Galaxy Games Four-Book Box Set (Galaxy Games)

1. Trouble

1

Trouble

T itan

“Hurry!”

“Yes, Mistress, but you usually want it slow.”

“You know just how I like it, Titan, but I expect my husband to come home any minute. Quit thrusting and go down on me,” she commands.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Sliding down my Whelpie mistress’s shaggy blue body, I find the bullseye by scent alone. I put my mind on autopilot as I lick and finger her.

A luckier male would have been born into a different family, one that could have kept him safe from slavers.

I was not a lucky male. Stolen from the halchuck playing field when I was fifteen, I’ve lived in one gladiator barracks after another in the twelve years since then.

I’m currently called Titan in the house of Hahn. If I live through this, I’ll be placed elsewhere within a year, two at the most. They’ll change my name, falsify my history, and try to pass me off as being less skilled than I am so I can win more matches.

Owners of gladiator flesh like to move us around, like pieces on a game board. I’m something to be used, nothing more.

Used as fighting flesh, used for sex, used for brawn, never brains.

In the past, it galled me. I had big dreams years ago, but no longer. If my Master tells me to pick up a three-foot gladius and fight a huge, muscled Anthen in the arena, I obey. If my Mistress orders me to lick her sex, I obey.

Even my dreams of winning enough purses in the arena to buy my freedom have drifted out of my mind. Whatever I do, my owners move the finish line. My goals have shrunk. All I want now is to keep breathing.

The door slams open and Master says, “What the fuck! Gilina! Do you have to do this in my own home? Our marital bed? With my best gladiator?”

“Get your sword, Katann. This brute attacked me! Call your guards.”

“Your appetites could be the death of our marriage, Gilina. The last time this happened, I asked for your discretion. Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe he forced his way into our bedchamber to put his mouth on your sex? Think of the male. Now he must be punished.” He sighs as his boots click across the stone floor. “Shit. This male was a money-making machine.”

I haven’t moved since the interruption. I can only imagine what the scene looks like: my naked blue gladiator ass jacked in the air, my mouth a hair’s breadth from her sex, my finger still in her ass.

For all I know, Master Hahn is about to grab one of his ornamental swords off the wall, preparing to slice my head off.

No one has told me to move yet. I’m not moving. My gaze is firmly focused on Mistress’s blue-furred mound.

My initial terror has disappeared. Now I’m furious. I didn’t ask to be summoned from my cell in the gladiator barracks. I am not the one who wanted to sexually service a shaggy blue Whelpie whose fur collects odors in the muggy Marentine sun. And I am definitely not the one who wanted to stick my tongue into her sex.

But I will be the one who is punished. For a moment, I feel the pull to give in, to let Master kill me, but that lasts no more than a second. I’m foolish enough to want to live.

I hear the soft ring of the sword being removed from its place of honor on the wall. If I believed in God, I would pray, but I don’t.

There are two types of slaves—those who pray to a God for mercy and freedom, and those who don’t. The result is the same—none of us receive either mercy or freedom.

“You’re going to be punished, Titan. My God may punish me for this in the afterlife, but you’re going to be punished now.”

Blaze

“Motherfuckers!” Shit, there are definite disadvantages to being 5’2” on Earth, and there are worse disadvantages to being 5’2” on planet Marentine.

Two huge alien guards are dragging me out of the hover transport they’d thrown me into. Their vice-like grips are bruising my upper arms as we speak. You’d think I would be smart enough not to fight back, not to tug, not to drag my heels. You’d be wrong.

Calling myself Blaze was one of the best decisions I ever made. It certainly fits me better than Bridgette. Who could take one look at me, 5’2”, soft cinnamon curls, whiskey-brown eyes, and tan skin, and decide that a 1950s Nordic name was the way to go?

Foster parents. That’s who.

At least I assume that’s how I was saddled with the moniker Bridgette. By the time I was old enough to ask about my origins, I’d already blown through ten or twenty homes.

So, starting at age fourteen, I refused to answer to anything but Blaze. It didn’t hurt that it was a code name for smoking marijuana. That just added to the panache.

I may never have gotten a grade higher than a C since elementary school, but I love to learn. I consider myself a mental sponge. I wasn’t busy writing book reports on Moby fucking Dick. No, I was reading about Skinnerian operant conditioning and behavior modification. I behavior-modded their uptight, condescending asses into calling me Blaze, didn’t I?

The day I turned 17, I talked the foster system into giving me money to legally change my name. I’m sure it was cheaper than paying for another year of care in one crappy foster situation after another.

Maybe I was going through a Cher, Beyonce, Adele phase, because my full name became Blaze.

The day after I turned 17, I enlisted in the army. I’ll admit, I almost washed out. I was probably the most undisciplined person ever to be accepted into the military. Maybe not, because they knew exactly how to handle me.

Something just switched in my brain during my second stint in Basic Training. I went from fighting it every step of the way, to thriving.

Eager to embrace every hardship, I ran with the heaviest backpack, cleaned with the best of them, ate what they gave me, and asked for more if I thought I’d need it to get through the day.

I’d found a purpose. I wanted to be a sniper.

Less than one percent of all snipers are women. Call me an overachiever.

What I didn’t sign on for was a little trip to outer space. Cocky alien fuckers stole me from my barracks at Fort Benning. I imagine if I ever do find a way back to Earth, I’ll be court-martialed for being AWOL.

Why I’m being hauled against my will into what looks like an abandoned high school gymnasium in the crappiest part of planet Marentine, though, has very little to do with any of that.