Kaitlyn O'Connor (10 page)

She reached for him when he stood, though, blindly searching her way to his loincloth and hooking her fingers in the waist. “Let me do that for you,” she whispered.

He removed her fingers, pulling her close, stroking her back soothingly. “I wait,
shimone.
Tomorrow, I please mine lover more.”

Loren swallowed with an effort, far less happy about coming when he wouldn
‟
t let her please him in return, feeling a terrible fear assail her that something would happen to him and she would never get the chance. “Please? I want to.”

He cupped her face and guided her upward to meet her mouth in a hungry kiss that rivaled Dakaar
‟
s. “Fight first,” he said huskily when he broke the kiss. He didn
‟
t release her. He seemed to hesitate over something that was bothering him. “Know is not polite to ask, but need know,
shimone.
No can risk spawning young in dis place. When is de spawning time for you?”

Loren stared blankly at the dark shadow where she thought his face was. “What?”

“No can give baby,” he said a little impatiently. “Need know.”

A jolt went through her as that sank in. He was worried about getting her pregnant? “You can
‟
t get me pregnant,” she said, but it was more horror at the thought and a denial of any possibility whatsoever than a statement she knew to be a fact.

He seemed satisfied, however. He kissed her again, briefly, and released her. Disappointed and anxious when he left, she stood at the bars for several moments, listening to his tread as he walked away. The doubts that she
‟
d entertained that he could see in the dark as he claimed vanished. There was no hesitation, no stumbling. His tread was as sure as if the place didn
‟
t look like the inside of a cave. Finally, she turned and made her way blindly to her own bed, bending at the waist and waving her arms in search of the bed. She found it with her shin and fell in.

She didn
‟
t realize until she had that she
‟
d left her toga where Balen had dropped it. After a brief debate over whether to get up and search for it, she pulled her blanket up instead. Curling on her side, she closed her eyes since she couldn
‟
t see anyway. Her body was still sparking and tingling from her climax and yet, as drained she
‟
d felt immediately afterward, the sense of satisfaction had disappeared with his refusal to allow her to give him release.

44

As unhappy as it made her to think he just hadn
‟
t been interested, it made her
more
unhappy when she finally recalled that men, earth men, seemed to think it weakened themto have sex before any sort of challenge. Maybe it did and maybe it didn
‟
t, but it certainly wasn
‟
t any comfort to think they might be concerned that a release the night before the games would weaken them and put them in danger.

She dwelt over that for a while but eventually her mind made its way back around to the bizarre conversation they
‟
d had about pregnancy. Uneasiness flitted through her as it occurred to her to wonder if he knew something she didn
‟
t. They
‟
d made it clear they
‟
d never encountered another human, though. They couldn
‟
t possibly know whether or not their biology was close enough to cross breed!

She would
‟
ve felt a hell of a lot better, though, if she hadn
‟
t abruptly remembered that her damned birth control pills were in her damned suitcase and she didn
‟
t know where in the hell that was!

Spawning was a damned strange way of referring to it, now that she thought about it.
Fish
spawned—on Earth—and she was as sure as she could be that they were mammals just like she was—except it was unnerving to recall that they had webbed fingers and growths that looked suspiciously like fins. She shook the thought off. They were mammals. She was positive of it.

They just looked too human
not
to be close—but close didn
‟
t always get „it
‟
done.

Anyway, why would they talk about spawning when they
‟
d very bluntly discussed her being a lover?

They were aliens, she reminded herself. Maybe they had times when they could fuck and not worry about it? And other times when they were actually fertile?

It seemed to her that that
must
be what he was talking about.

It was a damned shame that that immediately made her begin to wonder exactly where she was in her cycle.
Not
that she believed for a moment that having sex with them could create that kind of nightmarish disaster! But it was worrisome, if for no other reason than the fact that she had no pads for the occasion.

That
realization upset her so much that it completely diverted her from everything else.

What in the hell was she going to do when she had her period?

* * * *

Balen was so pleased with himself when he got to the cell he shared with Dakaar and Kael that he damned near started a riot. More accurately, he supposed wryly, it was because they could smell her scent on him. Both of them turned to look at him as he came in, did a double take and sat up on their bunks abruptly, clearly furious.

It made him angry. “I am not stupid! I do not want to lose the fight on the morrow. I did not spill my seed! I only pleasured her.”

Kael surged off of his bunk angrily. Dakaar was not far behind him.

“If you did no more than pleasure her, why do you smell like sex?” Kael growled.

“Because I pleasured her with mouth.”

Kael and Dakaar both went slack faced.

“Her pleasure center is not inside as it is with our women!” he said somewhat complacently.

45

“She showed me where it was and when I took into my mouth, she came.”

“Where?” Dakaar demanded.

“It is a little nub of flesh just at the base of her woman
‟
s mound, between the love petals.”

Kael frowned. “You are making that up! Why would it be there?”

Balen shrugged. “I do not know and she did not say. She offered to give me pleasure the same way, but I was near to losing my seed when she came. I did not think I could hold it if she put her mouth on me.”

Kael and Dakaar exchanged a speaking look and returned to their bunks. “I have her scent,”

Balen said somewhat irritably. “I pleasured her first.”

“You will have my fist down your throat if you do not shut the fuck up,” Kael snarled.

“Then I suppose I will not tell you what else I asked her.”

Dakaar did not have Kael
‟
s patience. “What?”

“I asked when her spawning season was and she assured me that we could not get her with child.”

“Was that before or after she punched you in the face for being so rude as to ask such a thing?” Kael asked dryly.

“She was on the other side of the bars,” Balen said pointedly. “She could not reach if she had tried for I was prepared to duck or leap back, but she did not try. She is not like our women.

She did look horrified, but I think that is because she is as determined not to spawn a child in captivity as we are—which is a very good thing! She cannot be close or she would not be able to think that rationally.”

“Well,” Dakaar said a little unhappily, “I suppose it is a good thing that we are not in sync in our reproductive cycles…now.”

“Only in the sense that we need not worry over a child,” Kael said tightly. “She is not likely to be happy when we go into spawning fever if she is not.”

“We have not gone into the fever since we have been here,” Balen pointed out. “Mayhap we will not when there are none of our women around?”

Kael sent him a sardonic look. “You do not believe that. I felt it in my blood
before
I saw Lau-ren! I cannot say that it is because of her when I knew before that I was nearing my time, but my blood hardly cools
since
she came. Unfortunately, I do not see that we can
do
anything beyond hoping the fates protect her from us and the spawning comes upon us when we cannot get to her. There is no stopping it or controlling it. If it comes upon us and we can get to her and she can be bred, we will have far more to worry about than our own fate. We will have a youngling to worry about and a mate in far more danger because of it.”

“She said that we could not get her pregnant,” Balen said uneasily.

“But does she
know
that that is true? Or was it only that she was as appalled as we are at the thought of giving birth to a child here?” Kael prodded grimly. “She did not tell you when her time was?”

Balen stared at him a long moment and finally shook his head. “She would have said if she was near her time, though. She would have sensed it as we do, would she not?”

“I do not know.
We
do not know because she is not Hirachi! We do not know how different she may be from us in ways that we cannot see!”

46

Loren didn
‟
t believe the sleep period could possibly have been as long as it usually was.

When the lights came on, the glare against her eyelids dredged her from so deep a sleep that her eyelids felt like sandpaper when she blinked them against her burning eyes and when she struggled from the bed to use the toilet, she staggered and wove as if she was drunk.

She considered for a few moments when she
‟
d relieved herself if she actually wanted to get out of bed, bathe, and dress and decided she didn
‟
t. Bathing off in the little basin, she headed back to the bed, slinging her hands to dry them along the way. She had nearly reached the bed again when the activity in the basement around her finally managed to penetrate the fog sufficiently to lift it and allow curiosity in.

Pausing when she
‟
d plopped down on the bed, she stared with burning eyes toward the bars at the door of her cell, listening and trying to figure out what was going on. The men were preparing to go out to practice, she decided finally, and fell back against the mattress, pulling the blanket up over her head to block out the light. She drifted for a while, like a feather on a current of air, falling toward sleep for a few moments and then rising up again.

Some memory nagged at her, made it impossible to completely relax and go back to sleep.

She tried to grasp it a while and then tried to ignore it. Finally, the clanging of metal against metal jarred it loose. The gladiator games!

Her eyes popped open and watered from the burn. Blinking the tears back, she dragged the blanket down and sat up, staring at the bars for a moment. Dismay filled her when she heard the distinctive sounds growing dimmer. They were leaving! And she hadn
‟
t even had a chance to see Kael or Dakaar or Balen! Scrambling out of the bed, she rushed to the bars and strained for a glimpse of them. They were taller than most of the other gladiators and their hair and skin tones distinctive, but she knew there were other Hirachis among the gladiators and she wasn
‟
t sure the one
‟
s she glimpsed were them.

“Be careful!” she called out to them, unable to tamp the impulse. They glanced back, but then so did most of the men behind them. Uttering a squeak of dismay, Loren leapt behind the wall to hide her nakedness and leaned out to wave frantically. Disappointed to see they
‟
d already turned around again, her shoulders slumped.

They were going out now? At this ungodly hour?

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she realized how absurd it was. She didn
‟
t have a fucking clue of what time it was beyond the fact that she didn
‟
t feel as if she
‟
d had enough sleep.

She didn
‟
t even know if Lecur kept their sleep hours the same as those of the other people on the space station.

Not that it mattered except that she hadn
‟
t been expecting it and she was distraught that she hadn
‟
t gotten a chance to see them and speak with them again.

She might
never
get another chance, she realized abruptly.

47

She pushed the thought away with revulsion. She couldn
‟
t think like that. She couldn
‟
t allow herself to consider it. She
‟
d be a basket case before they got back—And she assured herself they would come back. Ok, so all the men had been carrying the most hideously wicked looking weapons she
‟
d ever seen in her life, but Balen had said that they
‟
d been fighting for years now and they
‟
d survived this long!

She didn
‟
t know why she felt like the bad luck that was going to get them killed, but she couldn
‟
t completely dismiss the thought that something was going to happen to them just because she desperately wanted them to be alright.

Struggling with her disappointment and anxiety, she leaned down to pick up the toga she
‟
d discarded the night before and trudged toward the shower. There was no way that she could go back to sleep—now!—and she didn
‟
t know anything to do but to wait.

She didn
‟
t even have any idea how long they might be fighting! Nobody had told her that.

She
‟
d finally had to resort to the damned soap to clean her teeth. There was nothing else to use and, since she was trying to convince herself that she was primping for them and they would come back victors, she focused on a thorough scrubbing from her hair to her toenails. She
‟
d just managed to rinse the soap from her hair and was rubbing it from her eyes when a hand grasped her arm and yanked her out of the shower. She uttered a scream and skidded when she landed, slamming into the fish-man. He shoved her away and she fell back against the stone privacy wall.

“Come!” he said, turning and moving as quickly as his bulk would allow toward the door.

“But…! I
‟
m still soapy!”

He halted and turned to look at her angrily. “Now!” he bellowed, pointing imperiously toward the open door of her cell.

Fear sent her racing to obey although she was thoroughly confused and stopped as soon as she was outside, wondering which way to go.

Lecur pointed again. “De games will start! Move stupid
dyrk!”

Still confused, but more angry at the insult—and she knew it was when he
‟
d prefaced it with

„stupid
‟—
Loren started down the corridor the men had left by.

“Wait dere!” he snapped when she reached the door.

She stopped, watching as he moved off in another direction through the maze of cells. In a few moments, she heard him bellowing again and realized he must be collecting Karen and the alien woman. She saw she was right. In a few moments, he came lumbering along the corridor with Karen and the other woman, both as naked as she was, stumbling along in front of him.

Loren
‟
s heart leapt when she saw Karen. It was the first time she had seen her since they
‟
d been locked in the basement. Karen
‟
s face lit when she saw her. “What
‟
s happening?”

“No flap lips! Move along! We go now!”

Karen and Loren exchanged a look, but they hurried through the door when he opened it and climbed the stairs up to the main floor of Lecur
‟
s house. The thoroughfare, to Loren
‟
s relief, was virtually deserted. Trying to convince herself that was only because it was so „early
‟
and not because everyone was at the stadium, Loren moved with the other two women as quickly as she could.

“He
‟
s taking us to the games,” Loren whispered after a moment.

Karen flicked a horrified look at her. “Oh god!”

48

“Stupid
dyrk
!” the alien woman muttered.

Lecur had already called Loren that twice and she glanced at the alien woman sharply only to discover that her gaze was narrowed on Lecur.

She glanced back instinctively at that and saw that Lecur
‟
s face had turned an even more unlovely shade than usual.

“I gibe you to losers!” he snarled, gritting his horrible teeth at them.

Karen and Loren exchanged a wide eyed look and turned to look pityingly at the alien woman. She looked pale, but defiant. “You tell lie to you fighters den! Say I go to winner! Next time maybe dey doan fight!”

“For god
‟
s sake!” Loren hissed. “Quit antagonizing him!”

“I gib you to dem,
den
I gib you to losers!”

“Still lie. What point win if dey get me anyway?” the alien woman muttered.

Either she was a damned fool, or she had the biggest balls of anybody Loren had ever met in her life! He had nearly fifty fighters! If half of them piled on her there wasn
‟
t going to be anything left but a greasy spot!

She exchanged a speaking look with Karen and decided to keep her mouth shut. She
‟
d tried to reason with the woman. If she was determined to bait Lecur until he killed her, or let the fighters kill her, she didn
‟
t see that she could do anything to help her.

They accessed the stadium, as far as Loren could tell, via the same corridor she
‟
d been escorted through by Kael and Dakaar. Nothing else was even vaguely the same, however. She could hear the roar of hundreds, maybe thousands of voices almost from the moment they entered and by the time they reached the other end the noise was nearly deafening.

She saw why when they exited the corridor and came out on the field. The fighters were already taking up their positions to begin. Lecur gave them all a shove when they halted abruptly, sending them stumbling out onto the field with the gladiators. The crowd roared louder with enthusiasm, drawing the attention of the fights.

Unable to resist, Loren scanned the field anxiously for Kael, Dakaar, and Balen. She spotted Balen first because he was matched off with another fighter fairly close to that end of the field.

Shock made his face go blank for a handful of seconds and then his face contorted with rage.

Loren
‟
s heart skipped several beats even though she was certain the rage wasn
‟
t trained on her. She didn
‟
t spot Kael or Dakaar until Lecur had herded her and the others to a position roughly midway down the field and off to one side. They were still far enough from her that she couldn
‟
t tell anything about their expressions, but both of them were rigid with tension and she thought they were at least as furious as Balen had been.

There was a cage waiting for them, she saw when she looked away. When Lecur had locked them in, he turned and lifted his hands as if he
‟
d won some sort of victory, grinning widely as he played to the crowd.

Dropping his arms after a moment, he turned and rounded the cage where he
‟
d locked them and disappeared into another corridor. He emerged a few moments later and waddled down an aisle along the front of the seating area and then climbed the steps to the top where his harem awaited him in a private box. He
‟
d barely reached it when a horn blew that was loud enough to be heard over the roar of the crowd.

Loren jumped all over. Karen shrieked and grabbed her, digging her fingernails into her. The 49

sound of meaty and metallic crashes distracted both of them, and they whipped around to stare with wide eyes at the field. For many moments, Loren was so frozen at the sight that it didn
‟
t even occur to her to look for any of the men. When it did, she wished she hadn
‟
t. Kael, she discovered, was wielding what looked to be a sword about as long as she was tall. His lips were drawn back in a feral snarl and he was hacking as his opponent almost as if he was swinging a hammer instead. His opponent, who was perhaps a half a head shorter but about twice as massive, was fighting a defensive position, thankfully, and seemed to be more focused on fending off Kael
‟
s blows than getting in any himself. Terror turned her knees to water and she would
‟
ve sank to the ground if Karen hadn
‟
t been holding her in a death grip. Unable to tear her gaze from the sight, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Karen was screeching „oh god!
‟
in her ear like a broken record.

Opening her eyes again, she tried to peel Karen loose. “Cut it out!” she yelled finally.

“You
‟
re squeezing me to death!”

Karen looked liked she
‟
d slapped her and she was immediately sorry. It was Karen who
‟
d been kind enough to try to comfort her when they
‟
d first been taken and she liked her and wanted to offer comfort in return, but her grip was painful. “It
‟
s alright! Just not so tight, ok?”

Karen
‟
s chin wobbled. She nodded a little jerkily.

Looping her arm around Karen, she turned to look for the other woman and discovered she
‟
d retreated as far from the fight as she could and was huddled in a tight ball against the bars. Pity welled in her. “Come on, Karen. Let
‟
s go sit with her, ok?”