Stolen Desire (Outlawed Realm) (7 page)

Zekin’s shoulders and arms ached with uncustomary tension. The longer he’d been away from E2, where emotions weren’t allowed, the more they battled within him, demanding to surface. For the first time in recent memory, he didn’t want to push them down. He allowed himself to recall Paige’s sweet fragrance, so stunning when he was used to the prison’s sterile atmosphere, no different from the air on E2. Her mouth had been soft and willing beneath his. She’d readily accepted his tongue…as a pleasure slave might.

And yet, there’d been a difference. Free will and desire had driven her, not mindless obedience. In that moment, she’d wanted him, while he’d hungered for her. His yearning returned now, passion so deep, so genuine, it stole Zekin’s breath and strength. He locked his knees before his legs refused to support him, and forced himself to take a calming breath.

It did little to quiet his racing pulse. Heat continued to pour through him as he recalled the pleasure of Paige’s body against his, her nipples pressed against his chest, their thighs touch—

Bruda cleared his throat, breaking into Zekin’s thoughts, then asked, “You killed none of the guards?”

Zekin battled his persistent yearning for Paige and forced himself to answer. “One outside. Three within.”

“Four?” Qatar’s inflection betrayed his surprise. His expression, like Bruda’s, remained unreadable. “That’s all?”

With as much patience as he owned, Zekin explained, “It was enough to rescue Paige before more guards showed up, either from another wing of the outpost or from E4, perhaps E1. I didn’t have an endless supply of extermination darts to bring with me. I had to use several on each of the men inside before they went down. We need to strengthen the toxins we use. What we have now doesn’t work quickly enough.”

Bruda and Qatar exchanged a glance.

“Paige?” Bruda asked.

Zekin pretended to ignore the slight change in Bruda’s tone, not exactly mocking but close. Until now, they’d referred to those they’d rescued as “the female” or “the male”. Of course, none of the pleasure slaves had names, except for Eeete. Even hers wasn’t really a name but simply a way for Zekin to address her. “She told me that’s what she’s called on her plane.”

Qatar pushed away from the metal counter and paced, his boots slapping the floor. “None of the guards followed you and…Paige?”

“If they had,” Zekin said, “I would have killed more of them, as you obviously wanted. If that hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here.”

Qatar ignored the sarcasm. “What about the other females in the guards’ outpost? Were there more from E1?”

Zekin recalled the woman he’d seen. “Only one. She’d been locked out of the building, the same as the others from her realm.” From what Zekin had witnessed, none of those females had lasted long. They weren’t lovely enough for the guards. Nor were they compliant. “There were also two pleasure slaves. Their bodies were just outside the door not yet eaten by the creatures.”

“The guards will want more playthings,” Bruda said, “now that you’ve taken their last woman.”

“Paige wasn’t theirs to take,” Zekin countered, irritation sparking within him. An unexpected response. In times past, he would have tamped it down but couldn’t now. The energy it created was far too liberating. “None of those women from E1 were. Nor are the pleasure slaves.”

Qatar stopped pacing and glanced over. “We’ve already rescued quite a few of them.”

“Too many,” Bruda cut in.

Zekin frowned, no longer trying to hide his frustration with them, something he would never have done on E2. There, the discussion would have been all too civilized and quiet, behavior demanded by Vakar and his kind while they committed atrocities none of their people knew about. By sending Zekin and the other dissidents here, Vakar had meant to rid himself of their treason. Little did he know how his actions had released something deep within Zekin—a shocking hunger for freedom, the pleasure of feeling and reacting—rather than further imprisoning him.

Pity it didn’t appear to have had the same effect on Bruda and Qatar. Their turns were coming up to rescue the next victims. They didn’t seem as eager as when the task had been his. Not even trying to hide his disdain, Zekin asked, “It’s better to let them be abused and murdered?”

“I’m not saying that.” Bruda unclasped his hands and gestured in appeasement. “We should rescue them, of course. However, we’re timing our raids too closely. The guards may put up security measures that will trap us. They’ll learn we’re behind what’s been happening, and they may retaliate.”

“There’s no end to them, as you know,” Qatar added. “The scientists who create their kind and the pleasure slaves have seen to that. Even after we get rid of one, or a few, more always follow.”

Zekin shrugged. “Let them.”

Bruda mumbled, “Perhaps they’ll give up the idea of having an outpost.”

“They haven’t yet,” Qatar countered. “They seem drawn to this plane despite its dangers.”

“Then I stand by what I said,” Bruda blurted. “They may begin to retaliate.”

Zekin sighed. “They’d have to know one of us was even in their outpost. I left no trace of being there.” He pulled the used darts from his pocket and dropped them on the counter. Their tips make faint plinking noises. “I even hid Paige’s clothing in a snowdrift. They have no idea any of us were involved in her rescue or that of the pleasure slaves’. Even if they suspected such a thing, to do anything about it they’d have to find us. They’d have to know this colony exists.”

“You believe that will never be a possibility?”

“Anything’s possible,” Zekin argued. “If it does happen, we’ll fight them as we did the guards here, and we’ll win again.”

“Not if they have something else in mind,” Qatar warned. “What if they eventually discover the colony because of our raids and decide to tell Vakar what’s been happening here—what’s already happened when we took over the prison?”

Bruda’s face drained of color. “We can’t possibly fight Vakar and his men. They have all of E2 on their side. It’s a war we can’t possibly win.”

“One we’ll never have to fight,” Zekin reasoned. “What guard is going to tell Vakar that he came here and saw that we’ve taken over the prison? Vakar will want to know why the guard was here in the first place, given that E5 wasn’t his assignment. He’d been born to serve in the Pleasure Palace. Is the fool going to tell Vakar that he and the others like him are defying Vakar’s orders? They’re opening portals with the devices given them by our scientists, though not for Vakar’s benefit. Instead, they’re using those portals to spirit doomed pleasure slaves from E4 to this realm so they can enjoy them. And when that didn’t satisfy them, they decided to kidnap women from E1—not for Vakar to use and abuse as he demanded—but to keep the females for themselves.

“None of them will dare talk,” Zekin said when Bruda and Qatar didn’t respond. “The guards who could, the ones who ran this place, are gone. We monitor the systems in their absence, transmitting what they would have if they were still here. There’s no way Vakar will ever know what’s happened.”

“Until another of our kind is sentenced to this place as we were,” Qatar said, “and arrives with more guards.”

Zekin gestured dismissively. “We’ll take care of them as we did the others. If they don’t return to E4, who will notice? In particular, Vakar. As you’ve said, there’s no end to them. A few among dozens or hundreds won’t be missed. How could they be? They’re clones, identical in every way. There’s no means to track them by their genetic code as the scientists do with the pleasure slaves.”

“Perhaps not,” Bruda mumbled. “However, I still say we wait a bit before our next raid to keep them off balance. Even if the guards who come to this plane don’t alert Vakar, they may decide to storm the colony without considering the consequences. They’re not like us, Zekin. Primitive instincts—their anger, hunger for food, shelter, sex or power—drives them more than intellect. They may not care if they can’t get inside. Their only intent might be to damage the pods. If that happens, where would we go? There’s no place on this realm we could survive.”

“You keep forgetting they’d have to find us first,” Zekin argued. “They’d have to plan an attack. You believe creatures as primitive as they are could do that?”

Qatar answered before Bruda could. “They were shrewd enough to build an outpost here without Vakar’s knowledge. They manipulated the devices so the portals would bring them to this plane rather than E1 or E4. They may not match our intelligence or our ability to reason rather than to react. However, they do appear to be evolving into something that could risk all our lives.”

Paige regarded the metal plate Eeete had just handed her, overflowing with stuff she was supposed to eat. Unfortunately, the food looked very similar to those creatures Paige had thought were snowflakes. Coating their spindly legs was some kind of batter deep-fried to a golden brown. Must have been sixty of those suckers on the plate.

“What exactly is this?” she asked, then added immediately, “Yes, you have my permission to speak. Please do so always, whenever I ask a question.”

Eeete still hesitated, then spoke haltingly. “It’s tioma. What you call food in your language.”

Uh-huh. Paige fingered the collar of the camouflage shirt she wore, identical to the one on Zekin and the other men. That was, the men who looked like him and were dressed. Apparently, there were no clothes for pleasure slaves since they remained nude.

Paige’s legs and feet were still bare, the boots and pants Eeete had provided too large to put on. They lay on the floor near the pallet. In the brief time it had taken Paige to get dressed, Eeete had returned with the meal.

It seemed Zekin didn’t want Paige in the dining area. Could be he thought she’d freak out at all those nude bodies.

“Yes, I know it’s food,” she said, as nicely as possible, doing her best not to stare at Eeete’s lovely breasts, smooth mound, extraordinary beauty. “But what kind?”

“Kind?”

Paige was about to pick up one of the things to demonstrate what she meant, but thought better of it. “What kind of food is it exactly?”

A flash of understanding crossed Eeete’s face. “Good food. There’s much of it,” she added, the words rushing from her as if she couldn’t say them quickly enough. “Here, no one goes hungry. You can eat anytime you want, whenever you need to. No one stops you, no one whips you.”

Paige’s stomach fell, not only at what Eeete had just blurted, but how she looked. A kind of ecstasy transformed her features. She didn’t seem to realize how little she expected of life. No doubt because of the constant brutality she’d experienced. Paige wanted to hug the young woman, tell her everything was going to be all right.

A promise she hadn’t a clue how to keep. Offering the only thing she could, Paige lifted her plate. “Are you hungry now? Would you like some?”

Eeete stepped back. “All that is for you. Once you finish, I’ll bring you more. As much as you want. This too.” Her expression said she’d forgotten about the cup she held. Advancing, she handed it to Paige.

The liquid was a delicate green color and the consistency of milk. “What is this? That is, what’s in it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask.”

“Wait. That wasn’t an order,” Paige said. “It was just a question. You don’t have to go.”

Dutifully, Eeete returned to her.

Paige sensed the young woman would remain in the same spot until commanded to move…or she fell down from exhaustion. “Would you like to sit on the bed? We could both sit there.”

“Do you want to use me now?”

Paige frowned, then shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Use me,” Eeete repeated. She cupped one breast, lifting the supple globe, offering it even as she slid her other hand to her cunt, stroking her dewy cleft.

Paige stepped away so quickly, the backs of her legs bumped into the mattress. “No—
God, no
.
You’ll never have to worry about that with me.”

Eeete’s face remained serene yet curious, as though she didn’t understand Paige’s reaction.

“Guess I’ll sit while you stay there.” She sank to the mattress. Her hands kept shaking, sloshing her drink and rattling the things on her plate.

The noise drew Eeete’s attention to the meal. She regarded it as one would the world’s finest gems, something rarely seen and ultimately treasured. She’d clearly known little more than constant starvation or the threat of it.

Paige was certain she’d never look at food the same way again. She’d always considered it her enemy, when people like Eeete had had so little of it.

She put her cup on the floor, then gingerly lifted one of the crispy creatures. With her eyes closed, Paige forced herself to take a bite.

Damn.
The batter was light and crunchy with a hint of salt. The animal or insect or whatever the hell it was had a faint chicken flavor. Opening her eyes, she blurted, “This is really good.”

“I’ll get you more.”

“No, don’t,” Paige said, her mouth full. She had enough on her plate to feed two grown men. “I don’t want to waste it. Food’s too precious.”

Eeete adjusted her weight but didn’t leave, seemingly content to watch until Paige finished her meal.

After swallowing another mouthful, she asked, “Where did Zekin go?”