Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“What the fuck?” I yelled from under the large body that had tackled me and Cair, pinning us both to the ground.
Before I could attempt to push my way free, a hand shot out into Cair’s midsection.
With a whoof as the strike forced air from his lungs, Cair rolled away from me.
And the large body I’d already surmised was our missing fugitive, Xelthar Zarnoth.
Xelthar lunged toward me, away from Cair’s crumpled form. The fugitive wrapped a meaty arm around my naked waist and hauled me to my feet, pulling me against his body. I lamented that he remained clothed. Worse, he still wore his boots.
“Owww,” I hollered, squirming in his vise-like grip.
“Sorry, little Earthling,” Xelthar growled, not sounding the least bit sorry about stomping my bare foot.
If anything, he sounded gleeful about this turn of events.
He got the literal jump on us and now held me, naked and squirming.
I, however, was anything but gleeful, doing my best to remain rigid with control in his grasp while I frantically considered my options.
Cair had gotten to his knees, ashen face slowly returning to its dazzling glory. The anger in his yellow eyes made me glad I wasn’t Xelthar. “Release her. Your quarrel is with me.”
Xelthar laughed long and deep, like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “I think not, Enforcer.” He used the hand not snaked around my waist to stroke my hair. “She is my strategic safeguard.”
The formal phrasing threw me for a moment.
Then I understood. I was his insurance policy.
Oh, great. I angled my bare foot back and attempted to kick him in the kneecap.
The awkward angle and my lack of footwear doomed this to failure.
He tightened his arm around me, the compression of my organs sending pressure through my abdomen and into my lower back.
“That is enough, Emily Nichols,” Xelthar ordered. “Do not make me hurt you.”
The unveiled threat in his words stilled my actions.
“That is better.” His hand, which had been stroking my hair, trailed along my neck until stopping at my left breast. He tweaked my nipple.
I shuddered at the pain.
Xelthar’s palm closed over my breast, roughly kneading the skin. “Perhaps I interrupted too soon.” His grip drifted lower, then curved to my backside and grabbed an ass cheek, giving it a hard squeeze.
“Enough.” The melody in Cair’s voice now sounded discordant. It matched the glare as he rose to his impressive full standing height.
“You have no power here, Enforcer.” Gone was even a hint of a playful tone in the fugitive’s voice. “It is how I say it will be.” His hand drifted from my ass to my pussy, and he grabbed.
“Oh!” A heady mix of pleasure and pain, desire and disgust flooded me as his fingers played with my folds. One digit entered me.
“I see why you grabbed her,” Xelthar taunted Cair.
“You misrepresent the situation,” Cair stated.
“Was she or was she not sucking your penis?” Xelthar asked conversationally.
His finger moved rhythmically in and out of my wetness, a confused response that hadn’t started with him, but which he was all too willing to exploit “Do you deny she is lubricated for you to penetrate her?” He withdrew his finger and held the glistening digit in front of my face, so that I could see it along with Cair.
My face burned with embarrassment from seeing the evidence of my arousal, even though I had done nothing wrong.
Xelthar continued, unaware of my emotional reactions.
“She is a lovely, soft human.” His free hand grasped under my neck, lifting my chin, as if showing me off.
The slickness on his fingers from my body’s response coated my skin, and heat flared in my chest that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with humiliation.
“Should I sample her here and now? Maybe I will take her with me. You know that space travel is lonely. It would be nice to have someone to cater to my every whim. Someone I did not have to pay for, and who cannot deny me.”
Cair roared an inarticulate cry and stepped forward, fists balled at his sides, muscles straining against his shirt.
“Careful, Enforcer.” Xelthar’s fingers tightened around my neck, the tips of his digits finding the sensitive spots, not of an erogenous zone, but of my trachea.
I wheezed through my narrowed airway. Was this how I would die? Neck broken by some alien fugitive?
Xelthar’s fingers tightened further.
I grabbed at his hand, desperate to pry the fingers loose. My chest rose and fell in a futile attempt to force air into my lungs. Spots appeared in my vision.
Around the spots, I saw Cair release his balled fists and place them palm-to-palm against his chest. Like praying.
“That is better,” Xelthar said.
He released his fingers from my neck, and I gulped long, loud breaths of the fragrant alien air.
I couldn’t get enough. My heart thudded in my chest, nerves screaming with every pulse.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d hyperventilate.
That warning in my brain helped me calm my survival reaction.
I forced my shaking limbs to still and took slow, measured breaths instead.
Xelthar gripped my hip and pulled me against him.
There was no mistaking his reaction to this conflict.
Cair may have engaged in his sexual interrogation when trying to determine whether I was working with Xelthar, but at least he didn’t intend to make me a sexual slave, the way Xelthar not-so-subtly implied.
Rage howled within me. I took action, slamming my head backward into where I guessed Xelthar’s solar plexus or equivalent would be. I hoped to leave him breathless as he had done to Cair.
Xelthar grunted, released me, and staggered back a step before barking a laugh as he steadied himself. “Unless you wish to be punished severely later, I would not recommend continuing these pathetic attempts to escape. You are vastly inferior to me in both size and intellect.”
While I despaired that he was correct about my chances of escape, my so-called pathetic attempt accomplished more than either of us bargained for.
It gave Cair a moment unwatched by our captor. And that was all he needed.