A worried look spread across Margot’s face in spite of her best efforts to remain stoic. The man laughed with malice.
“What did you think? That you’d be welcomed back with open arms and given cushy lodging and special treatment after what you did? Not likely. Now keep moving. You know where you’re going.”
She did, actually. And once they shifted course back into the central parts of the tents comprising the camp she’d been allowed to walk in her prior stay, she knew the way quite well indeed. They were going to the ship. She was being taken to see Gromm.
They approached the large vessel, a familiar path she’d walked many times while staying inside as a guest. But now she was something else. And with that came the dubious honor of being taken into the heart of the ship to a very large, very secure room close to the command center. She was going to see Gromm in his personal chambers.
“Inside,” the guard growled, shoving her through the open door. An open door that abruptly became a closed one behind her with a frightening thud.
Gromm was sitting on a chair large enough to support his ridiculous mass. He was shirtless, not even wearing his boots. Just another man relaxing in his cave, only in this instance his cave was a spaceship, and the man was a brutal slave trading mercenary.
Shirtless as he was, she could see just how ridiculous his musculature was, the rippling cords of them making him appear like some high school kid’s attempt at drawing a superhero. Under any other circumstances she might have been tempted to quip about compensating for some shortcoming. But this was very much not the time nor place for taunts. She was mad, yes, but not stupid.
He rose, towering over her, his myriad rune tattoos shifting in his skin. Just as Floxxia had said, he was absolutely covered in them, looking almost like some sort of Skrizzit’s scratch pad.
The colors and styles of the markings were varied, likely dependent on what pigment he had on hand and who the nearest available Skrizzit was. But one thing remained constant. All of them were interlinked by fine lines. Lines she now knew first-hand allowed them to share power throughout his body. And given the sheer quantity of them, he had to be quite powerful indeed. Far more than she’d originally assumed.
He walked around her, not saying a word, staring down at the tiny human as he paced just a step away. She smelled his sour sweat. He was the opposite of Braxxos in that regard. His diet, his lifestyle, everything about him felt artificial and gross. He stopped pacing.
“You cost me a ship,” he said with a restrained calm in his voice that was somehow even more scary than if he’d been yelling.
“It was an accident, but?—”
“Andyou cost me two of my men.”
She looked up at him looming over her, a flare of anger rising up in her belly. If she was going to die, at least she wouldn’t grovel.
“You know what? Fuck you. You were going to capture the other survivors. You were going to sell them as slaves. That’s fucking abhorrent.Youare abhorrent.”
Surprisingly, rather than lash out, he just chuckled, a low, evil sound rumbling out of his barrel chest. “Oh, so you’re feisty now?” he said, picking up a fruit she knew was this world’s equivalent of a coconut, more or less. He squeezed, crushing it easily in his bare hand.
Oh, fuck, he’s even stronger than I thought.
Gromm reached out and patted her cheek with his now-wet hand. “Feisty is good. I like a woman with fire in her belly.”
He ran his hands over her body, not sexually, but like a butcher sizing up his next lamb for slaughter. She shuddered despite her best efforts to remain strong. To remain defiant. But the frightening, blue-skinned man was triggering something primal in her. A fear that had evolved over millennia and was how creatures either survived or went extinct. The man was a predator, she felt it in her bones.
Her Infala also felt it, reacting hard, twinging and pulling on her chest. Fortunately, he didn’t notice the faint glow that had flared up under her top. If he had, Lord knows what he might have done next.
Gromm’s door rang out loud with the pounding of a fist.
“What is it?” he shouted, keying the opening controls.
Rylinn was there. He glanced at Margot, noting her frightened look, then back at Gromm. “Is this a bad time?”
“Not at all. Come in. I was just talking with my new plaything.”
Rylinn did as he was asked, closing the door behind him and crossing to a chair, taking a seat and reclining as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. He even took a bottle of what looked like some sort of alcohol and poured himself a drink.
“Help yourself, why don’t you,” Gromm said with an annoyed scowl.
Rylinn didn’t seem concerned at all. He was amused, even. “Oh, I will.”
Margot caught his eye as he sipped his drink searching desperately for any glimpse, any hint of his former persona. The man she’d gotten to know and who had been so kind to her before.
None was to be found.
Rylinn shifted his attention back to his employer. “So, you have her. My payment, please.”
