It was the longest speech he’d made and the hardest to ‘translate’, but she finally realized he was saying whoever had taken her had implanted something in her brain so that she’d be able to communicate.
Well—she supposed he meant so she could understand when she was told to do something.
It worked … after a fashion, but it damned sure wasn’t flawless!
It worked well enough she was able to understand something she hadn’t really wanted to know—that she was going to be the ‘spoils of war’ until they wore her out, she supposed. Because she was only Tarik’s prize until the next main event—which she gathered was a in matter of weeks.
They went out daily to work out or to practice, she supposed. She was told to stay put and she was afraid to wander around without Tarik, so she only managed to piece it together from bits of conversation and the fact that they were sweaty and often bloodied when they came back after disappearing for hours.
They brought her gifts—both of them.
Elly supposed she should have considered the etiquette of rejecting or accepting, but it took her off guard when Kirt brought her a fist full of exotic flowers. She didn’t actually think of them as a courtship offering. She gasped in delight when she spotted them and lifted a hand automatically to accept them when he held them out—her only thought that she could get a closer look and see if they had a fragrance she liked.
It wasn’t until she looked up happily from her examination that she realized she’d screwed up. Tarik’s expression was tight with anger as he stared at Kirt. But Kirt seemed oblivious. He was watching her.
She glanced from one to the other, her face reddening with discomfort and then going white with anxiety. She didn’t know what he thought about it because he turned and stalked to the far side of their cell, folded his arms, and glared at the bars.
Ignoring the flowers she offered to return, Kirt grasped her and carried her against the wall behind her, engulfing her within his mass. She couldn’t see Tarik, could only wonder and worry what his reaction might be, but only for a handful of seconds.
Kirt commanded her entire focus as soon as he began to kiss her.
Well, she couldn’t help but retain a hyperawareness that Tarik was nearby, but it wove in and out of her consciousness as Kirt swamped her senses with the feel of his hard body, his taste and scent. And she thought, if not for the possibility that he represented a very dangerous physical threat she could’ve devoted her all to Kirt.
There was just enough distraction that when Kirt hefted her upward, mounted her on his impressive shaft and began bouncing her up and down it that her climb to completion was a rockier achievement than it might otherwise have been. There wasn’t a great deal of nerves that he missed stimulating for all that. It was just that every time she felt herself slipping closer and closer to climax, a warning flickered along the fringes of her mind and she fell back the other way.
Fortunately, Kirt was determined to ring some positive notes from her—she supposed because she’d sung for Tarik.
He kept pounding away at it, kissing her to mindlessness, until she leapt the barrier into an explosive climax.
She was really too weak in the aftermath to brace herself for a battle of the goliaths or to try to defend her actions, which made it a very good thing she didn’t have to.
The only results she could see of having inadvertently accepted both as lovers was that they began to vie to court her, thankfully not fight one another or turn their anger on her. Within a few days she had bunches of flowers in every stage of decay—from fresh picked to dried and crumbling to dust.
She appreciated it.
She really did—especially Tarik’s attempt to provide her with something to cover her nakedness. He’d sacrificed the bottom portion of his blanket to make something like a poncho that slipped over her head and tied at the sides.
She still felt more naked than clothed, but partially nude wasn’t nearly as bad as completely naked.
Her main uneasiness about it was the fear that they’d become way too preoccupied with courting—mostly the screwing that followed her acceptance ofanygift!—to consider plans for escape.
Thankfully, it transpired that she had completely misjudged both of them—partly, she knew, because the translators made it possible to understand one another but also made them all sound like primitives barely able to string words together.
Well—she was pretty sure they came from a more primitive world than hers, but she was also certain they were intelligent.
She was counting on it.
And it transpired that her faith wasn’t misplaced … although she had her doubts even after they set the escape in motion.
There was no sneaking around, which was what she’d envisioned—crawling through old sewers or something of that nature.
They did nothing when guards were sent to fetch her, strip her, and truss her up like a prize turkey again beyond the fact that Tarik embraced her and whispered ‘be ready’ in her ear.
She was hauled away and displayed as before.
She’d forgotten in the mean time just how painful that was and she was struggling to close her mind to the extreme discomfort when the gladiators were marched onto the field of battle.
They passed under her and she struggled to meet their gazes.
