Alien Romance: Stranded With The Alien Assassin: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 3) (5 page)

Each step felt like a step closer to her death sentence, and though it probably only took her two minutes, if that, to get into the right spot just a few feet away from the auctioneer, Jayne felt her final walk as a free woman was almost hours. As she took her spot, she tried to smile, though she doubted it was anywhere near like Sophie’s.

There were at least fifty males there, and a couple of females, all sprinkled around the room. Each had a hand on their wallets and another on a goblet full of alcohol. The auctioneer was fat, with a beer belly, but he kept his hair well-groomed, greased back and mustache styled into fine, curling points. Jayne only looked at him briefly before she focused on the back wall, keeping her lips turned up in a tight smile.

She could hear the man talking, could hear people from the crowd shouting back their own bids, but Jayne didn’t process a single thing, though she knew she should have. Her mind drifted to her family, far away and probably wondering where she was, her co-workers and friends, who all had told Jayne she was stupid for hanging around those bad neighborhoods so much. They didn’t know yet that she had gotten into trouble for not listening to them, though they would soon.

She even thought of D’Anil. She didn’t see him when she first walked out on the stage. Jayne hadn’t seen him since the night before. It wasn’t like her to have one-night stands, but she’d been in a rough spot. He was her last act of freedom, and he was a pretty great one at that, though she hated to admit that about one of the smugglers who’d brought her here. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Jayne had almost convinced herself the night before that he was different.

Until he left her to the hounds.

Jayne realized she’d been standing up on the stage for quite a while and glanced briefly at the auctioneer, being brought back into the moment. He seemed excited. She looked back to the crowd, and saw the man that called on her.

He was older and completely unfamiliar. But clearly, he was wealthy. She could tell that by the fineness of his clothing. When their eyes met, Jayne realized they were so dark, it was like they were almost a pure black. He smiled at her mischievously, and it caused her stomach to drop. What did he have in store for her?

“700 imdallions,” the man bid, licking his lips.

Jayne’s smile almost dropped. She didn’t want him. She didn’t want whoever this man was. She didn’t care if he was the best lover on this goddamn planet. She didn’t want to be his. But no one else raised their hands or their voices. This was it.
That
was who she was going to have to please for the next thirty days. Some dirty, older man with a fine suit and a thin mustache, and dark, greasy hair.

“1,000 imdallions!” another voice shouted from the back of the room.

The crowd looked all around them, trying to find the source of the bid. But Jayne had a feeling she knew who it was, just as a dirt-covered man with shaggy, brown hair began to push his way towards the front. “1,000 imdallions?” the auctioneer repeated, getting a nod from him.

D’Anil
. Heat rose to her cheeks. She didn’t know whether she was angry to get someone who had abandoned her to the mistreatment of others or if she was happy to get someone that she actually knew, somewhat. In reality, Jayne only knew his name, and his first name at that.

Her eyes darted back to the previous bidder. He wasn’t smiling anymore, his lips, which were still wet, set in a deep frown. Triumph surged through Jayne as his chest fell in a sigh, and he waved his hand dismissively. 1,000 imdallions… She had no idea what that meant, worth-wise, but she was happy enough that it was more than what he was willing to pay for her.

And then D’Anil. Their eyes met as he started to walk up to the stage to claim his prize. Jayne blushed, wondering if he was only doing this because he’d “tried the product” the night before. She looked away, down at the ground, as his hand found her back and guided her away from the auctioneer, people clapping all around them.

“Why?” she asked him, unable to help herself. Jayne chanced a look, tilting her head up.

He wasn’t looking at her anymore, jaw tight. “If you keep asking questions, I’ll bring back the gag.”

Jayne swallowed. It was hard to tell if he actually enjoyed her company or not during their travels, and even when he
bought
her, it was hard to tell if he wanted her around. “I think it’s a legitimate question, D’Anil.”

The man looked down at her, cocking his eyebrow in warning. She was sure he would have said something clever or mean, but he was interrupted by the intrusion of two other people. Jayne didn’t recognize them, though both were beautiful, a man and woman. They looked wealthy, both in rich colors, reds and oranges, and light fabrics. Both were covered in jewelry and manicured in their looks. The man had tanned skin, his eyes a startling blue, and his dark hair was kept short.

Jayne didn’t try to look too long, but she could see he had the muscles of a fighter, as disguised as they were underneath his fancy clothing. The woman, meanwhile, was femininity incarnate. She had the hour-glass figure that every woman wanted, full lips. Her blonde hair and gray eyes made her look cold, but everything else was so warm that Jayne was left confused on whether she wanted to make friends with the woman or just stand in jealous awe of her.

“I see you finally bid, my friend!” the man smiled cheerfully, bringing D’Anil in for a hug, reluctant on D’Anil’s side, and clapping him on the back, “About damn time.” His eyes roved over Jayne. “And a good choice, too.”

“What are you even doing here, Kani?” D’Anil asked, annoyed. It wasn’t the same kind of annoyance that he had with Jayne, she noticed. There was a familiarity between the two that it seemed almost like Kani was the little brother pestering his older sibling.

Kani shrugged at the question. “Little birdie told me you were helping with the slave trade now. Thought I might check up on you, since you practically avoid me.” He didn’t seem hurt by it, still smiling. “And Phreema had the idea of working as a vendor at one of these things. We’re swimming in profits!”

“You’re going to get yourself caught,” D’Anil said.

The other man laughed. “By who? The law?”

“Slave trade
is
illegal within the Milky Way,” Jayne interrupted, speaking for the first time in the conversation. Her fingers were tightened into fists on her dress, and embarrassment started to flush her by the looks of surprise from the other three. They’d all forgotten that she was there, apparently. Clearing her throat, she continued. “The Empire wouldn’t approve of this, and it
is
punishable by law.”

Kani stared at her for a minute, blinking slowly. His smile stopped until he looked back over to D’Anil. “Seems you’ve got a talker, friend. Good luck with that one… But as you know, slave trade has been a tradition here since the beginning of our history. The law has looked past it for thousands of years, and they will for thousands more.”

“Besides, Master Kani hasn’t bought anything,” Phreema smirked, “He is a simple merchant taking advantage of a social gathering.”

“And you tell me
I’ve
got a talker,” D’Anil said. His eyes met with Jayne’s and nodded his head. “I have to make my payment, and then we’re leaving.
Don’t
make me chase you down again.”

Jayne nodded, leaving Phreema and Kani behind as she followed her new master to the payments area. She couldn’t leave yet anyways. What did Kani mean that the law looked past the slave trade? They couldn’t possibly… Maybe the city could, but for the Empire not to notice? Especially if they were stealing from the other planets?

The only thing Jayne felt good about was the fact that they seemed to confirm that she was in the Milky Way, which definitely meant they would be under the jurisdiction of the Empire. Now, she just had to find someone that would listen to her and put a stop to this all.

She was still trying to come up with a plan when he was given a cord to wrap around her waist, when he tied it around her and discreetly held it by the small of her back so that it would hide it. “Where are we going?” she asked, almost numbly, as her mind tried to work in six other different ways.

“We’re going to my home,” he answered, not making her fight for the answer this time.

Jayne appreciated it, the fact that he called it
his
home. It wasn’t her home. And she was going to leave as soon as she could figure out a way to get home.

Chapter Five

D’Anil still didn’t have a reason for why he bought Jayne. He’d spent all his reward money for her, and for what? To take her away from the disgusting man that almost got her? He gave up the idea that he was a hero a long time ago, after the first time he killed a person purely for money. D’Anil also didn’t know what to do with a slave, besides the obvious. And he hadn’t lain with Jayne since the night at the fire. Everything was stiff, strange, for the first month.

That was mostly his fault, though.

He was always terrible with any form of relationship. Jayne was trying. She continued to ask question after question about him, about his childhood, his friends, his family. D’Anil didn’t answer all of them. In fact, he didn’t answer most of them. But as much as he liked to pretend he hated her questions, as the days flew by, D’Anil was realizing that Jayne was becoming a comfort.

Coming home to find someone there, with a meal already made and the house clean, it was something he hadn’t experienced since he was a young boy, since his mother was alive. Even having someone else’s voice fill the normally silent apartment he had in downtown Dlahik was a pleasantly surprising plus to having a slave, especially one that talked as much as Jayne did.

Jayne, meanwhile, was trying her best to keep up the nice act. She counted the days, knowing that Meta and Sophie were waiting for her to meet them. She wanted to tell them that it wouldn’t work, though, that this city’s government wasn’t going to do anything. But maybe they just had to
try
. And while she was playing nice, she found herself slowly making a home out of D’Anil’s place.

It was small, and when she first got to it, it was clear that he only treated it like a pit stop. The place looked barely lived in, no food in the kitchen, and no decorations.

She told herself it was to stave off the boredom when she would start to decorate, leaving the underground flowers she picked in a glass on a table in the living area, or spreading an extra blanket on the couch. And sometimes she would get rewarded by him, by a smirk or soft smile that D’Anil wouldn’t catch in time. Jayne could see it for just a second, and the fact that he tried to disguise it immediately afterwards made it that much sweeter.

As awkward as they were, they were building a home together.

That night, when D’Anil walked through the door, he expected what he’d gotten for the past month. He expected warm lights inside the house, sounds from the kitchen, and Jayne coming out with an easy smile on her face.

Then she would ask him how his day was, he would avoid telling her the details of the most recent job he did, and he would ask her how her own day was. Which would consist of nothing except for speaking to a neighbor or the letter carrier or how she would need him to go with her to the market to get things. Instead, when he got home, the house was quiet. It even seemed… Colder.

He shut the door behind him and locked it, discarding his coat by the door. D’Anil used to come home caked in dirt from the outside jobs, but since getting Jayne, he’d taken up more jobs in the city, ones that didn’t require him to leave for days at a time. And that meant his clothing would just be a little damp from the cave air, if anything.

Lately, he’d been trying to take some pride in his looks, and as he stood by the door, eyes darting around, he even self-consciously brushed his fingers through his thick, messy locks to seem more presentable. “Jayne?” D’Anil called out.
What if she’s escaped
? Would he chase after her? Or leave her to the authorities?

A noise from the kitchen made it so that D’Anil didn’t have to answer that question. “Jayne, are you in there?”

“Yeah,” she called back. He heard something in her voice that was different, his feet carrying him forward.

She was sitting at the table with a piece of paper in her hands. The bronze color of it told D’Anil it was a newsletter from the city. They handed them out every two weeks, to every citizen. D’Anil normally perused through them, but he hadn’t had the chance to read this one. Facing away from him, her face was obscured, unreadable. D’Anil looked over to where dinner was sitting. It looked like soup, the bread unsliced. “What’s going on?”

Jayne shot up, hastily wiping at her eyes and sniffling. Though she turned in his direction, her eyes avoided his, not wanting D’Anil to see the red puffiness. “Nothing!” she lied, “Just dusted earlier, and I’ve been bothered by that all day. It’s fine.” She finally looked up, smiling and moving over to the food. “Dinner?”

He frowned, going to the table slowly. “Sure,” the alien replied, fingers finding the newsletter. As Jayne busied herself with making his plate, he read through the information.

There was a story on the case he helped with, the one Alem had him kill three different witnesses for.
No surprise… He won
, D’Anil thought to himself. In the story, Alem would have had to pay 5,000 imdallions for the damages done to the families on the Outside.
And I should start asking for a pay raise.

The rest of the paper was small news, new vendors that would be at the marketplace and brief mentions of news happening in the cities outside of Dlahik. Not that they mattered much. Dlahik was the largest city by far, the capitol. He noticed one story, though, a local one, and this time for a murder he didn’t commit.

Foreign Tourist Found Dead
. A woman of non-Drunae descent was found in the middle of a street, dead. The murder was sloppy, impulsive. The picture used showed slash marks all across her stomach, and finally one, large and deep, across her throat. D’Anil studied the image closer, seeing the rope marks on her wrists, and then finally her face. It was only then that he recognized her.

“Your friend died,” he said. It wasn’t a question, more of an accusation that Jayne lied about being okay.

She stopped halfway through cutting a hunk of bread off for him. “What? Who?” Jayne asked, playing dumb. She cleared her throat and continued cutting off the bread, putting it on a plate and carrying it over with a bowl of soup. Jayne’s eyes avoided the newsletter the entire time. “Here you go.”

Normally, with any other person, D’Anil would have let it go. He would have let her suffer in silence. But this was Jayne, the one who never stopped talking and who could ask him a million questions. It was only fair that he return the favor. “The woman on the paper you were just reading,” he went on, “I remember her. She was the other girl that you were with, the one that ran when you first got here.”

Jayne sat down with her own plate and dipped her bread carefully into the broth. She’d spent three hours making this thing. Deciding to take a break, she sat down to read the newsletter, poring over the entire thing to find any information she could about the city, about the government, and the people, or even about anything from the Empire. What she found instead was disheartening. In fact, all Jayne had been able to think of since reading about her friend’s death was how much she had failed.

“Her name was Meta.”

“She was the warrior princess, wasn’t she?” D’Anil asked, “The main attraction for your group. You know, she’s the only other person that got bid on for over 1,000 imdallions.”

The brunette woman looked up at him. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked. D’Anil was startled, but masked it well. He’d never heard her sound so cold, not towards him.

“She probably fought them too hard, tried to escape too many times. She made herself more difficult than her master thought she was worth.”

“I’m so happy that I’ve proven to be worth your while then,
Master
,” Jayne replied. The entire month, she’d been playing nice, playing homemaker, and for what? Her friend was dead. Who even knew what shape Sophie was in, what this place had turned her into?

Look what they’ve turned
me
into
. Jayne imagined a picture from an old history book, of wives with pretty, perfectly curled hair and aprons adorning their dresses. A time on Earth long gone, and yet Jayne almost perfectly exemplified them here on this other planet.

D’Anil sighed and tore off a piece of his bread. She’d never called him
Master
before. He actually liked it, but not like this. Not when she was forcing it. “I knew you were going to be trouble when I first met you,” he said, “There’s not a lot you could do that would surprise me, worth-wise.”

Jayne was quiet for a long time, the only sound between them being the slurping of their mouths against their spoons. She could just do it now, reveal her whole plan to escape. And he could either accept it or thwart her. Jayne glanced back down at the picture of Meta, the newsletter sitting between them at the middle of the table. She couldn’t end up like that. Not before she saved the others, or in the very least, not until she saved Sophie.

“If I ran away, I’d end up like her, then?” she asked, “Is that how it works for all the slaves?” She wanted to make her voice sound as light as possible, like it wasn’t something she’d been thinking about since the minute she’d walked into the place.

D’Anil kept eating his soup, almost like she didn’t say anything at all. Jayne almost repeated the question until he dropped his spoon and spoke. “Depends on the master, I guess.”

“And what would you do?”

“Do you plan on running away?”

She didn’t owe him the truth. She didn’t owe him anything, really. And yet Jayne felt like she did. There were worse masters to be stuck with, and she hated to think about what she would have had to do by now if she’d gone to the other man.

It wouldn’t just be cooking and cleaning and making conversation. In fact, Jayne might have very well ended up like Meta, though she was sure that D’Anil was right. She probably tried to fight too hard. It was honorable, but it still led to her death.

D’Anil chuckled and shook his head. “The one time you’re silent,” he said, picking his spoon back up and continuing to eat his soup. He looked straight down at his food, not daring to look up at Jayne.
Is it shame that he’s feeling
? she wondered to herself,
Is he remembering that I was actually forced to be here
?
Has he been under some sort of illusion this entire time
?

“Whatever, it’s fine. I guess we should have talked about this before… The only reason I ever bought you anyways was to help you from that creep.”

Jayne was visibly surprised. “What?”

“You think I’m used to having a sex slave? You’ve been more of my housekeeper than anything,” he pointed out. Jayne winced slightly. Why did that sting? “And to be honest, it’d be easier without you here. I could start taking the better jobs again.”

“Better jobs?” she asked. She couldn’t help another question, but even now, her inquisitive nature realized that was not the most important part of what he was saying. “Wait, are you going to let me go?”

His grip tightened slightly on his spoon, and he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. D’Anil convinced himself that what he was saying was true. As great as it was to have a housekeeper, it’d be better to have one that actually wanted to be there every day, or at least one that he didn’t have to worry about escaping.

He could start leaving the city again, work on the Outside, even with the heat rising and the summer season reaching its peak. D’Anil could go back to the life of traveling alone, just like he’d had before, a life he was perfectly comfortable with in the past.

He didn’t need Jayne there. She’d just get in the way.

“If you want to leave, then you can leave,” he answered her, then looked up at Jayne seriously, “But it’s not as easy as you think-“

“Can’t I just talk to the leader around here-“

“No.”

Jayne huffed. “And why not?”

She hated the expression he gave her, one that made her feel stupid. “The man you’d want to talk to is in on the trade. In fact, he participates actively.” D’Anil knew all about Alem and the transgressions he committed, the hypocrisies that he hid from the city. D’Anil was paid to keep all those secrets, to keep them hidden. “He even got a slave at the last auction.”

“So what do I do?” she asked. The young woman was not used to this. She wasn’t used to justice not working in her favor. On Earth, there was corruption, but never on this scale. Not for a slave trade that spanned across several different solar systems.

“You get the hell out of here,” D’Anil advised. He paused thoughtfully. While he never really planned on keeping Jayne there, he never thought of how she would leave, either. Just that he couldn’t get caught helping her. If he did… He could say goodbye to any work from Alem.

Knowing the Drunae leader, D’Anil suspected he’d even get a new hitman just to take him and Jayne out. Information like the slave trade could ruin Imdali as a planet. It would remove them entirely from the Empire, leaving a people that had to hide underground for most of the year on their own, defenseless. “You go to the military base, and you stow away on the ship back home.”

Jayne nodded. “Well I have to get Sophie out first. I’m supposed to meet her in a couple of days… Is that enough time for us to get ready and leave?”