Page 40 of Escape Velocity

He answered with a little nod. “But let’s get back on topic. You’re directing this conversation away from your lies. What were they exactly? You said you were a slave. Did you really spend your days cleaning toilets and other noxious jobs?”

She looked down at her clenched hands.

“Answer me.”

“That wasn’t what I did.”

He sighed. “This is like pulling out teeth one at a time. What was your job?”

She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “I was being . . . groomed to be a sex slave.”

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Max tried to control his anger as he stared at the woman who had just made love with him. She’d started with one story and jumped to another when it hadn’t worked out. “That makes no damn sense.”

“Why not?”

“You told me you were given drugs to deaden your sexuality.”

“Yes.”

“Why in the hell would they do that—if you’re supposed to be a—party girl?”

“They taught us technique.”

“You mean like how to expertly suck a guy off?”

“What I did with your penis in my mouth?” she asked.

“Yeah, that.”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “But they wanted us to be innocent. They wanted the man who bought us to have the pleasure of witnessing our awakening.”

He couldn’t hold back a string of curses. It sounded diabolical. Yet explained that way, it made some kind of perverted sense—if you were going to sell a woman to a pervert.

“And what’s the rest of it?” he asked, sure that he wasn’t going to like the answers. “You made up all that crap about being punished for being beautiful?”

She sat stone-still as she answered, “It’s truer than not. They hated us for being desirable in the rest of the universe while they’re stuck on Naxion, covered with bumps and splotches.”

He dragged in a breath and let it out. “Yeah. I can see that.”

What was he going to do now? Leap out of his chair, cross the room and throttle her? Her slave masters had probably done that for a lot less.

He gripped the arms of his chair as he asked in an even voice, “You said you were a slave who scrubbed toilets so I’d feel sorry for you? And help you.”

She must be struggling to keep her voice steady. “Yes.”

“And what about my theory that most of the people on your planet catch a virus that makes them ugly? I suppose that was crap, too.”

“I’m part of a special breeding program.”

“A breeding program? What does a primitive civilization know about genetics?” he demanded, even as he remembered that people had been breeding animals since the dark ages on Earth.

“Genetics is breeding?”

“The science of breeding.”

“I guess they know enough. It didn’t always work. Maybe the virus theory is right. Some women in the program go through the change when they mature. They’re the lucky ones. They can have a normal life. If we don’t get the beauty bumps, we’re taken away for training.”

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