Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (38 page)

The man who’d led them, leapt toward
the gangplank, landed solidly and disappeared inside. Tariq turned
to him. “You next. Don’t look down.”

“
You had to fucking say
that, didn’t you?” Koryn snarled when he’d looked down and felt his
belly take flight. Shaking the image from his mind, he gauged the
distance and jumped. He hadn’t taken the movement of the gangplank
into consideration. He lost his balance and went down on one knee,
nearly pitching over the side. Scrambling up again, he bounded
toward the opening just as Tariq landed behind him. Tariq bowled
him over as he raced in behind him.

The man who’d led them bowed when they
picked themselves up and Koryn realized for the first time that he
was an android. “Lady Seana sends her love and wishes you a safe
journey and a happy life.”

“
Emerald?” Tariq asked
sharply.

The android lifted his arm and
gestured toward the rear of the ship. Koryn started to follow him
when he turned and raced down the corridor and then stopped. He
turned to look at the android. “Where are we going?”

The android shrugged. “We await
further instruction.”

“
I’d say the first order
of business would be to get the hell out of here,” Koryn said
sharply. “Tariq can give you the coordinates when he’s checked on
Emerald.”

The android frowned. “Any direction?”
he asked doubtfully.

“
Milky Way galaxy. For
now, just use the coordinates to reach Earth. That’s the general
direction anyway.”

* * * *

Tariq paused outside the door,
suddenly uncertain. After a moment, he pushed inside and looked
around, half fearful that he would discover Emerald wasn’t there
after all. He saw almost immediately that she lying on the bed in
the middle of the room, however.

A knot swelled in his throat as he
stared at her, trying to tell himself that it was enough to know
for certain that she was with them and finally safe. He didn’t want
to wake her.

Besides, he could smell the stench
from the sewers on himself.

After a long moment, he turned and
moved quietly toward the door again. He’d almost reached it when
she called out to him. He stopped and turned back, discovering
she’d pushed herself up on the bed to look at him.

His gaze flickered over her hungrily
for a split second before it pierced his mind that she was clothed
in the nearly transparent sheathe of a sex slave—in the colors of
the house of Mylor. A nauseating collection of thoughts and
emotions collided inside him all at the same time.

“
Tariq?”

Shrugging off the disorienting,
conflicting emotions at the fear he heard in her voice, Tariq
returned to the bed, kneeling beside it. “How’s my baby?” he asked
gruffly.

She struggled across the bed toward
him and threw her arms around his neck. “I missed you so much! I
didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

Tariq felt a knot swell in his throat.
He hadn’t thought he would see her again either. “I stink like
hell, baby. I took a stroll in the sewers and at that it wasn’t
much worse than that stinking prison cell.” He wrapped his arms
around her, though, hugging her tightly to his chest because he
couldn’t dismiss the need to assure himself he wasn’t
dreaming.

“
How did you get out? How
did I get here? Where are we?”

He chuckled, disentangling himself and
leaning away to cup her face in his hands. “We’re home.”

She blinked at him in confusion.
“Home?”

He searched her face. “Yes. Home is
where ever you are. Now let me get cleaned up so I can cuddle you
properly.”

She sat back when he released her. “I
could bathe you,” she offered.

“
Not this time, baby.
Rest.”

Getting to his feet, he headed into
the small bath that adjoined the master cabin—or in the case of
this particular ship, the mistress’ cabin. When he’d stripped and
dropped his uniform in the cleaning unit, he took a quick, hot
shower, scrubbing himself ruthlessly to get rid of the stench. He
was too impatient to stand still for a full drying cycle and
stepped out of it while he was still damp, striding back into the
bedroom and climbing into bed with Emerald. She scooted toward him
even as he settled, pressing tightly against him as he curled his
arms around her.

“
Koryn?” she asked after a
few minutes.

“
He was right behind me.
He’s safe.”

She sighed, nuzzling her face against
his chest. “How did you manage to get away?”

He uttered a derisive snort. “I bribed
and begged every son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever known. Seana finally came
through for us.”

Emerald stiffened and Tariq tensed.
After a moment, she relaxed again and went back to nuzzling his
chest and then kissing him.

He groaned. “Don’t baby. You can’t and
I want to so bad I’m dying here already.”

She tensed again. “You know I lost the
baby.”

The rage he’d felt instantly rose in
him again. He fought a round with it and finally subdued it.
“You’re safe. That’s the important thing.”

She began crying. “I’m so sorry,
Tariq. I didn’t know what they were giving me.”

“
Let’s don’t talk about
it. I wanted to kill the bastard when I heard about it, but all I
want right now is to get you some place safe where I won’t have to
worry about that happening to you ever again.”

She sniffed her tears back, pressing
tightly against him. “Where are we going?”

“
Centaurian, I
hope.”

Emerald was silent for several
moments. “I was going to take my daughter there. It was the first
colony outside our own system and the most well established. It’s
supposed to be beautiful.”

“
Hopefully we’ll find out.
I did the best I could to get all the coordinates, but the data was
damaged and encrypted besides,” Tariq said drowsily. “Don’t be
pissed off with me if I nod off. I haven’t slept worth a shit since
they took you.”

* * * *

As exhausted as Koryn was
once the adrenaline of escaping left him and relief had swamped him
to discover that Emerald was safe, he only managed to sleep
fitfully. His need just to see her with his own eyes and feel
absolute certainty nearly overrode his discomfort at interrupting
Tariq more than once. He thought the certainty that she would be
more interested in seeing that Tariq was alright played a part in
his reluctance to interrupt their reunion. He
knew
how she felt and he still
didn’t want to actually face it, to see the proof that would remove
the small hope he nursed that she’d cared enough to be worried
about him, too.

Taking a smaller cabin, he bathed the
stench of prison off and the smells from the sewer that he didn’t
particularly want to identify and lay down on the bed, struggling
to absorb the fact that he wasn’t going to die after all—probably
wasn’t. At least, he thought wryly, he didn’t have to face the
hideous execution that had awaited him. He might still be
incinerated if the authorities managed to catch up with them, but
that didn’t seem nearly as bad as being marched into a room to
stand waiting for the furnace blast that would melt his skin from
his body and then his muscles until even his bones were ash. Of
course, from what he understood, nobody ever lasted much more than
five minutes, but he’d had minor burns. He wasn’t unfamiliar with
pain. He knew how long five minutes felt when the pain was
excruciating.

Shuddering, he pushed the
thoughts from his mind and turned it to trying to imagine what life
was going to be like if they did make it to this new world and it
occurred to him that more had changed than he’d realized—everything
in point of fact. Neither he nor Tariq
had
a position on this new world.
They would have to make one for themselves. It was almost as scary
a thought as it was … exciting, he decided.

He wasn’t sure of how it was going to
affect his arrangement with Tariq in regards to Emerald, though,
and that disturbed him. Technically, she wasn’t a slave anymore
since she was beyond the reach of the Anunnaki nation. She would
have the same freedom and rights that she’d had before among her
people—although he didn’t have a clue of what those were. No one
had ever spent much time considering that the humans might develop
their own way of looking at things, their own rules of
civilization, but Emerald had certainly made it abundantly clear
that it was entirely different to them.

When he woke to the sound of Tariq’s
familiar tread in the corridor outside his cabin, he got up and
went to collect his uniform from the cleaning unit where he’d left
it the night before. It smelled better and it didn’t look filthy,
but it offended him to have to put it on anyway, partly because it
brought his prison stay to the forefront of his mind and partly
because it hadn’t faired particularly well. It was the next thing
to rags and he’d never had to wear anything that looked so bad, let
alone be seen in it.

His eagerness to see Emerald warred
with his reluctance to present himself looking so shabby, but his
need to reassure himself that she was alright finally won out.
Tariq, who seemed to be searching the small galley for something to
eat, flicked a glance at him as he came out, but he didn’t say
anything when he immediately turned toward the rear
cabin.

She was sitting in a casual chair in
the small cabin. She looked up when he came in, though, and smiled
when she saw him. “Koryn!”

It did strange things to him, overset
his entire system so that he couldn’t decide how to react. Feeling
short of breath and weak kneed, he moved to the bed and dropped
down on the edge, lifting his hands. “Come here, baby.”

She got up immediately and surged
toward him. He’d intended to look her over for signs of abuse, but
when she rushed to him with such obvious eagerness, he forgot
everything. Need exploded inside of him. Pulling her between his
thighs, he looped one arm around her to hold her tightly against
him and threaded his fingers through her hair. Dragging her head
back, he opened his mouth over hers to suck at her soft mouth
greedily and then explore the warm cavern. For a few moments, it
appeased his need to taste and touch her when he’d thought he never
would again, and then it wasn’t enough. He broke from her lips and
explored her face and then her throat and then he lifted her high
enough that he could explore her breasts.

“
Gods damn it, Koryn! What
the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Koryn jerked his head up guiltily when
Tariq’s thundering voice exploded unexpectedly around him, staring
at Tariq with blank, fevered eyes for several moments before anger
and possessiveness rolled over him. His face hardened. His hands
tightened on Emerald. He tensed, feeling the urge swell inside him
to counter Tariq’s challenge.

“
She just lost the baby,
dunce!”

Koryn glared at him for
calling him a dunce even though he immediately felt like one—and
worse. He swallowed convulsively several times.
“I wouldn’t have taken it any further,”
he said tightly, knowing as well as Tariq did that it wasn’t
likely he could’ve stopped himself before much longer whether he’d
recalled her condition or not.

He discovered he needn’t
have worried that Tariq would be too judgmental about his lack of
control. There was a glazed look in his own eyes as his gaze
flickered over Emerald.
“We can’t right
now … can we? She has to have time to heal.”

Koryn’s heart fluttered.
His gut clenched.
“It depends on when he
did it. If he checked her right off and discovered you’d bred her,
he would’ve acted then, in which case she might have had time to
heal from it—it’s been nigh a month. If I had any way to check her,
I could tell you. Unfortunately, I don’t have a damned
thing.”

“
There’s where you’re
wrong. Seana’s a health freak. I always thought it was strange that
she was so fearful of getting sick when she’d been regenerated four
times—and hadn’t once had any serious medical problems that I ever
heard about—but she was. I can guarantee you the sick bay is well
stocked.”

Koryn stared at him in
disbelief.
“She has a
sick bay
on her private
yacht?”

Tariq shrugged and
grinned.
“I told you she was a freak about
her health! You didn’t notice how unnerved she was about the
possibility of germs in the prison?”

“
Yes, well the place was a
cesspool! I would’ve been more worried about it myself except I
figured I wasn’t likely to live long enough to die from anything I
might catch down there,”
Koryn said
dryly.
“Where is it?”

“
I’ll show you after we
eat.”
He turned his attention to Emerald.
“Come on, baby. You need to eat something. It looks like the
bastard’s been starving you.”

“
I was … unhappy,” she
countered. “He said he would make me eat if I didn’t.”

Tariq’s expression hardened. “The
son-of-a-bitch won’t make you do anything ever again. I guarantee
you he’ll never get his hands on you again if I have to kill
him.”