Page 6 of Tortured

“Don’t threaten me, asshole!” And I run and dodge past his big frame, only to find myself cornered by another one of the big aliens. He reaches out a hand to stop me and the one inside the cage growls angrily, charging past me to slam into him.

What the hell just happened? I watch as the two trade a couple of short jabs, growling and snarling, snapping angrily.

I’m rooted to the spot until I realize that they’re both distracted and I can sneak past the two figures rolling on the ground.

“Don’t!” Alex screams. I take a quick second to glance back at her and realize that she’s plastered to the back of the cage and another giant is closing in on her.

I run to help her and she throws me a quick head shake. “No! Get Jenna! Look at her!”

When I glance further along the cages I see that one of the rough aliens has Jenna tossed over his shoulder and is calmly, carefully taking her out of the room and away from us.

“No! Leave her alone!” I yell, launching myself at him. He grunts but it barely slows him down. The first man grabs me and jerks me off the other man, muttering something unintelligible to him. The one holding Jenna glares at him and growls.

But then he stalks out of the room and down the hall.

“No!” I scream, jerking and fighting like a rabid animal, desperate to get to Jenna. She’s worse off than any of us and there’s no way in hell I’m just going to let some alien, no matter how sexy he is, drag her off to who knows what, who knows where.

The strange man jerks his head at the other man dancing around the cage with Alex. She growls and launches herself at him, kicking him in the gut which barely seems to slow him down at all. Alex is a force to be reckoned with at any other time and with any other perp but this guy is a huge, hulking behemoth of a man and he doesn’t even flinch when she starts pounding him with her fists.

He growls and glares at her and I scream, “Alex, maybe knee him in the groin!”

She grins mischievously and then turns to him, her sapphire blue eyes narrowing on him. I see her muscles tense but it’s so slight that I hope he doesn’t see it too.

She makes a flying leap and her knee aims right for his crotch. I don’t even know if they have the same equipment that human men do but I’m hoping they have the same vulnerability in their bodies.

Her foot catches his groin and he snarls at her, picking her up and holding her captive in his arms as they crush her like a vise.

She fights but it’s useless and he hauls her out of the cell and hits the door with a snarl at his friends that manages to convey all the annoyance he’s dealing with.

“NO, no no!” I whip around and see another man grabbing Ruby, his strange gaze locked on her fiery red curls like he can’t quite believe she’s real.

Running across the room, I charge at the man who’s wrestling with the tall redhead while she screams in his face.

Before I can really get involved, I feel arms grab me from behind, holding me steady as a cold piece of steel touches the side of my neck and I freeze.

The soft snick comes loudly in the suddenly-silent room and my eyelids get heavy, my arms turning limp and unable to touch, to hold.

My eyes close and everything around me slows until it’s barely moving in the fog. I can hear voices around me but they’re in such a fog that I can’t tell what they’re saying or see actual figures.

Arms slip underneath me and the last thing I see is a pair of gorgeous, gleaming amethyst eyes staring down at me, locked on my features in some state of shock and fascination that feels foreign and yet exciting to me.

Then everything goes black.

4

KOEHN

Granth, she is beautiful. Like the stars at night on Arkadia. My heart flips over in my chest in a way that’s never happened in all my years. I don’t know if I like it or not.

I follow the others into the med bay and watch as they all set their quiet burdens down. All of them have been tranqued with a sedative from our planet called Hasss.

Gardon bustles around the small but well-appointed med bay. It’s clear from the items on board that they at least planned on making sure that their cargo reached one of the auction ships alive if not well.

My eyes shift to the woman who fought me like a wild marzette. She scratched and screamed and I hated that I might have hurt her. But it was necessary since she was bound to hurt herself if we didn’t get all of them under control.

Gardon shuts her inside a z-tube that begins a slow, methodical scan of her tiny body. She fit so right against me, her wide hips a perfect cradle that would cushion my body and bring both of us a great deal of pleasure.

I glance at the readings on the screen and growl under my breath, glancing around at the other tubes that are running similar scans on all of the females.

---