Pet's Pleasure (3 page)

“No more. I don’t want you getting him any more gifts. Do you understand? He is spoiled enough as it is.”

“He is a growing boy who needs a mother’s love.”

“Love is not shown with presents, Mother.”

“Nonsense. It worked for you. It will work for him.”

Bekion turned his eyes to the ceiling and begged the heavens for help. His mother actually thought he’d enjoyed all those superfluous gifts when he was a child. He’d wanted her attention but her duties as queen and her many hobbies had kept her too busy.

His younger brother now received the same treatment. Unlike Bekion, a host of tutors and mentors teaching right from wrong and common decency hadn’t raised Kuruk. He ran amuck and did as he pleased without anyone to gainsay him. Bekion wanted to take his brother in hand but he didn’t have time.

Bekion asked, “Where is it? What did you buy him this time?” Though he already knew, he wanted his mother to say it aloud. He wanted her to act a little guilty or concerned for her actions.

“It’s only a human, Bekion. Earth has so many of them.”

“It
is
from Earth then?”

“That is what the poacher said.”

Bekion hoped the boast was false. If not, he would have to explain to Supreme Emperor Udo why Dowager Queen Tinette felt the need to break one of Gorov Empire’s oldest laws—leave the inhabitants of Earth alone.

“He was most adamant on that point, especially during the bidding. I think it was to drive the price higher. Not to worry, there was no way those present could outbid me.”

“You went to the bidding?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t leave something so important to Schel. He would have chosen the first human he saw and at the cheapest price. There were many unscrupulous people there trying to pass substandard humans off as true Earth stock. Schel believed most of them.” She tutted and shook her head. “Poor man is so trusting. If he wasn’t so helpful to me, I would have replaced him long ago.”

Bekion was sure Schel had meant to steer Tinette toward legal humans. The man did his best to curtail Tinette’s wilder ideas with little success. Schel remained an asset because of the few times he did succeed.

“Did the poacher have proof of his claim?” Bekion hoped not. He could excuse Tinette’s actions later by saying she’d thought the poacher’s sales pitch was falsified to garner more money. A small elaboration of the truth he hoped the supreme emperor would believe.

“The salesman gave my secretary the human’s belongings it had at the time of its capture. Some identification and clothing and money, I guess. I ordered it all disposed of. As a pet, it won’t need them.”

“I can’t believe Schel was so stupid,” he said under his breath.

“Whatever do you mean, Bekion? The female is genuine. I didn’t want one of those ugly inbred humans from the market. They are so unappealing. A pure human is preferred for my son. I want nothing but the best for him. The poacher said he only gathers humans from heavily populated areas. It will not be missed.”

“I’m sure her family will miss her.”

“Why? There are so many other females on the planet. They can pick one to be their child. Or its parents can have another. Those humans breed so easily and quickly, after all.”

Bekion felt a headache starting behind his right eye.

“It’s with the physicians if you want to see it. I planned to give it to Kuruk at dinner. His birthday is in another week. It’ll be an early present.”

“Mother,” he bit out through his teeth, “Kuruk’s birthday was two months ago.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“It was?”

“Yes.”

“Where was I?”

The headache spread to his left eye. He bowed his head into his hand and prayed for strength, not knowing why the conversation surprised him. He’d grown up with the woman and knew how she was. “You were there. You got him that rock, remember?”

Tinette smiled, resting her chin on her finger.

He could almost see the memory taking hold.

“Oh, I remember. He killed that rock, didn’t he? How exactly does one kill a rock, Bekion? I never understood how he accomplished such a feat.”

“It was a living creature from an unexplored planet. You had your soldiers kidnap yet
another
living being and Kuruk killed it. After that, I told you no more living presents.”

“No, you said no more sentient presents.”

“I told you no more
sentient
presents after he killed the Atigin Dragon-bird from Isia. Panagiota had to pay reparations to the male’s family as well as issue an apology with an extremely generous trade agreement. After the rock, I said no more
living
presents.”

“I’m sure you’re right as usual, Bekion.” Tinette resumed reading.

The conversation had ended with Bekion accomplishing nothing except giving himself a headache. He had to leave.

He straightened, standing at his full height, and bowed to his mother. In a formal tone, he said, “I shall see you later at dinner, Mother.”

“Have a good rest of day, my son.”

He was halfway across the room when she called out, “Are you leaving, Bekion?”

“Yes, Mother, I am,” he said without stopping or turning back.

“Come give Mother a kiss then.”

Bekion did an about-face and returned to her side. He didn’t bother wasting breath making excuses or arguing. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. She pursed her lips, making a kissing noise below his chin. That done, he pulled away to leave again.

Tinette grabbed his hand and brought it to her lips. She whispered, “You do a very good job. I’m sure Haig would be proud of you, Bekion.”

“Thank you,” he whispered back.

She reached out and stroked his cheek. Her eyes took on a misty quality. “You resemble him more and more every day.”

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

It was rare for Tinette to mention Bekion’s father. Haig had gone into self-exile almost ten years ago to keep Tinette out of the supreme emperor’s prison. No one had heard from him since. Bekion knew that pained Tinette, so she acted as though Haig didn’t exist. That meant Bekion had to do the same.

“Nonsense. You should be thankful to resemble your father.” She took in a long breath. Her somber attitude seemed to vanish as she breathed out. She patted his cheek and released his hand. “Now go off and do more things to better this kingdom. I’ll see you at dinner.”

He nodded and turned away, leaving at a faster pace than last time. He had to leave before Tinette called him back. The sooner he got away from her, the sooner his headache would go away—a simple fact he’d become all too familiar with over the years.

Tinette’s servants closed the door to her chamber once Bekion crossed the threshold. He sagged back against it, unable to support himself. His headache persisted. He looked at the men who waited for his acknowledgment and knew the pain would get worse before it got better.

“Do you want a nap first or do you want to see the human first?” Rois, who stood at the head of the group awaiting Bekion’s next move, asked.

“The human, Rois. Might as well get it out of the way,” Bekion mumbled. His hand went to the back of his neck. The pain behind his eyes had migrated there.

Rois chuckled.

Bekion glared at the man who stood a full head over him. That fact annoyed Bekion every time he looked at Rois. Bekion had thought he would be taller than Rois forever. They had grown up together with Bekion as the taller of the two well into their adolescent years. At age twenty, Rois hit a growth spurt and grew so his chin was above Bekion’s head.

“This way,” Rois said, heading off in the direction of the infirmary.

Bekion pushed away from the door and followed. “Have you seen the human, Rois? Tell me about her.”

Rois slowed his pace so he walked beside Bekion. “According to Schel, it is a female of the species. A brown one.”

“Dark or light?”

“Dark.”

Bekion looked around but didn’t see Vieve, his secretary. He raised his wristband-clad arm and pressed a blinking red square. “Vieve, I need you to locate the items given to Schel when he purchased the human.”

“As you wish, My King,” Vieve said in her usual light, flowery voice.

“Hurry, please. Tinette told him to destroy them.”

“I will endeavor to reach him before he carries out that task.”

Rois said, “Here we are.” He opened the door then stepped back, allowing Bekion to precede him.

Nausic, the guard Bekion had dispatched to ensure the human’s safety, stood and bowed.

Bekion asked, “Where is she, Nausic?”

Nausic pointed to the far corner of the room. “The little one hid there after I arrived. She hasn’t moved since.”

Bekion’s gaze followed Nausic’s finger. A little human female huddled between the back wall and one of the infirmary’s cots. With her head resting on her arms, she looked asleep. She also looked naked.

“Where are her clothes?”

Nausic said, “After the nanite bath, she became agitated every time any of the doctors or I approached her. I thought it best to let her be so she could calm down. The doctors wisely gave her the language visor before her immersion. I don’t think she would have reacted well if they had tried it afterward.”

“She can understand us then?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good.” Bekion walked forward. The time had come to introduce himself to his new pet.

He couldn’t give her to his brother. That was a death sentence. Neither could he return her to Earth. His family had already broken one Gorov Imperial law, compounding the issue was unnecessary.

He went to his haunches near the girl and asked softly, “Do you understand me, little human?”

She startled and cried out.

Bekion took that as an affirmative. “I am Bekion, king of Panagiota, the planet on which you are currently situated. What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer.

He placed his hand on the girl’s head. She was so small. The poachers had taken a child who would be sorely missed when her parents discovered her absence.

The girl tried to get away from him. He said in a soothing tone, “I will not hurt you. No one will. I only want to know your name.” He smoothed his hand over and over her head. From past encounters, Bekion knew humans had hair. He would reprogram the nanites to allow the human’s hair to grow back once he’d calmed her.

“Starling Moddel,” the girl whispered. She lifted her head a little bit and looked up at him. “Why did you bring me here? What do you want?”

Chapter Two

Bekion dropped his hand and his expression turned a little sad. “I did not bring you here. Poachers kidnapped you from Earth and sold you on the black market. My mother’s secretary acquired you, illegally, because she wished to present my brother with a new pet.”

Starling couldn’t be hearing him right. “Illegally? P-pet?”

“My race sees yours as pets. More than seven generations ago, men like the poacher would go to Earth and take several males and females to fill requests and orders. The supreme emperor at the time put an end to it. Earth’s inhabitants were made off-limits. People had to make do with pets bred from the humans already taken.”

She asked in a hopeful voice, “You’ll send me home then?”

“Alas, I cannot. It is against imperial law to make contact with an uninitiated planet—that would be Earth. Now that you have seen us, you cannot go back.”

“I didn’t want to see you. I want to go home,” Starling yelled.

“Your anger is justified but I cannot change the law. You should be happy it is I who greeted you and not my younger brother. Had I arrived ten minutes later, you might already be dead—or close to death.”

Starling’s anger turned into instant fright. Her eyes went wide and she rasped, “Dead?”

“My brother is still immature. He is not kind to his pets and has maliciously killed every one my mother has gotten him. I have told her repeatedly to stop buying…” His words trailed off after she started crying. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “If it was within my power, I would send you home. Know you will come to no harm while in my possession.”

His words made Starling cry harder. That she had tears left to cry surprised her. She bowed her head back to her arms, letting her tears drench her skin. Was she supposed to accept this and be happy?

The sound of people shuffling around reached her ears but she ignored it and indulged her sorrow. Bekion didn’t leave her side. His presence comforted her but only a little. He was an unknown. She wasn’t sure she should trust him. Though he claimed he was protecting her from the evil of his younger brother, who’s to say he wasn’t worse?

“Your Majesty.”

Starling startled at the quiet whisper from one of the men who had accompanied Bekion. She didn’t look up to figure out which one but waited for what would happen next.

The man said, “There are clothes and food waiting in your outer chamber for the female and yourself.”

Bekion made an affirmative noise then moved his hand over her head.

She stiffened.

He said, “I will allow that you must grieve for your loss but such a course of action is best carried out after you have eaten, don’t you agree?”

Starling gave a dejected nod. Arguing was pointless since her stomach agreed with him. And more importantly, her butt had gone numb.

She let her arms drop from her knees but didn’t stand. Calming down had reinstated her earlier shyness. Besides, Bekion and the men he’d brought with him hadn’t seen her naked. She wanted to keep it that way.

As though sensing the cause of her hesitation, Nausic draped a cloth over her shoulders. She looked up at him. He nodded to her then stepped back.

“Thank you, Nausic,” Bekion said, straightening. After a little grimace of pain, he held out his hand to her.

She stared up at him then looked at his hand. Whether Bekion was saving her from evil or saving her to do his own evil, she didn’t know but had to chance it. She sighed and placed her hand in his, allowing him to pull her to a standing position.

Her head reached Bekion’s stomach. That was no surprise since all his people were tall. The shortest one Starling had seen was over seven feet tall, easy.

Starling being shorter than the human average didn’t help. While she should be used to being the shortest person in the room, Bekion’s people made her feel like a child.

“How old are you?” Bekion asked with mild concern.

“Twenty-three.” She adjusted the cloth so it covered her more then hunched a little. Her breasts were not a measurement of her age. The unwanted admiration had long since gotten old.

He gave her a surprised look.

She said in an annoyed voice, “I know. My height makes me seem younger.”

“My surprise is not for that. I thought you were young but I didn’t think you were younger than my brother.”

“How old is he? You said he was still immature. I thought that meant he was a teenager or something.”

“By your calendar, he is—” He paused in thought, moving his lips on silent calculations. “Thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one?”

“By your calendar. By my calendar, my brother is thirteen.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty in my years. Seventy-two in yours.”

Starling let her jaw drop. She tried to calculate the difference but couldn’t wrap her mind around the figures. Seventy-two? Bekion didn’t appear seventy-two. Did the difference in calendars affect the way his people aged?

She squeaked in dismay when Bekion picked her up and situated her against his side with her butt nestled into the crook of his arm.

She pushed at his shoulders. “What are you doing? Put me down! Let me go!”

“Calm down, Starling.” Bekion rubbed his free hand over her arm. “My intention is to carry you, nothing else. It is a long walk back to my chambers. I don’t want to shorten my stride for you to keep pace with me.”

That made sense. She stopped struggling and rested her hands on his shoulder.

Bekion left the infirmary with two men walking in front of him and three men behind.

With Bekion holding her, she truly felt like a child. No one had carried her in such a way since she was ten. Sure, plenty of guys picked her up because she was so tiny but they had cradled her in their arms like men were supposed to carry women.

But then, did she want Bekion acting like a normal man? There was no way she could have a relationship with him. For one, he was too big…too
tall
. She didn’t know how big he was and didn’t want to find out.

He had a kind of boy-next-door charm when he smiled. Minus the height, he resembled any other man she would see walking in the mall or driving down the street. His dark-brown hair was cut short and slicked back. His blue-gray clothing, which matched his eyes, resembled a casual suit without the jacket. He was also clean-shaven. Very business chic.

With her up-close vantage point, she would almost call Bekion good-looking. He would be even better looking if he weren’t so tall and holding her hostage.

She glanced around to get a better sense of her new prison. Bekion didn’t volunteer any information about the portraits on the walls or the rooms they passed and Starling didn’t ask.

No one spoke. The somber atmosphere made her a bit nervous. When she finally worked up the nerve to ask about her future, the smell of food interrupted her thought process.

The smell emanated from a food-laden table in the middle of the room they entered. One guard sped up his pace so he could pull out a chair, which Bekion went to and set Starling down. She could barely see over the edge.

“This is ridiculous,” Starling grumbled to herself as she stood on the cushion of her chair. She made sure her makeshift toga was secure so she wouldn’t give the people in the room an eyeful.

She situated herself but kept sight of Bekion walking around the table. He took his own seat. He watched her and she watched him, neither of them moving to touch the food between them.

She asked, “I’m really going to be your pet?”

“You truly are my pet.”

“Nothing else?”

He cocked his head to the side. “You’re too small for my tastes, little Starling.”

Well that was a relief. At least she didn’t have to worry about being jumped any time soon. “Do you have other pets?”

“You are my first, of any species.” He glanced at the food then back at her. “Are you not hungry?”

There was a plate of something that could be bread rolls but she wasn’t going to trust that…books and covers and all that. “What is it?”

Bekion picked up one of the bread-roll-looking things and said, “This is sweet
savo
—a plant much like the Earth potato though its texture is spongy inside. As the name indicates, it is sweet.”

She took the
savo
from Bekion’s outstretched hand and sniffed it. It smelled like cake. She pulled off a chunk and popped it into her mouth. If a white sweet potato was crossed with a sponge cake and a baguette, that would be the sweet
savo
.

She tore off another piece and ate it then pointed at the sliced fruit on another plate. “Fruit or vegetable?”

“Fruit.”

She had to put her hand on the table to reach for it. Given her size in relation to the furniture, her lapses in table manners would have to be excused.

The fruit was purple and firm in her grasp. She bit into the pulp and it crunched like celery. That didn’t surprise her so much as it tasting like grapes…green grapes.

Bekion named off the other foods present one at a time, sampling a few himself. He waited for Starling’s impression of each food before moving on to the next. Her disgusted reaction to one food had him laughing behind his hand.

Was raw fruit supposed to taste like burnt sugar mixed with ash? And for that matter, who would eat it without the promise of monetary compensation? Not only did she make a face once she tasted it but she let it fall out of her mouth in a very unladylike manner.

Bekion asked, “Not to your liking?” He cleared his throat then chuckled more.

Starling took a big bite of the sweet
savo
to cover the taste. “Yuck,” she said after she swallowed. A lingering taste remained. She wanted to spit but didn’t know where.

“I shall remember not to serve that to you in the future.”

“Is it supposed to taste like that?”

Bekion tried a piece. Not only did he not spit it out, he seemed to enjoy it. He nodded and ate another piece. “Very good. It’s in season and at the right level of ripeness.”

“Gag.”

Out of the twenty-two different fruits, vegetables and assorted pastries, not liking one boded well for the future. A future that remained uncertain.

She asked, “As your pet, what do I do?”

“What do pets on Earth do?”

“Depends. Some pets are for company, like birds and cats and fish. Some pets are for protection, like dogs. There are dog and cat shows where owners primp and preen their little sweeties to show off how pure or thoroughbred they are and get prizes.” She shrugged. “Which am I?”

“I have no intention of entering you in a human show. It would be unfair as you are more purebred than any human that would be present. Most of the humans in those competitions are so
in
bred you would not recognize them as your species mates.” He studied her with a half-smile. “I have guards for my protection and you are hardly big enough to see the job done.”

Starling nodded in agreement. She had no fighting ability.

“So that leaves company, would it not?”

“Or breeding.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. Why did she say that? The last thing she wanted was this man, or any other, forcing her to have sex with some weird guy to pop out babies.

Bekion raised an eyebrow. “Do you wish to have children?”

She shook her head. “No!”

“Ah.”

He didn’t say more. She turned her gaze to her plate then down to herself. Finally, she looked around the room. The men who’d accompanied Bekion stood conversing with each other. They paid no attention to her or Bekion.

“Not right now,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?”

She met Bekion’s gaze. “I mean…back on Earth, I was in no position to support a child, not well at any rate. I don’t think I’m mentally ready to take proper care of a baby either.”

“Once you are ready to have children, I will broach the subject of breeding and possible partners. At this time, I have no use for human children. A king does not need to engage in such employment.”

“Employment? What do you mean employment?” She gave him a horrified look. “My…my children would be sold? You’re planning on selling my children?” The last part of her question came out in a high-pitched shriek.

Bekion held up a hand. “Your worry is for naught as you have no children and no interest in having children.”

“But—”

“Little Starling, the subject is not important at this time.” He glanced over her head then stood and left the table. “I think it is time you dressed.”

Starling wanted to argue further. It didn’t matter if she didn’t have children now. She would want them one day. Or she would so long as she knew they wouldn’t be sold. Bekion needed to know that, except his focus was elsewhere. She looked over her shoulder at whoever had caught his attention.

A woman wearing a simple tan sundress stood to the side of an open doorway that led to another room. She curtsied to Bekion, which made her long red hair fall over her shoulders, and then turned her attention to Starling.