“You could untie me,” Drako suggests. “Then I could take off my own belt.”
“Why would I release you?” Thor says.
“Because you are going to anyway. You’ve already decided to keep me alive and I am more use to you when I am able to move. Having a disobedient female around is going to cause us both problems,” Drako says. “Untie me, brother. She knows to fear me.”
“And she will know to fear me too,” Thor replies. “Go and get his belt, little one, or I will untie him, and he will use it on you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
My eyes go wide, as I realize he’s actually serious.
“If you untie him, he won’t punish me. He’ll kill us both. Or he’ll kill you, then do a bunch of terrible things to me, or he’ll do them first, then…”
“She does have quite the imagination, doesn’t she,” Drako chuckles dryly.
“It’s not imagination. You wanted to torture someone to death.”
“Go and get his belt,” Thor repeats.
“You want me to touch him? You want me that close to him? What if he bites me and tears into my jugular with his bare teeth?”
“By the gods, girl,” Thor sighs. “You refuse to obey under any circumstances.”
“He killed your entire crew,” I remind him. “He gave the order to shoot our ship down. Am I that annoying that you’d let a mass murderer have freedom just to punish me?”
Thor gives me a long look. “You’re right,” he says finally. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You should kill him. He killed everyone else,” I say. “Letting him live is letting their deaths be in vain. We have no guarantee that we will be rescued. We could all die tomorrow. But you’re letting him have an extra day of life, and a chance to talk his way out. He could escape his bonds in the night and kill us both…”
“That’s enough,” Thor says firmly. “I don’t want to hear a dozen arguments for killing a bound man. It’s cowardly, and I won’tdo it, no matter how much he might deserve it. We have honor. That is what distinguishes us from them.”
He lets me go, thank fuck, and we share the mushrooms. They’re still not good. But they are food. Thor sits down for a bit afterward and closes his eyes. He says he’s not going to sleep, but I know he’s exhausted as I am, and he’s bigger, so he needs more rest.
When he starts to breathe slow and deep, I know he’s asleep. I plan to do something terrible then, but the need for a nap overtakes me. I wake up late in the evening, with dusk gathering quickly. Thor is still asleep.
I sneak over to Drako, kneel down, and whisper in his ear. “Get fucked, loser,” I say. “You’re going to die like this, tied up like a helpless little animal.”
“You keep taunting me,” he growls back. “But we both know you want your pussy wrapped around my cock. You’re not trying to get me killed. You’re trying to provoke me into escaping these ropes and punishing your pussy. Don’t worry, girl. You’ll get the rough use that you crave.”
“I wouldn’t fuck you if you had the last penis in the universe,” I tell him.
Right at that moment, Thor grips me by the back of the neck, his hand curling in the fabric of my shirt.
“Stay away from him, or you’ll have a sore ass again,” he says, his firm lecturing in quite sharp contrast to Drako’s intense sexual threats.
“She doesn’t want to be babied,” Drako says. “She wants a baby put in her. She won’t respect you until you dominate her pussy.”
“If sex was enough to make her behave herself, she’d be submissive already,” Thor says.
“Not the right kind of sex. You want to survive this world? You need to untie me. If something comes in the night and eats me, you’ve given me no opportunity to defend myself. Pretty evil, wouldn’t you say?”
I realize, to my complete horror, that Drako is actually going to talk Thor into letting him go. He’s appealing to his honor, and to his notion that we are safer in numbers. That does not apply when one of you is an absolute psycho.
“You have yourself, and a woman you can’t control, and you’re keeping your greatest potential asset trussed. I already showed you what could be eaten. You’ve filled your belly because of me.”
“Because I forced you to tell me on pain of your own death.”
Drako laughs. “We are all as good as dead. This world devours everything with a spark of life. Why do you think it remains unsettled? There are colonies further past it lightyears in every direction. But every expedition that lands here, disappears.”
