Taking Tilly (8 page)

She dismissed that notion.

That would be attributing ‘good’ to
beings she didn’t believe had much in the way of emotions—good or
bad.

They didn’t seem particularly
evil—just unmoved by the plight of the women they captured and
sold.

Which she supposed most people would
see as evil, but it required intent to do harm as far as she was
concerned to be evil. Wild animals weren’t evil because they killed
to eat and ate to survive. These aliens were humanoid, but they
damned sure weren’t human and had no real reason to care about
humans—or to feel any emotion toward humans.

As far as she could tell, they were
simply merchandise. They had been picked up and they were being
prepared for the market where they would be sold.

Which meant this was life as she would
know it for the remainder of her life. She was going to be sold to
someone as a toy and what she made of it might boil down to how
well she behaved. She might manage to become some male alien’s pet
and be pampered and treated as well as a favored lapdog—which
wouldn’t be bad. It certainly wasn’t something she would’ve chosen
for herself. She’d had ambitions of being a success in her life,
having things, having money to pay bills and then some. She’d
planned to have some of the finer things money could buy, hoped,
one day, to have children and a husband that cared about
her.

That was a lost cause,
though.

She hadn’t tried to dwell on
it.

But they’d left Earth and with that
all hope she might have had to escape and return to the life she’d
had.

No, she had to make the best of what
she was facing.

And to her mind that was doing her
best to make her master happy so he wouldn’t mistreat
her.

She thought that was going to be a
hell of a challenge considering she was to be sold to
aliens—hopefully humanoid, but she couldn’t count on that, she
realized in dismay. And really, humanoid wasn’t much to look
forward to. Apes walked on two legs. It was sobering to consider
she might be bought by something even more horrible.

An hour or so after the second meal,
the sound of boots on the metal plates of the floor silenced the
fitful conversations and all of the women looked toward the
entrance just as the alien men arrived.

The commander was in the forefront. He
looked directly at Tilly. “Come.”

Feeling an uncomfortable flutter in
her belly, Tilly rose and moved toward him as the other men entered
the lounge and selected a ‘toy’ to entertain them.

It wasn’t until they passed her cell
that Tilly realized she hadn’t seen the second among the men. She
wondered at it, but she wasn’t stupid enough to ask where he was or
what had happened.

The commander took her to a cabin she
hadn’t seen before—a combination living/sleeping/work space that
was clearly his and just as clearly, she thought, emphasized his
status among the others. It was nearly as sparsely furnished as her
cell, but it had a wider, more comfortable bunk with bed clothes
and there were things scattered about that appeared to be personal
items.

She saw several photos—or at least
images in frames—although she didn’t actually get the chance to
examine anything.

The commander didn’t in point of fact
get right down to business either, to her surprise.

He sent her to sit on the bunk while
he headed toward a locker of some sort that she saw contained
glasses and bottles.

She assumed it was a liquor cabinet.
It certainly looked like one even though the vessels looked alien
and the liquids inside were strangely colored.

Although she supposed that might be
the color of the vessel rather than the liquid.

She wasn’t actually allowed to sit as
she pleased she discovered when she reached the bunk. The nano
seized control and although the position was comfortable enough, it
was blatantly sexual and that discomfited Tilly even while it
aroused her.

She was settled with her back against
the wall but her knees bent and her legs cocked wide enough to give
him a good view of her genitals.

He handed her a glass of
something.

She didn’t think she would be allowed
to decline so she took it and then watched him as he stripped his
jacket and shirt and boots off. He settled in a chair much like the
one he used on the command deck and leaned back, propping his feet
on the bunk between her legs.

“
Drink,” he ordered when
he saw she hadn’t so much as tasted the glass of liquid he’d given
her.

Since he lifted his own glass,
muttered some salute, she supposed, in his own language and then
downed the contents, she sniffed the contents of her glass, decided
it didn’t smell horrible and tried to toss her shot
back.

It felt as if it was burning a hole in
her esophagus and then her stomach. She choked and coughed, trying
to catch her breath.

She thought he looked amused when she
finally managed to stop coughing, but her eyes were watering so she
could’ve been mistaken.

He took her glass, refilled it and his
own and handed the glass back to her. “Drink.”

Dismay flickered through her. She
really didn’t want more.

She’d been ordered to drink by her
master, however. She didn’t have the option of refusing. She downed
the second as she had the first. The coughing fit didn’t seem to
last nearly as long the second time.

He distracted her by sticking his big
toe into her open cleft and wiggling it.

She giggled and just barely resisted
the impulse to slap his foot away.

Then sobered abruptly and stared at
him owl eyed.

That time she was more certain she saw
a flicker of amusement, but she was still glad she hadn’t given in
to the impulse.

He refilled her glass a third
time.

She didn’t know why he seemed to want
her to drink herself into a coma, but she decided she was entirely
willing if he thought she might have reason to be stupefied before
he got started. The third drink barely burned at all, but she
thought her head might fall off.

Handing him the glass with an effort,
she sprawled on the bed in the ‘ready’ position.

He stood, removed his trousers and
shorts and joined her.

To her surprise, he
settled in the cradle of her thighs—but aligned himself with her
head to head rather than genital to genital. Supporting his upper
body on his elbows, he lowered himself until he was almost nose to
nose with her.
“You are a strong, brave
woman,”
he murmured.
“If you were not so very tiny, I could almost close my eyes
and imagine that you were a good Merkdar woman.”

Tilly discovered she was either too
drunk to assimilate what he meant—or the heat of his breath and the
nearness of his lips to hers had completed her descent into a
mental vacuum.

Or he wasn’t speaking English at
all.

She held her breath as he dipped lower
and began to pluck at her lips with his—either experimentally to
see what he thought of it, or what she thought of it, or maybe
because that was the way they started things?

Heat rolled through her—whatever his
motive, the effect was to melt down her internal wiring system. She
sucked in a shaky breath when he lifted his head, opening her eyes
with a strenuous effort to the discovery that he was studying her
face.

Slowly a frown formed
between his brows.
“My world is gone and
most of our people with it. The few of us left deserve to survive
as a species. For that reason, I rarely allow myself any regrets
about what must be done for the sake of survival. But … that was …
more than I allow
,” he murmured. “No mean
you be harm-ed. Regret.”

What, Tilly thought
blankly?

He didn’t explain further
and he didn’t allow her time to pick it apart in her mind and
understand. He lowered his mouth to hers again and this time
covered it, breached the fragile barrier of her lips and delved
inside the warm, wet cavern to explore and possess. The drink he’d
given her didn’t intoxicate her as much—and
that
had pretty well wiped out a
million years of evolution and reduced her mind to basic animal
instincts.

She became as substantial as
marsh-mellow—everything inside was hot and melted and gooey. She
didn’t think she could’ve moved if her life had depended upon it
and she hadn’t been staked down for the taking by the
nano-suit.

She didn’t
want
to escape, to
evade. She would never have dreamed his kiss would so completely
captivate her, but she was so enthralled with his taste and the
feel of his mouth on hers that she scaled the ladder from zero to
eager in five seconds flat.

She was already desperate for
penetration when he broke the kiss and began a leisurely
exploration of her throat and ear, her upper chest, her breasts.
Bolts of heated lightning streamed through her as he tugged and
sucked at her breasts, one and then the other and back again until
she moaning, gasping for breath, skating the edge of
crisis.

And afraid that he would withhold the
rapture his touch promised.

He shifted upward finally, aligning
only the main cock with the mouth of her sex. She was so wet by
that time that he managed to embed the enormous head with the
minimum of effort.

He paused and she felt tremors run
through him that made her quake inside.

And then slowly, so slowly she wanted
to scream, he pushed inside of her until he was as deep as he could
go and Tilly felt like a bug pinned to a display board.

She needed release so desperately!
“Please,” she whispered.

To her dismay, he shifted downward,
pulling free of her so that he could look at her face.

She stared back at him, swallowing
with an effort.

“
What you say?”

She bit her lip, but he knew she’d
said something. She licked her dried lips. “Please.”

His kiss was fierce that time, wild
with hunger, almost punishing.

And she felt like weeping when he
broke from her lips.

But he shifted upward and impaled her
once more on his massive spear, driving deeply, and then set a pace
that brought her to the brink in moments and, to her great relief,
pitched her over the precipice and into glory. She gasped, cried
out sharply at the rapture that engulfed her as if she was being
consumed by a fireball, forced to ride the climax to its limit by
his unrelenting, punishing thrusts, experiencing a boosting thrill
at the feel of his release as he followed her into
ecstasy.

It was exhilarating, humbling—a
pleasure that went beyond the physical to feel his arms tighten
around her possessively when he came.

That was the very best, she thought as
she drifted blissfully in the aftermath of her release and finally
passed beyond the veil of consciousness.

Chapter Ten

Although they had long since finished
eating, the women were still gathered around the table in the area
they had come to refer to as the harem when they heard the tramp of
booted feet—many booted feet—as if the entire squad was approaching
the lounge.

They fell silent as one, turning
toward the doorway with varying degrees of fear and
anticipation.

The approach of the men enmass, they’d
learned over the days they’d been allowed the freedom of the
lounge, usually meant one lucky recipient was about to be fucked
almost to death by the entire squad.

No one really understood that ritual.
They still wore what the aliens referred to as their nano training
suit—which meant they were fully under the control of the men—and
there wasn’t one of them that hadn’t learned that resistance was
not only futile, it could be fatal—or very close to fatal, which
was almost worse. Why did they continue the show of force when it
was no longer necessary?

Were they concerned the women might
relax and forget they were sex slaves if they got together? That
the women might try to overwhelm them?

As ludicrous as that sounded, Tilly,
for one, wasn’t completely resigned to being a slave and it wasn’t
beyond the realms of possibility that they might rebel in her book,
however useless resistance was. She suspected she wasn’t the only
one that felt that way.

In point of fact, she’d begun to get
the sense that there were some trying to convince her to lead a
rebellion.

She felt for their plight,
but she wasn’t about to lead an attempt that would only result in
more of them getting jettisoned into space. They couldn’t win.
There might be four times as many women as there were men, but the
men weren’t just hulking huge. They were
very
strong.

There was absolutely zero possibility
of overwhelming them physically.

There was also absolutely zero
possibility of overwhelming them technologically because of the
suits alone.