Page 40 of Kidnapped from the Paradise Resort

Kara really didn’t want any more of the dark green wine, but again she didn’t want to be rude. Raising her crystal goblet, she took another sip and had to fight not to spit it out. The bitterness was so strong now it almost made her feel like she might throw up!

“Mmm,” she said weakly, putting it back down. “Yummy. But I’m really hungry so I thin…thin…thinkI need to eat somethin…I mean some-thing.”

She frowned. What was wrong with her mouth? Why were her words coming out slurred?

“Oh, you’ll get a chance to eat something, sweetie,” Gaela said, grinning at her in a distinctly unpleasant way. “But not here.”

“Wha…what do you mean?” Kara asked, shaking her head. For some reason, her friend’s face was looking fuzzy around the edges. In fact, everything in the room was going in and out of focus. What was wrong with her?

“You’ll see,” Gaela said. “Nono!” she called. “It’s working!”

“Wha’s workin’?” Kara demanded. “I thin I need t’ go—don’ feel s’ good,” she added. She tried to stand up from the couch but her legs felt weak and wobbly and they didn’t want to hold her weight.

“You just stay right there,” a new voice said and she looked up to see Brother Nono standing there in his long green robe.

“What’re you doin’ here?” she asked, slurring her words. “Gaela said you’re gone.”

“I was waiting in the back room for you.” He smiled at her. “I think it’s time we went for a little ride together.”

Kara frowned up at him, trying to make his features come into focus. He didn’t look so much like the shy, inexperienced novice as he had in the past. Instead, his face had taken on a more worldly, knowing look—he seemed almost sinister to Kara as she stared up at him.

“Wa…wait. Where’re we going?” she asked as he put an arm around he waist and started lifting her off the couch.

“Why to the Exotic Beauty Lounge, of course,” Gaela said, coming around to get Kara’s other side. “That’s a brothel, in case you’re wondering, sweetie,” she said, smiling in a most unpleasant way. “And it turns out you’re going to beextremelyvaluable there because of your special DNA.”

“My special wha?” Kara shook her head. None of this seemed to be making sense. How could Gaela and Nono be doing this to her? She’d been sure it was Feex who was the bad guy—she’d had no idea that her new friends might be in any way involved in the kidnapping ring.

“I had your genetic material tested after you ate with me the other night—got it off your utensils,” Gaela explained as she slung one of Kara’s arms around her neck and helped Nono drag her off the couch. “It turns out you’ve got just the right genetic makeup to respond toy’thosin.”

“Y-wha?” Kara shook her head, she wasn’t even going totryto repeat that word.

“It’s a kind of stretching agent used by brothel managers who need to accommodate clientele who are, shall we say, well endowed.” Gaela gave an unpleasant laugh. “Like Trolloxes, for instance. Most of the time when they get a smaller woman, they have to spend weeks stretching her out so she can take a Trollox shaft. But for someone with the right DNA, a single shot ofy’thosin—otherwise known as ‘the stretchy drug’ will get them ready.”

Kara began to panic, but in a very fuzzy and distant way. She remembered what J’orn had said about the two-headed trolls who were ten feet tall and how they often killed the women they tried to have sex with. Was Gaela actually suggesting she was going to sell her to a brothel that catered to those monsters?

“Wait—you can’ do this t’ me!” she protested. “I’m not…I can’…”

“Oh yes you can and you’re going to make us a lot of credits!” Gaela smiled at her in that extremely unpleasant, greedy way again. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to find just the right girl to sell to the Exotic Beauty Lounge! You’re going to fetch afortune.”

Kara shook her head as the horror of the situation dawned in her fuzzy mind. Her new “friend” wasn’t any kind of royalty from another planet—she was a common grifter who sold hapless women to brothels for profit!

“Please,” she begged brokenly. “Please, don’…don’ do this!”

“That’s enough of her begging,” Gaela snapped. “Give her another drink of the wine.”

Nono lifted the half-full wineglass and though Kara tried to shut her lips, he somehow managed to slosh a big mouthful of the awful, bitter stuff into her mouth anyway.

“Now swallow!” Gaela exclaimed and slapped a hand over Kara’s mouth.

Kara swallowed reflexively and felt the numbing drugged wine spread from her mouth down into her throat. She choked and gagged for a moment and then everything started going dark.

No!she thought.Oh, no—I can’t lose consciousness! I have to stay awake—I have to fight them!

But her body refused to do anything at all—she couldn’t even lift her hand to slap Gaela or push the other woman away when she wrapped her arm around Kara’s waist.

“Come on, sweetie,” she said, smiling even wider. “Let’s take you out the back way so nobody suspects. Nono will sign you out in the book up front and then, as far as anybody knows, you just decided to leave early.”

Kara felt a wave of fear roll over her…but that was followed by a wave of blackness.

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