I feel something first: a warmth, tingling along my spine. I have a moment of free-fall, as I realize in the most primordial part of my mind that something is there. I think of animals first, and I’m not entirely wrong. Fear freezes me before he even touches me, so I simply stand there and wait for him, like prey, to come up behind me.
I know that whatever it is, it is Kerz. A guard?
My mind is too slow, fear having gripped me so intensely that not even my thoughts will move. I reach for my knife too late, but I stand no chance against a Kerz guard, anyway. This alien race has an average male height of nearly seven feet, and their strength is—literally—otherworldly.
He won’t kill you, I remind myself. There is even a part of me that is relieved as I feel the hard muscle of his physique against my back.
He doesn’t put his arms around me to restrain me; he simply stands against my paralyzed body. The heat of his body feels good in the chill air, and I become aware of how cold I am only at that moment. A hand grasps the fist in which I hold the knife, and squeezes slowly, gently, until the building pressure forces my fingers to pop open and the knife falls to the ground with a heavy thunk. I feel that his claws are emerging, their hard, fearsome lengths slowly spreading from his fingertips.
To my right I catch a glimpse of thekrython his forearm. It’s green-yellow, the scaly patterns of it glowing like embers in a fire. I recognize the pattern immediately. For a moment it is silent except for our breath: mine, rapid and shallow; his, steady and strong. Now I smell him, too—in this respect, he’s more human than in any other way: a clean, musky smell tinged with something barely sweet and hard to describe, unique to him, hovers just above his skin and starts a cascade of arousing feelings in my core.
For a moment—however brief—I feel like I’m in a dream. A sense ofdeja vuinvades me, and strangely, it wells up in my chest as a calming warmth.
“Do not scream,” he says. His breath is warm against my neck, caressing my earlobe, sending a ripple of gooseflesh down my shoulder blades and a hot flush across my cheek. He must be bent down to speak so close to my ear, his lips inches from my skin. Low in my abdomen, arousal pools and snakes through my body.
Damn it, I think.God. Dammit.
I exhale. In the glow of hiskrythmy breath forms a pale yellow cloud. With the only breath I have left, I say—and I don’t know why:
“Rys.”
When his arms move around me, I sink into his chest and give up.
“No. Sound,” he says.
I see nothing but streaks of faint light as he picks me up; I can only sense the sudden distortion of the forces of gravity and then the solid muscle of his shoulder at my hips. I’m over his shoulder, tossed there with such ease, like a sack of potatoes.
“Wait,” I say, and even I’m not sure what I mean by that. I have nothing to bargain with, no ability to fight him, and even my desire to do so seems to be melting away like ice in a desert. I feel his hand beneath the cloak and the heavy, oversized robe I wear, along my calf, moving up, hot and gentle, but with a terrifying strength—I know—coiled in its muscle. His claws are out fully now, and they graze my skin in their journey upward, to my inner thigh.
My traitorous body is gushing now, and my pussy pulses with wet warmth as a single finger and its razor-sharp claw press slowly and gently against my skin where my femoral artery travels. This sends mortal, black fear coursing through my body but also arouses me so much that I feel I could climax without another movement of his body. Just the flick of that finger could kill me in a second, and I’m gushing out juices like a crazy whore.
I squeeze my eyes shut. We begin to move. His strength supports me so that I barely jostle as he walks.
The ramifications of what I have done reach my consciousness. A phantom heat spreads over my bottom, a reminder of the searing heat of his hand when he spanks me. I go back to where I started when I first came here: Rys’ dungeon, to be broken with his brand of sexual torment. But now he knows that my submission was a lie all along.
Tears well up in my eyes and arousal wells up in my pussy. What is wrong with me, I wonder. I don’t even care that much, I only want to get away.
But very slowly, as we move, I realize:
We are not returning to the fortress.
My heart is jolted to wild life and ice water pours into my veins.
As though reading my thoughts, he squeezes my thigh, firmly, but not painfully.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
But that is not what I fear.
CHAPTER2
Three Earth months earlier
Anya
“Is that what you’re wearing?”
Fiona is impossibly stunning in a black dress made of real zeotlak skin, her white-blonde hair (natural, of course) flowing in a perfect, silky mane that moves as one body. Single strands of Fiona’s hair never, ever go rogue. She delivers this question with a sweet tone, undercut by her unmaskable disdain. She takes pleasure in this sort of thing, but she’s also embarrassed by me. The conflict plays out on her face in a contortion of her features, leaving her ethereal beauty intact, but marred by a snarl and a dark look in her eyes.
