Pharon's Demon (2 page)

“Yes.” The man smiled. Point for him! “Snakes
fill the shafts.”

The damn Director had said nothing about
snakes, but a job was a job—and this was her last chance. That had
been her takeaway message from the Director’s last
meet-and-greet.

“If you hear a rasping sound,” her guide
warned pleasantly as they started the upward ascent, “you will want
to duck. It will be the snake launching itself at you. It is not a
pleasant way to die. The serpents seek the warmest spots of the
body to suckle and feed. Since it is summer and our world is baking
in the heat, they have many choices.”

***

The shaft descended deep below ground. At
least it would be cooler, right? Screwing up her courage, Bennu
wrapped her legs around the rope the guide had tied to the outer
edge of the shaft. She didn’t dare use her hand-held boosters to
descend into the absolute darkness. There was too great a chance
that the airflow would dislodge stone and dust from the walls of
the shaft. Low tech, she groused. Why did her jobs always require
taking the low-tech route? Would any of her brothers have found
themselves descending, hand over hand, down a long rope?

Of course, there were advantages to going low
tech. In addition to the thrill of hunting for treasure, the rope
provided a delicious friction between the Lycra of her blacksuit
and her pussy. With each foot she dropped, her arousal built as the
rope rasped gently between her thighs. The blacksuit’s thin
material had been designed to resist almost any tear or cut, but
that same lack of bulk meant she felt every brush of the rope
against her core. The smell of her own arousal filled the air
around her. Damn. And all that waited for her at the bottom of the
rope, according to the guide, were snakes.

Life wasn’t fair.

***

The demon waiting at the bottom of the shaft
heard the soft whisper of the thief’s descent. Another fool come to
steal what was not his. Shifting his weight from one foot to the
other, he leaned back against the wall and savored the relative
coolness of the stone. Even hundreds of feet below the surface, the
tunnels baked in the summer heat. Like all his kind, Mkhai was lean
and whipcord strong. Despite the lack of sun deep in their
underworld kingdom, his skin was as golden-colored as those of the
abovelanders. His dark leathers clung to every inch of his tall
frame. He had not planned to patrol the tunnels tonight; having
discovered the thief in mid-descent, however, he could not decide
whether he was pleased or not that he had done so. Impatiently, he
shoved a braid of dark hair away from his face.

The thief moved into sight. Mkhai’s eyes
glowed golden in the darkness.
Yes, come to me little
thief
.
The unmistakable scent of female
cream reached his sensitive nose and he took a second look at his
thief. An unfamiliar but not unattractive black material clung to
lithe, delicious curves, outlining each curve and dip. Pulled back
into a no-nonsense ponytail, the female’s hair belied the sheer,
lush impracticality of her body. Strong, flexible—and unmistakably
feminine. How delightful. Perhaps he
should
take the time to
teach this thief the error of her ways. After all—his mouth curved
into a lush smile—he did have a responsibility to the Pharons. He
should make quite certain that this thief did not repeat her
mistakes of this evening.

He’d enjoy paddling that delicious little ass
almost as much as he’d enjoy sinking his cock into her pussy.

***

Bennu’s feet touched bottom and a lean arm
shot out of the darkness with snake-like rapidity. The arm twisted
hers behind her back, while the other dragged her up against a
hard, male body. No pain, but no escape.

“It was a mistake,” growled a raspy voice in
her ears, “to come here for Pharon’s topazes. These mines are
well-guarded, little
femi
. We do not tolerate thieves.”

Tilting her head back, she looked up into a
face almost alien in its handsomeness. Gold eyes glowed at her
beneath dark hair bound into hundreds of braids, each fastened with
a small topaz. Her newest captor also had eminently lickable,
tawny-colored skin and a deliciously firm mouth. There was nothing
soft about this male at all. The throbbing between her legs
intensified. He smiled slowly.

“You will get what you deserve here,” he
promised.

He looked beyond her into the darkest of the
tunnels branching off from the bottom of the shaft. To her
mortification, she shrieked. Dozens of golden eyes stared back at
her— and as many tall warriors. Well-defended by snakes, my ass,
she thought. The only snakes here were of the male variety.

“What do you think, my brothers?” he called
to their audience. “Shall we teach the little
femi
what
happens to women who misbehave here?” As the masculine chuckles
filled the air, cream spurted shamelessly between her thighs. Oh,
yes
. These males would not let her escape without paying for
her crimes.

How delightful.

***

His little
femi
was delightfully eager
for his discipline.

Erotic images flooded Mkhai’s mind. He would
teach this one not to take what was not hers. He would enjoy the
pleasures of mastering her. Already, his cock was a thick, hard
stem begging to be planted deep in her wet sex. If his brothers had
not joined them, he might have lacked the control to see to her
disciplining first and taken her first. It was just the summer
heat, he told himself: the mindless mating frenzy that seized them
all when the sun blazed relentlessly in the abovelands, beating
down on their stony world, heating it—and their blood—until they
found temporary release with their sex partners.

Unfortunately, there were few sex partners
below grounds. Only those women the abovelanders had cast out or
had marked for punishment. Pharon’s demons had no female of their
own and no hope for release from the burning heat the sun built
remorselessly in them unless they found their summer mates and
their eyes burned golden for the chosen one. Given the lack of
women here, the odds of that happening had seemed impossibly
low.

And yet now—completely unexpected—he held a
female. A feral possession welled up in him.
His
. His mate.
He would make her so since the gods themselves had placed her in
his arms.

“You are a lucky one,” called one of the
other warriors. They glided smoothly out of the shadows, as drawn
by the female’s presence as him. Would she enjoy sharing pleasures
with such a number of warriors? There was only one way to find out.
And, truly, he
had
vowed to show no mercy to the thieves who
thought to wrest their topazes from the mines, from Pharon.

“Tell me your name,” he demanded against her
ear as the sun’s heat tore through him, thickening his cock
further. Would she take every inch of him when he crammed himself
into her sex? Or would she whimper with the agonizingly sweet
pleasure of just the thick tip, thrusting in and out of her greedy,
wet sex until she howled for more—and he gave it to her?

Her breath huffed out in a small sigh.

“Absolutely not,” she declared, shaking her
head. “There are conventions to be adhered to here. Name
telling—not one of them.”

“Do not be stubborn,
femi
,” he
crooned, letting his breath whisper over the smooth shell of her
ear. Good. She shivered. She was deliciously sensitive. Delicately,
he licked the curve, tasting her flesh and giving her the smallest
hint of pleasure.

“No,” she protested, squirming in his
grasp.

“Hold still,” he warned.

“Make me,” she dared. Did she think that he
would not? What were the males like where she came from?

“Spread them.” His leg kicked her own apart.
“Do as I say, little
femi
,” he growled when she
resisted.

She looked up—cautiously—and eyed the heated
press of male bodies surrounding hers. Their sibilant, hissing
language was likely as unfamiliar to her as the abovelander’s harsh
tongue was to the demons. The implants Pharon had insisted on made
it possible for him to understand her, but she would not have that
advantage. Of course, he intended to leave her with no advantage at
all.

She would learn faster that way.

***

He bent her ruthlessly over his arm. The
sharp crack of his palm sent heat blossoming across her cheeks.
Methodically, he paddled both sides of her ass until she wanted to
grab and rub the stinging cheeks—and then plunge her hand between
her thighs and massage her engorged clit until she screamed.

Without stopping, he asked: “Is your pussy
wet? I smell cream.”

She creamed more, both embarrassed and
aroused.

His large hand shaped her ass almost
casually, tracing the seam. “Spread your legs more. Let me see for
myself.”

The blacksuit parted, as it was designed to
do, beneath his stroking finger, exposing her flesh to his
view.

She hesitated, curiosity welling alongside
the desire. What
would
he do if she refused? Would he be
deliciously inventive, or as disappointing as all the other
would-be lovers she had encountered in the course of her thefts? He
answered her unspoken question with a sharp stinging slap on her
juicy sex.

She howled, arching up into his hand, dark
crimson shards of pleasure shattering through her. Oh, this was a
male who did indeed know how to punish—and to please. He landed
three more stinging blows. The graphic sounds of her own panting
filled her ears, along with the juicy sound of her sex. Close. She
was so close to orgasm. She could feel it building in harsh spasms
from her very core. He could make her come like she had never come,
with just one more stroke of his talented fingers.

Pleasure dazed her.

“Down here,” he said, forcing her chin up
until she met the eyes of the males surrounding them, “you obey all
of us.” His voice was a low growl.

“Yes,” she hissed.

He nodded. “We are agreed then.” What had she
agreed to? He was standing her up, but her sex was so wet and juicy
that she almost came from the simple motion. She rubbed her thighs
together. She no longer cared who was watching or where she was:
she had to come, had to give into the spasms.

He grabbed her chin between his hands. “Do
you know which season this is?” He didn’t wait for her to answer.
Good. She wasn’t sure that she could have strung two words
together. Instead, she focused on the desire humming through her
and let his words wash over her like a delicious surf. “It is the
summer season,” he explained. The males around them moved closer.
“We may be Pharon’s demons, set to guard his mines against the
thievery of your kind, but we burn during these months. Even as the
sun rises higher in the abovelands and bakes the sands to a glowing
hotness, it heats us. It heats our blood, our bodies.
We
burn.”

He slapped a hand around the thick, hard stem
that pushed upwards from his loincloth. “Our flesh burns,” he
warned in a low, dark voice, “and there is very little ease
belowground. We must wait until one of your kind is foolish enough
to seek us out, to seek out our treasures and to pilfer. Then,” a
slow smile spread across his face, “then, we do find ease from the
burning. We find it here.”

His thick fingers parted her soaked flesh,
but it was not his fingers that stabbed deep inside her sex. No,
the digits she rode so frantically belonged to one of the other
males crowding the tunnels. Oh, damn. They were
sharing
. One
by one, they stroked and teased and penetrated her soaking sex as
her captor held her open for them all.

With a scream, she finally came in great
spasms, riding the fingers in the tunnel for all to see.

She should have visited the mines sooner.
Certainly, she intended to visit them again. And again. This male
gave a whole new meaning to the phrase
getting it good
.
Nevertheless, as any talented thief knew, plausible deniability was
the key. Sure, he’d found her trespassing. And it didn’t look good.
But she
hadn’t
actually stolen any stones.

Not yet.

The golden-skinned male gathered her
effortlessly into his arms, tying her wrists together and shoving
her rappelling gear into a leather bag he slung over his back.
Good. Although she could make it back to the ship without her
things, she didn’t fancy the climb up without a rope.

She pulled the blacksuit closed as best she
could and he frowned.
Playtime’s over
.

“I don’t even know your name,” she protested
just on the principle.

Information was a weapon, right? She could
use all the weaponry she could find. She stretched luxuriously in
his arms like a cat, rubbing her skin against the hot, dry skin of
his captor. He hadn’t been kidding. She could feel the heat burning
through him. His cock was a rigid bar poking her in the small of
her back.

She’d come; he hadn’t. What was he waiting
for?

“Mkhai,” he said shortly. Damn, he wasn’t
even out of breath—and she was no small woman. If possible, he was
moving even faster down the corridor.

“Well, Mkhai,” she started and aimed a look
up at him from underneath her lashes. Clearly, it was time to pull
the sex card. If her brothers would stoop to it, she couldn’t
afford to be picky. She’d left a detailed flight plan behind with
the Director, but if the male kept her locked up long enough, the
homing device implanted under her skin would activate and send out
a distress beacon.

Then all three of her brothers would come
flying to the rescue and she could kiss goodbye to any hope she had
of future independence.