Slave (14 page)

I added, gingerly rubbing the side of my sore nose, “it could be because I got my nose fucked by all the men in that dive we went to last night. I think I’ve had enough dicks in my face to last me for a good, long while.”

“He did say that you would be able to track me if we ever became separated,” Cat reminded me. “We have not been separated. He may not have lied.”

“Yeah, well, if you think I’m gonna play hide and seek with you just to prove it, you’ve got another thing coming, Kittycat!” I informed him. “Besides, I’m not so sure whether being able to track you would be such a good thing or not. I mean, you might not want me to be able to find you sometimes.” Cat appeared to be doubtful about this. “No, really,” I insisted. “You couldn’t possibly want me around all the time! I mean, what if you were out with the guys getting drunk and chasing women? Would you want me to be able to find you just so I could jerk a knot in your tail?”

“I do not have a tail,” he said firmly. “Nor would I want you to jerk a knot in it if I did, and if you were my mate, I would not be out chasing other women. Such an activity would be pointless if I had you as my mate. But if we were ever separated, Jacinth, I would want you to be able to find me.”
“Well, you know, if I’d known it would be so important to you, I could just as easily put a homing beacon on you, instead,” I countered, glossing over just how sweet a sentiment that was. And it was sweet—at least I thought so, though I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a current expert on such things. “It would have been a lot less risky, and probably would have worked better. And, besides, what about you, Kittycat? You seem to have a pretty good smeller there, yourself. Couldn’t you find me, instead?”

“Possibly, but not over a very great distance,” he admitted. “I can smell you when you are close and realize that it is you, but I could not do it even from across the plaza on Orpheseus Prime.” He sighed as he remembered. “I feared that you would not return to the auction to bid on me. I thought you had gone.”

Just how he thought he would have been able to pick my scent out of the stench of Orpheseus I’ll never know, and I still was rather amazed that he had been able to do it even when I was standing right there under his nose.

Then another thought occurred to me. “You say that as though you were hoping I would buy you! But as I recall, you didn’t seem all that twerked up about it when I did,” I reminded him. “‘I am a slave and a prisoner; I will attempt to escape,’” I quoted him. “If you wanted me to buy you so damn bad, why in the name of sense did you say something like that?”

He shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps I was not ready to admit that I was attracted to you and would remain with you always, whether you chained me or not.”

“Playing hard to get, huh?” I nodded knowingly.

“That’s such a
guy
thing, isn’t it? You can’t admit you
care about someone, so you just had to wait and come back of your own free will to make a deal with me, instead. Is that right?”

“Yes,” he agreed, though he seemed somewhat chagrined to admit it. “But I am here now, and I will do what I promised. I will help you find your sister, but I will not leave you when our search is finished. I will stay with you, always.”

Well, this was surprising! Guess I didn’t need to be

“bonded” to him after all! Of course, you know how it is when a stray cat follows you home; once they adopt you, there’s just no getting rid of them. I had thought that he might have other plans for what to do with his freedom, however. “What? You mean you’re not gonna go off on some raging personal vendetta against the Nedwuts for destroying your planet?”

“I am but one man,” he reminded me. “I cannot fight them all.”

“Well, at least you have that much sense!” I said with a good deal of relief, because I sure as hell didn’t want him picking a fight with every Nedwut we happened to run across! I’d seen plenty of them in the past and had, fortunately, managed to avoid any serious entanglements with them—at least, up to that point. Of course, I knew that a gang of them had taken my sister and, believe me, I held quite a grudge against them for that; but since they all looked pretty much the same to me, I wouldn’t have had any way of knowing if I’d gotten the right ones even if I did manage to bump off a few of them. I wasn’t particularly interested in exterminating all of them either. I just wanted the little shits to go back home and
leave the rest of the galaxy the hell alone.

I realized then that I was tickled to death that Cat wanted to stay with me, though I couldn’t have said why.

Perhaps it was just because I’d been alone for so long. It was hard to admit it to him, though, and I knew I certainly wouldn’t do it today. I guess I was playing hard to get, too.

“Well, come on, Cat,” I said, giving him another pat and getting up from the bed, doing my best to ignore the fact that I was completely nude—and so was he. In another place, another time, we might have been feeling laetralant for a better reason than just a good night’s sleep. I mean, even first thing in the morning, he looked good enough to eat, and I’ll admit, I wanted nothing more than to curl up with him and rub his tummy while he purred. But I had a sister to find and rescue, and I’d wasted enough time already. Steeling myself, I went on, “We’ve got to pack up for at least a fourteen-day trip, so get your tail out of bed and let’s get started.”

“Fourteen days?” he said with surprise. “The red-eyed one said that it would take only four to reach her.”

“Yeah, well, if you believe we can get there, find Ranata, and get back here in eight days, you’re even more gullible than I thought, Kittycat! Plus the fact that there’ll be three of us on the return trip; we’ve got to be prepared for anything!” I paused, tapping my chin for a moment as I considered the possibilities. “I wonder if we could rent or buy some horses. The way Delamar talked, the road between here and Ranata’s house is a pretty good one, but I’d just as soon ride if I could.”

The thought of riding a horse again was one very appealing part of Ranata’s rescue that I hadn’t counted
on, and it would be a welcome change from some of the other conveyances I’d had to use in the past. I once rode in a cart pulled by something that looked a bit like an ostrich and the damned thing hadn’t had any more sense than a Nedwut on a three-day drunk! As I recall, I ended up walking that time, too, and with a bit of a limp, I might add. In this instance, however, I thought that riding was a terrific idea. What I didn’t reckon on was Cat being such a wuss about it.

“I will not ride one of those creatures,” he said, sounding about as immovable as a space cruiser with a dead engine.

“What’s the matter?” I taunted him. “Afraid you’ll fall on your ass? I thought cats always landed on their feet when they fell down.”

“Perhaps the cats you are familiar with can do that,”

he said firmly, “but the people of my world cannot.”

From the way those black and gold cat eyes of his were glittering, I had an idea that he was going to be rather stubborn about this.

“Be that as it may, I still think we should try to get a couple of horses,” I argued. “They would be so much better than a droid to carry our supplies. I mean, I’ve got a pack-droid, but the damned thing is so obnoxious, I’ve never used it much and would prefer not to take it with us on a journey where any stealth might be required— although I suppose I could power it down to keep it quiet if we needed to.”

“It is…noisy?” Cat ventured.

“You’re damned right, it’s noisy!” I exclaimed.

“Whatever idiot programmed the stupid thing thought it
would be simply grand to have a droid that could not only carry all of your supplies, but would also sing hiking songs to you while you walk. I’ve yet to figure out how to disable the music feature, so mostly I leave it in the hold.”

I’d tried to sell it once, but the potential buyer had been rather annoyed by it as well. That was one deal that I should have been a bit dishonest about, just as the crook who’d sold it to me had been. He told me it would stop singing after the first standard mile, which, like a fool, I believed. What I didn’t realize was that he knew he would be long gone before I’d ever walked that far with it, the slimy little Croanot! I’ve been suspicious of every one of those creepy-crawly little bastards ever since! Of course, the fact that they look like big, fat, greasy spiders should have been my first clue not to trust one of them. You want to talk about a species that will totally gross you out: it’s a Croanot! Ugh! They give me the creeps every time I think about them!

I put my local clothing on again—trying not to think about all the slime it had been covered with the night before—but also packed a pair of flight overalls, a couple of shirts, several pairs of shorts, and some decent boots as well. I thought perhaps if we got far enough out of town, no one would see us, and if we got off the road just a bit, we might be able to avoid most of the other travelers anyway. Sticking to the road would be unnecessary if we were dressed the way I usually did, but I had some serious qualms about going through the jungle in that flimsy little Statzeelian get-up. It wouldn’t even protect me from sunburn, let alone the poisonous plants and
nasty insects that were bound to be indigenous to this world. Statzeel might have seemed like a tropical paradise, but I’d never been on a single planet yet that didn’t have its fair share of things that it was prudent to avoid.

I tried not to look when Cat got out of bed, but, dammit, I’m only just so strong! It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him naked before—and probably more times than I’d seen him dressed—but he still kinda took my breath away. I gave myself one brief glimpse of him and resolutely turned my back on him to get started on the packing.

He didn’t say anything about it, but I wouldn’t have blamed Cat for being a bit miffed that every other man in the bar had managed to get off on me except him.

Maybe that was why he let them all do it, thinking that it might get me in the mood—I don’t know, because he never said. He
had
kissed me, though, and despite the fact that he could have done anything he wanted with me, he hadn’t taken advantage of my nearly comatose state once my transformation into a so-called bloodhound was complete. Of course, making love to a wet rag might not have been what he had in mind, and I had a feeling he was just waiting for nightfall to roll around again to make another move. He seemed to be a patient, but determined, fellow, and perhaps he thought that being out in the jungle might bring out some of my more basic animal instincts. However, if he thought I was going to just up and give in to him out there in the jungle, he had another thing coming! I was a little tougher than that—or so I believed. Besides, I thought he deserved a little punishment for putting me through all that crap with Delamar. I would probably end up fucking him at
some point, but not until we found Ranata and had her safely stowed in my ship and were well on our journey home. I needed to stay sharp, and I
knew
what sex does to me!

In the end, Cat proved to be more stubborn than the proverbial mule; we wound up taking the damned pack-droid with us after all. And I had to admit, it was quite useful, even if it was irritating. I filled it full of stuff we could sell if need be, just to give us a better cover, and though we kept to the road as we left the town, fortunately no one questioned us about our destination. Traveling salesmen were pretty much the accepted norm on most worlds, anyway, and I doubted that we would be the only ones out there on the road. Medicines were the easiest things to carry, and you always met someone with an ache or a cut or two along the way who hadn’t brought along a first-aid kit.

“Who knows,” I told Cat cheerfully. “We might even make a profit out of this trip!”

Actually, I’d already found something I could turn a tidy little profit on, and that was the fabric from which the Statzeelian female clothing was fashioned. There were plenty of worlds where the inhabitants liked to be able to show a little skin now and then, and the fact that this stuff was actually able to keep you warm at the same time was something that I felt would sell very well on many planets. I’d already seen bolts of it for sale in the marketplace, and planned on picking up as much of it as I could before we left.

Another thing I had in the hold which I hadn’t thought to bring out the day before was the sunscreen that they
make on Frituna Five. It would last a full month with one application, and with all the fair-skinned women I’d seen out and about, it might turn out to be a hot item. I used it myself on a regular basis and had never gotten a sunburn on any planet yet. Of course, I’d never put it to a really good test because I usually didn’t have this much skin hanging out—well, okay, I
never
had this much skin hanging out!—but it kept my nose from getting burnt.

Cat seemed to think my suggestion that he put it on his dick was a good one, but then teased me into putting it on for him. I did my best to seem nonchalant about it, but I’d have been lying if I said it wasn’t doing anything for me, and it obviously got him going because his cock started gushing fluid from the corona as soon as I touched him.

Honestly, he was so wet it’s a wonder the sunscreen even stayed on him long enough to do any good!

I put some on Cat’s face, too, which got him purring again. Between his purring and the pack-droid singing

“
I’m Happy When I’m Hiking
,”
it’s a good thing we weren’t trying to be sneaky about getting to Ranata’s house—well, at least not yet, anyway. There would come a time when we’d have to be very careful because I certainly didn’t want one of those ornery Statzeelian males coming after us when he found out we’d stolen the Earth woman for whom he’d shelled out two thousand credits! He was bound to be a little pissed.

Cat and I marched along the road with our singing droid, and I was forced to admit that I was enjoying myself—well, the scenery, anyway—for it was just about the most beautiful planet I’d ever visited. The plants, animals, and insects we’d seen in the town were
just a small sample of the fabulous wonders that were out there in the jungle. Every plant seemed to be trying to outdo the one next to it when it came to displaying big, showy flowers, and the birds and the sky were as brilliant as the blooms. We passed a clearing of sorts along the road where the meadow was covered with blue and purple flowers, looking for all the world like a field of Texas bluebonnets. We probably hadn’t needed to bring along any water either, because about every mile or so, there was either a stream running alongside the road or a waterfall. There were the cutest little monkey-like creatures as well, and I saw several of them regarding us solemnly with their huge, round eyes from their perches in the trees.