Silver Bound (2 page)

“And why not? You are nothing now. Nothing to anyone but your new owner.”

“No.” She couldn’t shake her head, couldn’t even lift a finger to vent her outrage.

The nurse turned away.

This was Kalon’s doing. Had to be. He’d ordered this barbaric punishment for her running away with Jared.

“No,” she said again, as uselessly as before.

The word came as a whisper at odds with the upheaval, the scorching grief that wanted to screech, climb the walls and yell at the man who’d done this to her, but he wasn’t here. She’d never forgive Kalon. Never forget the perpetual smirk on his face. She hated her husband. But, oh, hate wasn’t a strong enough word to encompass the loathing. Outrage boosted her strength again while her hands fisted and pushed against her restraints. The seething, a physical force of her anger, wouldn’t let her body relax against the fierce need to vent her pure animosity toward the man who’d stolen her innocence in more ways than one. If she got out of this mess, she’d be sure he paid for the pain and suffering he’d caused.

And the murder.

She didn’t mind forgetting her husband, but her son… Impossible. She had only love for Kalon’s son. Her son. The one person she’d cared for since making the biggest mistake of her life. Instead of running from her mother’s wishes, she’d acquiesced to an arranged marriage with Kalon because her too-grand status prohibited her marriage to a Grassland rancher. What a mistake that was, then and now, to give up a decent man for a wealthy one. If only she hadn’t let her guilt drive her to make such a bad decision, she wouldn’t be in this chair.

She couldn’t face her own culpability in her destruction.

But she wouldn’t forget her son.

“Jared.” The whisper breathed through her and became her mantra as the zip at her hairline signaled the end. Ice crept along her limbs, and shivers quaked her body, strong enough to jolt against her restraints.

Jared. How could she forget him, no matter what they did to her body, to her mind? Jared lived in her every cell. Was written into her being.

Jared. Jared. She latched onto the name. Forgot all else, grappled with it and hung on as if her life depended on it, because it surely did.

“Jared.” The sound escaped her dry lips on a sigh as a bright silver flash exploded inside her.

The rope left his fingers and flew with precision to its target. With a practiced yank, Guy tightened the lasso around his robo-shepherd’s legs. Max tumbled to the dry ground with a woof.

Guy strode forward to stroke Max’s soft, synthetically furred head and removed the lasso. “Good boy. You put up a good chase this time, but I took you down.”

The mottled-brown Max appeared to grin, tongue slurping along the cuts on his hands—the dog’s saliva carried first-aid anesthetic. Its tail thumped on the ground and sent dust flying in a cloud. Guy chuckled and signaled to Max with a wave and a low-key whistle. The knee-height robo-dog took off, leaving a rolling wave of air-thrown dirt in its wake as it circled Trident Ranch’s smallest corral.

Keeping track of the robot’s circular sprinting, Guy coiled the lasso and paused. The next lap around, once Max passed the gate, he’d be in optimal position. He tensed, ready to strike. A hum at his waist distracted him from the game. With a sigh he gripped the comm unit and whistled for Max to return.

“Hancock?” He dusted off his black plethor vest, adorned with the silver sheriff star, as he waited for his foreman’s explanation for pinging him after work time. All the ranch hands had gone home to their families at least a dozen lasso robo-takedowns ago.

“The mayor’s here to see you.”

“The mayor. Sure you got the right man? The mayor’s got no business with me.” No, not even personal business. Especially not personal.

With a cursory survey, he took it all in—his ranch that he’d owned and managed for a dozen years, and how a man like the mayor might view it.

Lush fields of rich, verdant grass stretched endlessly, interrupted by long lines of fencing. Cattle grazed in pastoral peace. The sprawling three-story ranch house painted white and black sat on top of the hill, reaching toward the clear blue sky. The fifty-man enterprise produced quality beef to feed those who could afford it and some who couldn’t—he made sure of that. His business spanned three worlds and two space stations, but he didn’t do business with
Zuthuru,
the station that hung in the sky outside his lonely bedroom window every night. A bedroom that was lonely in part because of the mayor now waiting on him.

“You still stick to the old ways, Sheriff Trident, using a lasso to take down an errant beast?”

He barely contained a flinch. “Shouldn’t sneak up on a man with a gun, Mayor.”

“No sneaking. Your mind was elsewhere. Same as mine’s been.”

With a shake of his head, Guy strode toward the barn without pausing for the mayor to keep stride. “I was raised on the old ways, since my father never spent a credit to improve this place, but no, I use all the latest, including that robo-shepherd. It manages the cattle without my having to lift a lasso. Just like to keep in practice. So does the dog.”

Cool humidity-controlled air washed out of his office as he opened the barn’s side entrance. With a motion, he indicated the vacant chair in front of his desk. “What can I do for you, Mayor?”

“I need your help, Sheriff.”

“That’s what they all say. Have a seat, Quinn.” He adjusted the six-shot phaser on his belt, sat behind his desk and leaned back to prop dusty boots on the scratched surface.

This ought to be good.

Quinn hadn’t spoken a word to him in five years, not since the day he announced Guy wasn’t good enough to touch the dainty slipper on his daughter’s foot. Guy’d already known that. He didn’t need to be told. He still couldn’t help himself. Still had to touch that foot. That ankle. That thigh. Those breasts that rose above the rich gowns, flaunted for all the rich, high-powered spacers who’d come calling. The shiny blond hair piled high to show her elegant, sweet neck, and the smart mouth at odds with that elegance.

He sighed. Dreams. Nothing but. He’d never laid a finger on Jewel in a sexual way except in his dreams, but damn, those dreams were good, even if he’d forced himself to let those dreams go when she’d walked out of his life without giving them a fighting chance. He’d kissed her soft pinks lips once, though. The chaste kiss goodbye burned into his mind like a brand.

The silver-haired Quinn shifted in the chair and didn’t meet his eye. “I like what you’ve done with the place. Your father never took pride in this ranch. Looks like you’ve got more cattle than anyone on this speck of a world.”

He raised a brow and didn’t answer. When Quinn complimented, he needed something. Bad. Hands crossed over his stomach, Guy waited out Rangetown’s mayor. The lone sound in the room was the creak of his chair. The only person Quinn ever cared about enough to be put in this uncomfortable situation, to act this humbly, was his daughter—the woman he couldn’t think about without a knot fisting in his middle.

His chair thunked to all four feet, and he leaned over his desk toward Quinn. He fixed his stare on the sweating man in his embroidered vest, tails and pleated slacks. A lone trickle of moisture tracked along Quinn’s gray sideburns, belying the accepted truth that Quinn never sweat. The day warmed by the minute but didn’t compare to the dog days of summer.

The knot in his stomach solidified into a fist of stone. “Tell me what you need, Quinn. Now.” He was right proud of the steel underlying his voice of command. The one that never failed.

“Jewel was coming home.”

The silence stretched thin.

Guy cleared his throat and forced himself into the role of sheriff, his since he’d caught the former sheriff smuggling cattle steroids on planet. From the age of eighteen, he’d striven to deserve the silver star on his vest, resolved to be a better man than his father. He didn’t have to try too hard. “Jewel was coming to Grassland?”

“She sent me a communiqué she was leaving her husband and bringing her son here.” Quinn wiped a hand over his brow.

“Son.” He hadn’t known she had a child. The boy couldn’t be more than four. Would he have blond hair like hers? Bright blue eyes that stared through a man?

Quinn tapped his foot on the floor in a nervous patter. “She was due yesterday. I bought her two tickets, and I’d gotten word she’d stopped on
Zuthuru
for a shuttle, but she didn’t land on the planet. Neither did her son.”

“Jewel was on
Zuthuru?
” He couldn’t keep the scowl from contorting his face.

Quinn paled, as he should. A fragile woman shouldn’t set foot on that depraved cesspit. “I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same, but she made all the arrangements before she let me know a thing. All she asked was for me to pay for the tickets. She probably has no idea of the illegal trading that keeps that barge floating in the sky.”

An anxious flutter joined the knot in his belly. He was tighter than a bowstring on a Taphgan fiddle. It didn’t matter what Quinn said from this point. He knew what he’d be doing within the next ten minutes. He mentally calculated how much fuel remained in his hopper. Surely enough to get to
Zuthuru
and bring back two passengers.

“I need to borrow your hopper. It’s the only one in this quadrant. I could go borrow Hingham’s, but it would take me a day to get there by zip-train.” Quinn frowned with the request.

He’d never heard of the mayor asking a favor. He shook his head. “I’ll go.”

Quinn licked his lips, straightened in his seat and wiped his brow again.

“I have the cover and the means to move on
Zuthuru,
” Guy said. “You don’t. But you knew that, didn’t you? Why didn’t you save the hogwash and get to the point?”

The taste in his mouth turned acidic, as bitter as the sourgrass that spread like weed in the pasture. Quinn hadn’t thought him good enough to touch his daughter before, and now he’d come to him for help?

Before he’d proven his worth, made more money than anyone on this backwater world, he’d been the son of a failed rancher. Now he was the man relied upon to uphold the law and, for the past year or so, his path had been littered with their lovely highborn daughters, who didn’t know the difference between a heifer and a bull. None of them held a candle to Jewel, who’d helped him at the ranch, dirtying her gloves and dresses so that she and her mother had to go behind Quinn’s back for new ones. He hadn’t approved of her helping out on Trident Ranch.

“I’m the best there is, and you know it. I’ll bring her and your grandson back. You have my word on that. Just like all the other women I’ve gotten out of that pit.”

“Thank you.” Quinn rose to shake his hand.

“No thanks are necessary. It’s a job. That’s what I do.”

It was more than a job. Quinn’s quirked brow said it all. Jewel was more than that to both of them. The older man insisted, “I’m coming with you.”

Not bothering to reply, he slid open his desk and flicked on his intercom. “Hancock, open up the barn and roll out the hopper. I’m going off-world.”

“Sure thing, boss. Got another job? Need me to come along on this one?”

Guy split the bounty with Hancock when they retrieved women lost to the slavers. The extra help was more than enough to compensate for the money he didn’t need.

“Not this time.” He didn’t add that this time it wasn’t a job.

This time, it was personal.

After four excruciatingly slow standard hours and several well-placed bribes, Guy found Jewel.

Too late.

He maintained a cover on
Station Zuthuru.
He portrayed a rich, spoiled Terraloft spacer who drank, gambled and bought female slaves sold to the highest bidder—which he’d always managed to be before passing the cost back to whoever paid for their rescue. The slaves he released back to their families, untouched by him and in as good a shape as possible after they’d been kidnapped and sold.

None of them had been silver-tipped.

Hell and damnation.

He never took a job to retrieve a silver-tipped slave. For good reason. They couldn’t be separated from their owners without killing them, and it wouldn’t matter if they were returned to their families since a silver-tip’s memories were erased. Their self-will, their past and future, and even their souls belonged to the owner.

A shadow bidder had signed a pre-sale for her, but he wasn’t there yet. Guy still had time. He’d arrived three hours ahead of the debauched man who wanted more than a slave’s body. The shadow bidder wouldn’t like his slave disappearing on him. It took quite a bit of maneuvering to find and schedule a silver-tip purchase. Guy didn’t care. Whoever intended to buy her would never treat her gently nor give back as much of her life as possible.

Hunched over, elbows on knees, Guy pressed the pads of his fingers tight against his skull. Owning a person’s body, desires and her entire existence was not something he was prepared to do. He should walk away and tell Quinn his daughter was dead. In all truth, she was.

Jewel hadn’t chosen him five years ago, marrying an iron-ore tycoon’s son instead, but he was her only choice now, to protect her shell of a body.

After a quick check, he deemed the small room secure. He couldn’t delay longer. With a deep breath, he started the vid-call.

From aboard Guy’s hopper, where he’d commanded the man to wait for the all clear, Quinn’s face filled the screen. Usually appearing young for his age despite his silver hair, the mayor still had the same chiseled features but they were strained, and dark circles formed under his eyes. “Have you found them?”

“Yes. Well, I found Jewel but not her son.” He ran a hand through his short hair and fought to keep his features bland. “There’s no good way to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it. She’s in line to be silver-tipped. Already been wiped. I don’t have enough time to mount a rescue. She has a buyer. He’s due for the procedure in two hours so she’s in the clinic under strict guard. The only recourse I can see is to buy her myself.”

“You have the funds for that?” The mayor’s face paled further, but he kept it together despite his visible shaking.

“You’d let me buy her?”

“I don’t think I’m in a position to give my permission.” Quinn’s face contorted as if he held back tears.

“I could leave her to whoever her buyer is.”

“No. You’re a good man. A decent man. If she could speak for herself, I’m sure she’d want you to take the place of whatever immoral piece of spacewaste buys human souls for his pleasure.”

“Well, if you put it that way, I’m sure she would.” He blew out a long sigh.

“I’ll transfer the funds to you.”

“No. In a few hours I’ll own your daughter.
Own
her. You know this is irreversible. This isn’t like all the others I’ve rescued. I won’t take your money for disgracing your daughter that way.”

“As I said. You’re an honorable man. Anything I can do to help?”

Honor? He failed to disillusion the mayor, but he took his offer of help because he didn’t have time to explain to Hancock. “Get in touch with my foreman. Tell him to help you find the boy. Let him know I’ve had to deplete all my liquid funds for one of my projects. Have him put the south pasture up for sale. That damn Christoff has been after that land for years.”

“I’ll buy it and hold it. You can get it back when you’re able.”

“No—” He bit back the denial. “Wait, damn my pride to hell anyway. I appreciate the gesture.”

He was about to take the woman he’d wanted to marry and make her his slave. He had no pride because deep down, whether or not he could admit it, he fully craved possessing her. He didn’t deserve her father’s help after all the lurid images he’d been experiencing, but he took it.

“I may never make it home. Slavery is illegal on Grassland, and everyone will know she belongs to me with one glance.” Fighting a frown, he worked hard to keep his face immobile. He’d see his ranch again because he’d simply gone through too much for that chunk of pasture.

“We’ll figure it out. Just save her. Where’s my grandson?”

“She won’t remember. You’ll have to track him while I get Jewel away. Get in touch with Brice Levski. He’ll help. He’s a mounty on Taphgan now. At least, since she won’t remember her son, even to tell us where he is, she won’t remember enough to worry.”

Small consolation, but he promised himself he’d reunite Jewel with her son if it was the last thing he did.

The pain in Quinn’s face was unlike the staid politician. There was no love lost between them, but they would both miss the vivacious Jewel. They’d both do their best to find Jewel’s son. The mayor shook his head as his throat visibly worked. “I may have a way to rectify her memory wipe. I’ve heard of a man who’s said to have a cure. I’ll contact him to find out if he can do anything for her.”

“I’ll be in touch.” He ended the vid-call and, before he could change his mind, walked back to the clinic’s office.

The manager smiled at him, her welcome expression no doubt due to his already handsome bribe to get the information he’d needed from her earlier. “Are you ready to pick out your new concubine? I have a dossier of measurements and pictures here.” She waved in the air, her dark hair piled on her head above a space-pale face. “Her personality is yours to mold.”

He bit back the urge to wipe that plastered smile off her face and tell her what he thought of slavers, but he needed her cooperation. “I’m interested in the one brought here today.”

The office manager frowned, showing fine lines around her mouth and a cold stare. “She’s no longer for sale.” She rose. Her silver lab coat rustled as she moved to the slider. “If you would like to come back another day, we can look through the dossiers. Until then…”

The door slid open. The empty hall outside seemed bleak and stale. He wasn’t doing this right. “I’ll pay more. You said yourself, one is as good as another.”

He gave her his most charming grin, but she shook her head and he froze his face to keep the scowl at bay.

She tutted. “I’ve already started her procedure, as you know. She’s already bought.”

The momentary inclination to throttle her and make her tell him where Jewel was hidden away nearly took his breath, but a sly glance from the manager couldn’t be mistaken. She could be bought, as surely as Jewel had been.

“I’ll pay you double,” he blurted. “She took my fancy.”

The manager turned, the plastic smile brightening a little, and shut the door. “I’ll take your money. Though one is as good as another.”

Her cheerfulness went up in direct contrast to his plummeting mood. Yes, to this shadow-bidder who already waited on her, one slave would be as good as another. But not to him. Not to Jewel.

The manager walked him to a payment booth and left him there to complete the arrangements. He didn’t hesitate. Jewel meant more to him than these funds, even if he’d nearly cleaned out all his accounts. He swiped his thumb over the pad on the panel to complete the money transfer.

The light clicked from yellow to green. Everything was all set.

In a small but plush waiting area, he waited as the technician prepared Jewel for his inspection before the procedure.

The procedure.

The coming process both repulsed and, he was ashamed to admit, excited him. His cock filled, heavy in his lush Terraloft garb, all silk and clinging, brushing against his heated flesh. He preferred the twill slacks and cotton button-down shirt of his real life to this material made to flaunt his body. But it fit the part. He blended with the dissolute elite who had nothing better to do than relieve their boredom. As that kind of man, he wouldn’t care if his erection was so hard and long it peeked above the waistband of clothing that most people wore to bed.

In this guise, he didn’t have his boots. A man couldn’t be a proper sheriff without his boots. He sighed. He’d never quite been proper.

He should walk away rather than submit Jewel to enslavement, but he couldn’t, even though she’d broken her promises and walked away from him five years ago.

A yellow light over the door signaled that Jewel had been prepared.

For a second, he considered taking the easy way—a small DNA swab and Jewel would be programmed. But if he didn’t go through with the full procedure, the technician would know something was wrong. Everyone did it. Nobody opted to forgo imprinting their silver-tipped slave with their own bodies.

Lust trembled through his body as the door slid open.

***

She was born as a woman at 0600 ship time. That she knew the time made her curious, a state-of-mind she seemed to well understand. The numbers on the wall display slowly progressed.

She had no name, but she accepted her surroundings and the tick of the seconds passing by. She’d been alive for an hour. Secured in a strange chair for her own protection, she’d yet to walk or move. But she could walk, had done so many times before. She’d led a life and understood the world and what it held.

Although she was certain many thousands of people inhabited this space station and billions more roamed the galaxy, she only knew one person, the female nurse who’d bid her welcome and explained that, as a newly created woman, she had one reason for living. Her master. After the impending procedure that’d been thoroughly explained, he would take her away.

“Be patient.” The nurse’s tone was bland. Neutral. The woman in a lab coat leaned over her and painted liquid on certain parts of her anatomy. Though told this was accepted, wanted, by her master, she futilely tugged at her arms to cover herself as a small tool touched her lips, her nipples and between her thighs with external wipes of a frigid, slick utensil. A gust of liquid from another device penetrated between her vaginal lips.

No longer floating in a numb state, she grew hot and wiggled against the cold padding beneath her. She prickled with a blush. The seconds stagnated, lingered, stretched to an unbearable length. The lone sound in the room came from her own agitated breathing.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Be patient. You will be fulfilled, given purpose, in a matter of moments.” The nurse finished the ministrations by placing a snug band around her neck.

Before she could loosen her tense muscles, the door in the room slid open. A man walked in.

She sucked in a breath. Her master was beautiful. Gold-highlighted black hair curled at the edges. Stubble thick on his lean, defined face, he had the appearance of an elegant aristocrat. A dangerous curve angled his brow over dark brown eyes. He ignored the nurse and came to her. His languid stroll showed the masculine perfection under the silky blue suit, loose and clinging to a muscular torso and strong legs.

Cognizant for barely an hour, she understood his sexual predation and her role to serve his craving. His expression, hard and sensual, left no doubt.

Her stomach tugged. A sense of familiarity and longing assaulted her, and a luscious burn started from her lips and ended, fevered, between her thighs. Moisture pooled there, and her body tingled everywhere his gaze rested. Standing at her feet, close enough for the soft fabric of his breeches to tickle her toes, he evaluated her. Quiet, but with seeming motion, he vibrated as if he never stood still. From head to foot, he lingered, touching her with his dark expression and a slight upturn at the corner of his full red lips. High on his sharp cheekbones, a light blush grew to give him a wild, savage look to match his slightly glazed eyes.

A deep, husky command to the technician broke a strange spell between them. “Let’s get started. She pleases me.”

A little thrill shot through her, and she twisted her wrists against the restraints. She pleased him. For the first time, she smiled, the motion stretching muscles that seemed little used.

Looking him up and down, the nurse stood next to her master and handed him a small round container. The formally stoic tech smiled.

“Her memory and body have been wiped clean. The procedure is easy. The white paste on her hands and erogenous zones needs to be programmed with your DNA and linked to her collar. If anyone besides you touches those zones, her collar will react.”

The nurse rattled on. “This lubricant is a nanobot program for you to insert in her vaginal canal with your penis. Your sperm will carry the bots further into her reproductive organs to complete the programming. Then she’ll do whatever you want, when her necklace is tied to the command bracelet.”

The nurse cleared her throat and stared pointedly at his groin. “Most ask me to apply it. If you’d like…”

“No thank you, ma’am. You explained everything before. I’ll handle it from here.” His answer laced with steel cut the nurse’s smile from her face. The nurse withdrew to her console.

The next few moments would imprint her master onto her body through her collar. She’d be linked to him in every way, unable to stand the touch of another without her collar incapacitating her with illness. The programming would make her body cringe from others, only want him, and prepare her for him when he craved—sex. She was ready to fulfill her purpose.

Though she’d anticipated fear, now that the moment had arrived, a strange peace settled over her. Without doubt, she was made for this man. An instinct, as if her body remembered him, clicked in place. She accepted her fate and welcomed it.

He hesitated, and a fluttering pulsed in her belly. He wouldn’t back out, would he?

She forced her lips into a smile, and he moved again, silencing the flutters. He stepped between her bound, outstretched legs and bent over her. The rest of the room, everything, faded away, and all she saw, all she felt, all she breathed, came from him.