Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (7 page)

“
Why can’t I have
something to wear? You aren’t worried I’ll thwart you and catch my
death from exposure?”

A mixture of amusement and anger
flickered in his eyes. “You’ll have to talk to Tariq about
that.”

Which, apparently, was a waste of
time! “Why?”

“
Because he’s claimed
you,” he said tightly.

Emerald’s heart skipped a beat. She
frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

“
It means he has the power
to do so and he’s exerted it.”

“
I still don’t
understand,” she managed to say after a moment. “I thought … I
understood that I’d been resurrected for experiments.”

He looked startled and then irritated.
“What the hell made you think that?”

“
It’s what Tariq said—that
the Anunnaki had experimented on humans since they’d first
discovered them.”

He glanced toward the untouched tray
and reached over to remove the lid. Picking up a bowl much like the
one the night before, he handed it to her. She saw without a lot of
enthusiasm that she’d graduated to thicker broth. Taking it from
him obediently, she sipped at it, discovering it tasted like cream
of mushroom soup. She frowned. “Why is it that everything you’ve
given me is so familiar?”

“
Because most of the foods
in your diet originated on our world. We didn’t just experiment on
the humans,” he said dryly.

“
But … you aren’t going to
use me for experiments now?”

He looked at her, his gaze flickering
over her face. “You belong to Lord Tariq now. He’ll tell you what
he wants you to know.”

She looked down at the cup
in her hand to keep from giving her thoughts away as resentment
swelled inside of her. Just like that?
He
decided and it was so?

Why was she surprised when she’d
already deduced that she was either a prisoner or a lab rat or
both? And maybe she still was? He hadn’t explained what it meant
that Tariq had claimed her.

Except she had her
suspicions that he had plans that included having her naked in his
bed. He’d said as much, after all. She didn’t see any reason to
doubt it, but she discovered acknowledging it unnerved the hell out
of her. “
Lord
Tariq?” she asked in a suffocated voice. “If he’s so
important, why was he sent here to collect the lab
animals?”

“
He wasn’t
sent.”

Emerald sent a startled look toward
the door where his voice had emanated and discovered Tariq was
standing in the portal. She felt her face heat.

Koryn pushed his chair back abruptly
and rose. “I had a look at the abrasions. They’re responding
satisfactorily to the medications.”

Tariq met his gaze for a long moment
and then glanced at Emerald. He sauntered into the room, allowing
the door to close behind him. “Just so that there are no
misunderstandings,” he murmured, “she’s off-limits until I’ve bred
her.”

Shock rolled over Emerald. She gaped
at him, wondering a little wildly if she’d misheard him.

“
Gods damn it, Tariq!
She’s barely two days out of the pod! You know damned well she’s
still too fragile and weak for breeding! You’ll end up killing her
and your babe with her!”
Koryn growled,
switching abruptly to their own language.

Tariq’s face
hardened.
“Have I ever given you reason to
believe I’m deficient in understanding?”

Koryn blushed.
“I’m not questioning your intelligence or your
judgment—in any other matter! Don’t talk to me as if
I’m
mentally deficient!
Do you think I didn’t notice you could barely contain yourself
until she was fully developed and ready to be released from the
growth pod?”

Tariq flushed.
“How the fuck did you manage to notice anything
when you’ve been hovering over her pod yourself?”

“
I was doing my
job
!” Koryn responded tightly.

“
Tell that to someone who
doesn’t know you as well as I do!”
Tariq
said derisively.

Koryn stared at him
angrily for several moments
. “I won’t deny
I desire her.”

“
Good! Because you’d be
wasting your fucking breath!”
Tariq
snarled, striding to the beverage dispenser. He hesitated over
selecting
nizsum
and finally settled on a mild wine, annoyed that he’d even
considered the
nizsum
. Then again, Koryn was right. From the moment he’d first
seen Emerald, he’d thought of little else besides possessing her.
Abstinence was hellish enough without having a desirable woman
close enough to smell her scent and not being able to do anything
about it.

“
She isn’t ready,
Tariq.”

Tariq turned to study him
for a long moment before he focused on Emerald.
“I know that,”
he said almost
mildly.
“I just wanted to make sure that
you understood our friendship won’t save you if you touch her
before I’ve bred her
.” He met Koryn’s gaze
for a long moment.

“
And after you’ve bred
her? Will you give her to me?”

Tariq’s face hardened. He
looked away, struggling to get his temper under control. Reminding
himself that a pretense of indifference was the only way he was
likely to pull off what he wanted didn’t help. He didn’t
feel
fucking
indifferent! He wanted to choke the life out of Koryn for touching
her at all.
“I’ll let you fuck
her.”

“
You mean to keep her?
She’s human. You know, regardless of the circumstances—or your
position—the council would never allow you to take her as a
concubine.”

Tariq sent him a startled
look since it hadn’t occurred to him even to consider taking her as
a concubine and then glanced at Emerald.
She might be a pureblood and a desirable woman, but she was
human, not Anunnaki.
Granted, some of the
old ones had, but
that was long, long ago
and the main reason it was frowned upon now. They were simple
creatures, however desirable, and hadn’t acclimated well to their
world or their customs and beyond that, their own women had been
outraged and made such a fuss that the council had reversed their
stance on taking Earth women as concubines. They hadn’t outlawed
it, but they’d made it damned difficult on those who had, and no
one had even tried it for years.

The only possible
explanation for Koryn’s assumption as far as he could see was that
it
had
occurred
to him, which didn’t improve his mood and deepened his suspicion
that Koryn’s guilty start when he’d come in arose from what he’d
been
thinking
about doing, even if he hadn’t acted on it.
“That and the fact that you’re my best friend is
the only reason I’ll allow you to fuck her at all,”
Tariq growled.

“
When you tire of her,
then?”

Tariq flicked a hard
glance at him and finally shrugged.
“I’ve
no heirs,”
he said dryly, studying the
wine in his glass.
“I’ll want to breed
more than one on her.”

“
So what you’re saying is
that you intend to use our friendship to keep her?”
Koryn said tightly.

Tariq sent him a look of
surprise.
“You object?”

Anger flashed through Koryn. He wasn’t
in a position to object and they both knew it. His bloodlines and
family name were almost the equal of Tariq’s and yet ‘almost’
wasn’t good enough—now. He had neither the power nor the position
to demand a breeder of his own—not in their current circumstances.
If they hadn’t found their nursery devastated, their purebloods
vanished into thin air or dead ….

He
still
wouldn’t have been in a
position to demand Emerald if Tariq had wanted her, he thought
angrily. He could choose
one
if they’d found enough to go around and as long
no one of higher class or power wanted her, she was his.

Even Tariq stood to lose her if
someone of a higher position decided to claim her.

That was why he refused to wait, Koryn
realized abruptly. It wasn’t just his eagerness. It was the fear
that she’d be snatched from his grasp.

His anger waned as that settled in his
mind. It wasn’t a bad plan, he decided once he’d gotten past his
anger and could think straight. If she was breeding, Tariq could
keep her in seclusion and if it was known that he was sharing her
she wouldn’t attract undue notice.

It did little to cool his
resentment that he couldn’t claim her for himself. He wasn’t
certain he could’ve brought himself to share her with Tariq if
their roles had been reversed, but then he knew Tariq well enough
to know it was eating at him that he had to regardless of his
efforts to behave as if it didn’t matter.
“No,”
he responded finally, his own
voice tight with reluctance.
“There’ll be
no way to keep the other men from talking, you know. Too many have
seen her already. She might not have attracted so much notice if
not for the hair.”

Tariq snorted.
“You think they noticed anything above her
breasts?”

“
You and I
did.”

Tariq downed his
wine.
“That’s why I intend to keep her
confined in my quarters. I suggest you double your efforts. I
wouldn’t propose it if things were different, but it wouldn’t be a
bad idea to make duplicates if you can get enough genetic material
to do so.”

“
Not that I don’t see your
point, but I’ve been damned lucky to get what I have!”
Koryn retorted angrily.

Tariq turned to look at
him.
“What about the woman you found
today?”

Koryn frowned.
“I don’t know,”
he said
doubtfully.
“Possibly. I think it’s more
likely I could get enough from the male to make two.”

“
I don’t give a fuck
whether the
women
have breeders or not!”
Tariq
growled.

“
They
do,”
Koryn retorted dryly,
“and there are some powerful women behind this
enterprise.”

“
They’ll be happy to learn
that we’ve found nearly three times as many men than we have women,
then,”
Tariq said sourly.
“I hope to fuck it isn’t a trend, but it’s
beginning to look that way.”

“
It’s a little early to
arrive at that conclusion, although I’ll agree it is certainly
looking that way, but I’m not sure it will count in our favor with
the women when we haven’t managed to clone even half the men we’ve
found.”

The comment effectively
distracted Tariq.
“It would suggest a war
as the cause of this mess—either among themselves or with invaders.
The council—everyone—is going to want to know what happened and
we’re going to need the right answers.”

“
We haven’t found anything
to support that,”
Koryn said
sharply.

“
Except the ratio of men
to women, you mean?”

“
Except that,”
Koryn agreed. He glanced at Emerald, saw that her
jaw was set and her eyes sparkling with anger and repressed a
smile.
“Emerald doesn’t look especially
gratified by your claim.”

Tariq flushed
uncomfortably.
“I hadn’t realized I said
that in her language,”
he said
ruefully.

Koryn stared at him a
moment and chuckled.
“I hadn’t thought I’d
live to see the day a woman rattled you that much.”

“
You haven’t seen it
now,”
Tariq said tartly.
“I was pissed off to find you hovering over her.
It had nothing to do with being rattled.”

Koryn grinned.
“If you say so. As much as I’d enjoy staying to
watch, I think I’ll just take my leave now and let you handle this.
The lab calls.”

“
Coward,”
Tariq murmured with amusement.

Koryn flicked a rude gesture at him as
he headed out, but he didn’t turn around.

Tariq studied Emerald ruefully when
Koryn had departed. She glared at him and finally turned a
disdainful shoulder in his direction and settled her head against
the back of the chair.

“
You aren’t sleeping in
that chair,” he said grimly.

Emerald stiffened, but she didn’t
otherwise acknowledge his comment.

Shaking his head, he returned to the
dispenser for another glass of wine for himself and one for her.
She stared at him when he settled in the chair beside her and
offered her the glass. “It’s wine,” he said dryly.

“
I had soup.”

“
And now you’ll have
wine.”

Her jaw tightened but after a long
moment, she took the glass. “Somehow I doubt this is part of my
diet,” she muttered under her breath. “Maybe it’ll kill
me.”