It was primitive, though it was rapidly gaining and making strides. But that first day, when they had touched down, the sheer beauty of it had paled in comparison to the fact that there was nothing and nobody there.
She had been so afraid of being there, and now she was afraid of leaving the place that had become the home she had always dreamed of, even before she had known she could dream of such things or what they even were.
She tucked a strand of her shining hair behind one ear and said, “Okay. I’ll do it. But I won’t like it.”
His eyes, large and wide and as blue as the sky, danced with a sort of amusement. “I didn’t expect you to.”
She grouched, “I still don’t know why we can’t make you act as a sex slave. I’m sure you could charm the hell out of the female sex slaves and probably even a few of the male ones if you really put your mind to it. I’m sure they’d really take a liking to you.”
His face took on an indignant and outraged expression once again. His chest puffed up. His hands went to his hips. His eyelids slanted downward. “You do know that I’m not going to excuse you from this no matter how many insults you hurl at me or how many pokes you take at my manhood?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, her eyes traveled down his attenuated and leanly muscled body, right to his crotch. There was a chubby and plump outline there, one that she had seen before. He was so well-endowed that even the baggy trousers that he wore could not completely disguise the fullness of his member. A hot blush stained her face, and she jerked her eyes upward again. “Who says I’m trying to poke at your manhood?”
Oh, God. Had she just said that? She had! Things just kept getting worse by the second!
He said, “Good to know.”
He strode out of her hut, and as he went, she couldn’t help but notice the way that his tunic top rested just above his narrow waist and right above the firm and tight swell of his enviable ass. How he managed to keep an ass like that was beyond her. It was perfect, all muscled and full and…
God dammit!
That she had long been attracted to him was no secret to her, and she was fairly certain that it was not a secret to him either. The real question was how in the hell she was going to pretend to be his sex slave and do that around a large crowd of people while still ignoring the attraction that was so blistering hot that it often made her skin feel as if she were being exposed to not one, but several, suns.
Her long raven-black hair swung around her as she paced up and down the confines of her hut. She had a lot on her mind. The woman who had been sentenced to be sent back to Old Earth had been screaming for most of the day, her voice ringing through her hut’s thin walls and out into the world. Her daughter, a young and sincere woman who did, in fact, work hard, and who often tried to hush her mother’s complaints, was on edge. Mostly because she had been refused admittance to the hut. In fact, her things had been taken from it and then placed in a nearby hut shared by two young girls around her own age.
The punishment was harsh, and Margie was still conflicted about her part in that woman being sent back to the war-torn planet from which she had come.
She knew it had to be done. But she regretted her action and escalating the situation. She should not have spoken. And if she had spoken, she should not let the situation get so out of hand that the brothers had interceded.
Jeval was cruel, sometimes unconscionably so. He would not think sending that woman back was unkind. He would see it merely as a tool to prevent open hostility between the two very different sects of humans there on the planet. It was actually that and nothing else, but that decision didn’t take humanity into account. It took into account only the greater good.
She stopped, her head lowering between her shoulders. The crown of her head met the cool stone and mud wall of the hut, and she sighed, her shoulders drooping low as yet another scream from the hut, situated very near hers, rang out.
Margie said, aloud, “I don’t have to do this with him. I could refuse. Here, all can refuse. I have the right to say no. But I also have the right to bargain. If he wants this for me, he has to rethink that decision. Perhaps the threat and the day’s imprisonment will be enough to make that woman rethink her position.”
Could that be possible? She supposed it could be. It was worth a try anyway. She didn’t want that woman’s death on her conscience any more than she wanted to refuse to go along with the rather outlandish plot that had been hatched around her and created for her. She did not want to question herself as to why she wanted to go and do that so much.
It was a stupid thing to do. She was probably going to get her silly self up and killed, or something even worse!
If she had learned anything over the years of living on Old Earth and in the Below, it was that treachery abounded and that nowhere was safe. She had learned the hard way that people would do anything to save themselves, even jettison off those that they claimed to love the most.
What if he deserted her at the first sign of trouble?
Would he leave her there to fend for herself on a strange planet among strange creatures? Would she stand a chance if he did?
She had to consider that. If it came to a point where he had to get out and she was not in his immediate vicinity, he would absolutely choose to leave her behind in order to serve the greater good. In order to serve the planet he and his siblings had labored centuries to have and the people upon it.
Margie knew about his past.
He had been born on Revant, that long-gone planet. In his veins ran the blood of kings of his kind. His people were warriors and gifted with strange gifts. He and his brothers had taken up where their father and mother had left off, wrecking ships in order to preserve their people’s way of life on a planet outside of Federation grasp and rule. They had been attacked by the parasitic race known as the Gorlites and, with full Federation cooperation, they had been sold off to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder just happened to be a mining colony also run by The Federation’s cronies. They had lived underground, breaking their backs and bones and spirits year after year after year to produce the fuel for The Federation ships. They’d broken rock with their bare hands and bled all for the things that came from below that surface of that hot and lifeless place where they had been imprisoned, and for money to line the pockets of the greediest of all—Federation and mining officials who cared not one damn bit where their slave force came from, or how many died there in those dark and lonely mine shafts.
Jeval would do anything to protect this planet and his people. Even the humans that were not of his bloodline but who were now upon the face of that world and who he considered his subjects.
A long shiver worked its way through her body. Subjects. Yes, that was exactly how he considered those who also resided on the planet.
His other siblings insisted on democracy, but not Jeval. She had often seen him gazing at her fellow humans with a look of mingled contempt and amusement that spoke volumes about how he felt about them as a race. He had no love for them because he thought them weak and silly creatures. He did know, however, that the planet needed to be populated.
