erect encircled her clit, keeping the small, sensitive bundle of nerves in a constant state of arousal as well.
Leita had been dressed in the revealing outfit shortly after awakening from the drugged sleep she’d fallen into after being force-fed the chocolates by the shifty-eyed clerk. She had no idea where she was or even if she was still in the Galleria. Her watch- me bracelet was gone along with the modest one-piece coverall she had been wearing when she first got to the huge shopping ship. For all she knew, she was in another part of it entirely, a darker part, where human flesh instead of goods and services were sold.
The outfit she was wearing wasn’t nearly as tasteful as the pale pink see-through nightie Pierce had practically ripped off her on their first meeting, she reflected grimly. Not that there was any point in thinking about Pierce anymore. He was long gone and it irritated her that even in this situation and under extreme duress, her mind kept returning to him. Even if he had known that she was here, wherever here was, and up for sale, Leita knew he wouldn’t rescue her. After all, she’d shocked him with a tazer and sent him from her door naked in the middle of the night. That kind of behavior didn’t usually induce a man to come after you when you got in a jam. It was time to forget him once and for all and concentrate on getting out of here. Except Leita was afraid the only way she was going to leave the slave gallery was at the end of a leash.
Every once in a while a greasy attendant with slicked-back hair and moist brown eyes would walk by and paint some kind of glistening body oil over her nipples and the inside of her pussy with a tiny little brush that tickled horribly. The first few times this had happened, Leita had tried to fight him. Then they had tied her hands behind her back so she had tried to bite him. In fact, she’d bitten nearly every attendant and prospective customer who came to look her over, which was why she found herself on her knees, strapped to a table-type platform at the back of the room being sold at half- price.
Leita supposed there was a cosmic kind of justice going on here if you looked at it the right way. She herself had ordered what was essentially a sex slave, albeit a mechanical, vat-grown one, only a few months ago. And now she was being sold as a sex slave—if anyone cared to buy her, that was. Most of the buyers weren’t attracted to the dimly lit corner she was occupying—they were focused on the front of the huge auditorium. There on a large stage the better behaved captives and future slaves pranced and showed themselves off in their tiny, revealing outfits.
Leita couldn’t believe that anyone could take being kidnapped and sold so calmly, but after lights-out the night before, one girl had actually told her she was looking forward to her new life. The girl, who had carrot-red hair and freckles and whose name was Midge, had been given as a bride to an older man in a mining colony. The miner’s first wife had died, leaving him with ten children to raise—children who ended up in Midge’s care while her new husband worked the mines. “Between raisin’ a passel of screamin’ brats that ain’t even mine and bein’ sold as an intergalactic love concubine, I’ll take the sex slave gig every time,” she told Leita as they were trying to get to sleep. Leita couldn’t agree with her, but she could definitely see her point.
Earlier that day Midge had been sold to an attractive older man with silver hair at his temples and dark brooding eyes. He had led her away with the complimentary leash that came with every slave purchase and Midge hadn’t looked at all unhappy to be going with him. Leita had watched her go with a mixture of fear and regret. Maybe she should have behaved herself better so that the richer, more interesting clients would have been attracted to her. As it was she had a sign over her head that said Attitude problems—50% off today only! and only bargain basement shoppers of the cheap and sleazy variety had been coming to see her. But no matter what her fate, Leita just didn’t have it in her to go quietly.
It was ironic, she thought, as she watched various other women who had been stolen away from their normal lives to be sold at the slave gallery. Ironic because she had often had fantasies just like this. Dreams in which her Master came and picked her out of a crowd, choosing her above every other girl there because he could tell she was special. He would come strolling through the aisles, bypassing every other woman there and stop in front of her, taking in her nearly naked body with his piercing eyes until Leita blushed all over. He would touch her, teasing her sensitive, exposed flesh by twisting her nipples to watch her squirm an
d stroking one calloused fingertip over her slippery cunt. Then her new Master would take her back to his ship and ravish her mercilessly, making her come over and over again…
The reality of being sold as a slave was somewhat different, however, Leita thought sourly. In her fantasies she hadn’t been dumped in the bargain basement bin along with two other less than desirable captives. One of the other half-off girls had a bad cold and kept sneezing on prospective clients and the other appeared to have several invisible friends that she conversed with freely.
Leita found it demoralizing to be shoved away under a for sale sign like the runt of the litter that nobody wanted. Not that she wanted to be sold, but she wasn’t sure what her fate would be if she wasn’t. She might be traded to the organ snatchers like an old ship being sold for spare parts. Maybe she ought to stop biting and behave herself, no matter how abhorrent the idea of being led away on a leash was…
Just as that thought flashed through her mind, she saw the attendant with the pot of body oil and the ticklish brush coming toward her again. Only this time he was bringing someone with him—a prospective buyer, no doubt. But this buyer was different. He wasn’t old or fat or slimy-looking as everyone else who had come to see her had been. Instead he was tall and beneath the tight-fitting black pants and vest, it was clear he was also quite muscular. He wore a privacy mask that covered the lower part of his face so that only his eyes were visible and carried himself with assurance.
“That one,” the buyer said, pointing straight at Leita. He had a deep voice and sounded certain of what he wanted. He pulled out a pouch and Leita saw the attendant’s eyes widen as real platinum coins poured into his palm.
“Perhaps another choice,” the attendant said, giving the buyer a wide, oily smile. “This one is most troublesome.” Apparently he had been more than willing to sell Leita to the tall man until he saw the money—now he was hoping to make more.
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