“What—” Kate felt lightheaded suddenly.“What ishappening?Where are we?”
“Lower your voice,” the blonde said quietly.“Or they’ll come over here.”
“Sorry,” Kate whispered, her arms trembling.“I just—I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Only me and the redhead at the end over there have returned,” she said, tilting her head down the row of women.The blonde looked back at the arena before them.The air was charged with an electricity that prickled her skin in awareness.It felt…ominous.The blonde continued, “This is a fight.Winner takes his pick.”
“Pick ofwhat?”
The blonde looked at her oddly.“Of us.”
Kate physically felt the blood drain out of her face.All thought ground to a halt and she could only say, “But they’re aliens.”
No shit, Sherlock, she mocked herself.
“Like I said…you get used to it after a while.My first time?I freaked the fuck out.”
Kate wanted to laugh, the kind of hysterical laughter that people only had when they couldn’t believe what the hell was happening or when something had gone seriously, seriously wrong.
“What happens after that?What happens after one…picks you?”
Kate got a shrug and their chainstinkedtogether.“I bit the first one that tried to take me so he chose another girl.Your guess is as good as mine.But let’s just say that I think there is a reason why we’re naked.”
How can she be so calm and collected about this?Kate wondered.
She realized the answer a moment later.Because she had to be.Kate realized that freaking out would get her nowhere.It was very likely that the blonde had come to the same conclusion: that they were fucked escape-wise.Their options were limited.
The alien must’ve ended his little speech with a bombshell because the arena went completely silent before chaos erupted.Kate realized they wereexcited, even more so than they had been before.And she couldn’t help but wonder why.
She glanced up at the setting suns and realized that was the least of her worries.How the hell was she going to get off this planet and get back home?
Steel doors on opposite sides of the arena hissed open slowly.The crowd went quiet.With bated breath, Kate watched as a hulking, hunched alien emerged from the tunnel.It had two legs and two arms, but its limbs seemed stretched, corded together by surprisingly thick muscles.Its skin was a velvet brown, its teeth sharp like razor points.Drool pooled on the ground as it walked and the alien let out a roar so deafening that it made the hair on her arms stand on end.
If this fight was for what Kate thought it was—to take one of them as a sex slave—there was even more reason to fight back.There was no way she’d let something like that get close to her, touch her.
Another big worry, however, had just appeared.Striding out through the double doors on the opposite side of the arena was a man.No, not a man, she realized.One ofthem.An alien.The crowd went absolutely bat shit crazy when they spotted him.
A pulse of awareness fluttered through Kate, reverberating to her very bones.
The alien wasmassive.Easily seven feet tall with ropes and ropes of muscles that lined his shoulders, his chest, his abdomen, his forearms, his thick thighs.His skin wasn’t green, or brown, or blue, but rather a subtlegold.His skin shimmered like a mirage, reflecting the light of the fading sun.That wasn’t the oddest thing, however.He had horns.Black horns that jutted up from his temples and curved around his head, fading into long, dark hair that fell to the middle of his back.He wore no armor, as the other alien wore.The golden one was bare chested, proudly showing off a multitude of scars that crossed and dissected his skin.A solid gold band wrapped around one of his biceps and she saw the glinting of metal pierced through his dusky nipples.
Brutal.Deadly.Intense.
Any one of those words would describe him.
What took her most by surprise was the heavy feeling in her breasts as she looked at him.And the faint throbbing between her thighs.Kate cursed herself.Feeling desire was thelastthing she should be feeling right now.She’d beenkidnapped.She was chained and naked in an arena full ofaliens.She was lined up before two of those aliens who were about to fight one another to take one of them.
So why couldn’t she rip her gaze from him?
The alien looked around the arena, scanning the crowds, eyes narrowed, as if searching for something.His eyes tracked to the line of women she was standing among.And then, suddenly, he was looking straight at her.Not at the blonde next to her.Not at the woman on the other side of her with flawless, mocha-colored skin.Her.
There was no mistaking it.His expression didn’t change but something in the lines of his body did.His whole body tensed, his stomach clenched.For a moment, Kate wondered if she’d angered him somehow.
At his sides, his hands flexed.He had claws, tipped in sharp black nails.Kate gulped down air.Why was the air so thin suddenly?
Then, he tore his gaze away from her as though being forced to.His eyes sought out his opponent.Kate felt bad for the velvet brown alien.Almost.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blonde glance her way.Kate turned towards her, her heart pounding, suddenly very nervous about what the outcome of the fight would be.
