Page 10 of Freedom Mine
Chapter Three
ALLI
“Afraid I’ll punish you for your remark? Let’s get this over with.”Those had been his words. Healing was always slow and painful. Sex was fast. . . though sometimes painful depending on the owner. But it was always fast. He’d brought her to his bedroom. She’d only thought to avoid a beating when she’d stripped and waited for him on his bed.
She’d guessed wrong. About Kayo. About everything. He’d looked shocked, horrified, and sick as he stormed out. Never had she felt so ashamed in her life.
Could he be telling the truth about everything? How would she know? What she did know was that something wasn’t right. Maybe he liked men instead of women and he just meant to have her tidy up his bedroom. The man was a slob, after all. Clothing, dirty and clean alike, covered the wood floor and the chair in the corner, while a score of dirty glasses littered the nightstand. She heard a scraping as she accidentally kicked something under the bed. Along with some dust balls and a dirty shirt, she found a score of empty bottles under the bed.
She sank to the bed, taking in the bedroom for the first time since she’d stripped. She’d been focused on anticipating what would keep him from flying into a rage after her flippant remark outside.
Aside from the mess, there was little here that spoke of who he was. The walls and dresser were barren of pictures and trinkets. Amidst all the mess and chaos of his room, was a neat pile of sheets, blankets and a pillow on the corner of his dresser. The pillow was so soft under her touch. It matched the one on Kayo’s bed. A white case with a blue pinstripe border.
Maybe he’d intended her to make up his bed and clean up. She’d assumed too much about him already. She needed to see for herself what type of man he was.
She left the bedroom, stopping only to listen for voices or movement. He’d slammed the front door earlier, but years of sneaking about after hours and into restricted areas of her prior owners’ houses had taught her to move cautiously.
One by one, she opened every door in the house. All she found was a house, a very disorganized, messy house, but still just a house. Not even a punishment room. . . unless that was in one of the other buildings.
Once out the back door, she walked the property for a long time, coming across no one, including Kayo. Part of her had hoped to run into him, though she wasn’t sure why. That wounded look of his had felt like a knife sinking into her flesh.
It shouldn’t have bothered her, but it had. It still did. He owned her. She shouldn’t care about him. She should enjoy any pain she could bring him, except he hadn’t caused her any. In fact, he’d been trying to do the opposite.
She needed to test the exit pylons on her own, when he didn’t have a hand-held control panel in his pocket to trick her. What if he had lied, daring her to leave so the fence would shock her unconscious or worse? No, she couldn’t take that chance, not yet.
She ventured toward the stables. Except for the occasional scraping of hooves against the ground, the place was quiet. In fact, the entire compound was dead quiet. Now was a good time to explore, to find hiding places, possible weapons, anything she could use to protect herself and eventually escape.
The first two stalls were empty, though they had fresh hay in them. In the third stall, a harkifa was nursing its calf. The other stalls were empty. That locked door at the end of the stables, the one with the padlock. . . that worried her.
She edged her way to the door, listening and watching. No light shone from under the door. If it was a punishment room, it was currently empty.
“Hey, you, what are you doing?” a man said from the entrance to the stables. In his left hand, he held the ties to a very muddy harkifa. He tied the animal to a post, freeing both of his hands. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She’d allowed herself to be trapped.
“You’re the new slave, aren’t you?” he said as he advanced.
“I was looking for Kayo,” she said. If he knew she was Kayo’s property, that he’d have to answer to him for any damage he caused her, then he might back off.
“He’s not here. And you shouldn’t be either.”
Alli edged her way toward the entrance, her hand falling to the knife in her pocket as she sidled past him. His eyes followed her the entire time, but he never tried to touch her.
“You best listen to Kayo,” he said as she moved out of his reach. There was nothing between her and the house now. She could run, except he hadn’t touched her and there was a warning in his words.
“And if I don’t?” her words came out with a bite, a side effect from all the pent up fear and frustration she’d experienced since Harko had dumped her at the feet of a slaver on Farren 3 with the explicit instructions to sell her somewhere uncivilized, where her next owner wouldn’t go easy on her.
Her fists clenched at her side, thinking about Harko and the pleasure he derived from her pain. At least here with this slave, she could be herself, even though she didn’t know him. She didn’t have to worry about other slaves punishing her. She only had to worry about if they caught her or did something to undermine her. Slaves were no better than their owners sometimes.
“You’ve had more than one owner,” he said. “It shows.”
“I never changed the sign on my back to ‘Hard Worker if Treated Well’. Maybe they’d keep me around longer if I had.”
“Yeah, I get it. Lay it on thick with me if you’d like, but listen to Kayo, for your own good. If you leave here, you don’t know who you’ll end up with. Pretty thing like you won’t last long with the wrong owner.”
“Is there such a thing as the right owner?”
He laughed, shook his head, untied the harkifa, and disappeared into the stables.
Alli headed to the main house. The man seemed to be cautioning her against running, and he had a point. There were a lot worse out there than Kayo, at least from what she’d seen so far. The stable hand had also confirmed her suspicions. Despite Kayo’s claims, she was his slave.
