Chapter 13 #3
Sasha murmured, "I must be heavy. I should go sit in the other chair."
Kane grunted. His face was very close to hers. Sasha felt his breath on her mouth and she opened, tasting his exhalation. His left hand gently squeezed.
Pleasant tingles sparked in her belly and the base of her spine. Her nipples pinged as if he'd tweaked each one. Her muscles relaxed without her permission. Slick bathed his thigh.
"Fuck, Beauty. You have made me addicted. Soon I will be tasting that."
"I don't know what you can be addicted to. You have been gone, looking for Merrick and doing who-knows-what-else." She pushed at the wall of his chest. "I forgot you even lived here. I don't even know you."
She wanted to give into the impulse to dig in her claws in the pads of muscle and bite him. Never had she looked at a man and needed to bite him. The urge wasn't normal; it couldn’t be.
"From the moment we were in the car together. Fruit and salted honey. You have a feast for me, don't you?"
"I'm just a poor breeder girl from a poor sector. Someone seized all my holdings. I have nothing to offer."
"You are going to learn your worth if it's the last thing I do, Beauty." His hand rubbed and moved and squeezed down her leg, up her thigh, and around her butt.
Sasha moaned. More wet trickled from between her thighs. There was no pain from it now. His touch felt so right.
"You're making me mess. Please stop."
"Stop so you can be saved for your real mate? Are you still thinking of the Selection? You want one of your father's cronies?"
His free hand tugged at her wet hair. His mouth found that sensitive place where that hair connected with her scalp and he kissed the spot.
"I need to get back to my life. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself here. I don't know where I fit. You are the Warlord Alpha. I make good gin. I have people who depend on me. New flavors to invent. I want to try something besides fruit flavors. I have plans."
She watched her own hand move, tracing corded muscles and fingering through Kane’s sparse dark hairs. What would he think if she picked up his hand and sucked on his fingers?
He grabbed the data pad on his desk, opened a program, and scrolled to a list of names. Sasha wanted to tell him to put his hand back on her butt, to keep touching her there. She needn't have worried—he gave her the pad and his hand returned, reaching deeper, fingers going all the way to the crack.
Sasha panted. It felt nice, tickling just a bit, waking up skin that had never known touch. More, she moaned inwardly.
Biting her lip, she shut that down. She was not a harem girl. None of that from Sasha Dover.
"Look at the names."
What was he saying?
"That is your father's list. I will tell you a story. You won't believe me. But you can do the research and confirm everything I say on this data pad. It connects to Administration Libraries. Say you understand."
His fingers slipped down, just the tips, following her crack. Unable to form words, Sasha hummed. Those fingers snaked around from the back, over her thigh, and to her belly where his hand opened.
"Say you understand," he repeated.
"I understand."
"Now read the names. Out loud."
Sasha read the ten names out loud. A couple sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't recall why. The names on her father's list were all strangers.
Kane rubbed her belly in gentle circles, knuckles lightly caressing the underside of her breasts, stirring the curls at the top of her sex each time his revolutions passed low on her belly.
She was so proud of those curls. Her breeder body had frozen with childhood, sexless, until the pheromones of a true alpha woke her up. In three weeks’ time, she'd sprouted new hair everywhere, with Lilla and Lanny eager to remove it again.
But the soft, downy little curls on top of her mons made her a woman. She'd hurt anyone who tried to take them.
"Read the names, Sasha. I can't hear you," he chuckled.
Wet seeped from her. His pants would be ruined. She read through the names again to satisfy him.
"Do you have a preference?" he asked.
"What?"
"These are your father's men. Who would you pick?"
"I don't know. This is his list?" She glanced at the names again. If she wanted, she could have the Administration check to see that they were all still single. Breeders choose. None of them would turn her down. Not like the Alpha Warlord Constantine Kane.
"Did you know the top three names are three of my brothers?"
"My dad knew your brothers? Princes?"
An angry rumble snuck out of Kane's chest. His hand suddenly turned, cupped her breast, and squeezed.
Oh, someone help her. Sasha whimpered. Such an intimate touch.
Personal. Private. His gentle touch felt amazing on her sore breasts, like his hands were meant to be there.
She wondered if he would carry the heavy things for her, just walk behind her all day with her breasts in his big, wonderful hands.
"Sasha, I would kill my brothers before they ever got near the succession. I may one day have to. Do you know why? Sasha, are you listening?"
She wasn't. She covered his hands with hers. Maybe she could get him to soothe her nipples. Just put his fingers there, on the tips, pull a little bit.
"I am going to set you in the other chair if you don't listen."
Her groan was worried and anxious. "No, don't, Kane. I like it here." Forgotten was her earlier plea to sit somewhere else. She was such a hypocrite.
"Then listen."
"Okay."
"Do you know why I would kill my own brothers?"
"No, I don't know why." She turned her head into his neck and inhaled.
"My brothers want to bring back the slave class in full. They believe, for crimes committed over eight hundred years ago, that all humans should be subservient slaves without rights or property. My brothers are Administrators to three sectors: 10, 2, and 12. Some people call these areas the slums."
"Kane." She leaned away a little, his words interrupting her bliss. "That can't be right. My Dad would never—"
"These men are my brothers. My rivals and enemies, Sasha. Your father, the man who you say loved you, whose will and legacy you are so intent to honor, put them as his first picks as a husband-mate for you.
"He did not pick them by accident. It was a promise. A girl like you—clever, industrious, strong, and so gifted—is a prize to any alpha. You are more valuable than any treasure. He was going to give you to the men who treat other men as less than animals."
Sasha was trembling. Kane's hands moved, soothing over her body. What he was saying was horrific.
"Every single man on this list? All ten of them believes that drones should have no rights, no intrinsic value, nothing more than what their breed masters allow them. These are the men your father cultivated as friends. Are you listening?"
How could she not? He was speaking right in her ear. His sensual lips that had yet to kiss her mouth were right there. She could turn her head, capture his mouth, lick inside and take a taste. But she stayed still while he poured out his ugly truths.
"Your father was younger than me. I did not meet him until his thirty-year military assignment.
He served under me. It is forbidden for alphas to take a bride-mate while they are in the service.
The Administration encourages abstinence in the younger men because after the first encounter, the mating instinct is activated.
"An alpha at full maturation wants two things to ease the itch under his skin: sex and violence. One or the other will do. The army gives them violence so they can learn self-control for the other, but it's not enough."
She had learned this in school. One had to understand drones and breeds to coexist with them.
Kane continued, "Sex and violence are hardwired into the alpha's genes, super soldiers wired to repopulate the planet. We train them as best we can. We have to, because the only female who will ever fully satisfy them is one like you, Beauty.
"But since males are males and your kind are rare, there are plenty of betas, and even willing alpha females, or even the sterile breeders, to ease the itch. I noticed then that your father, he preferred drones."
"He preferred drones? You mean he lay with them? I know that. You don't need to tell me. Lots of men sleep with drones. I have half-brothers and sisters."
He tipped her chin up, his thumb a barely-there touch coasting over her lips. "Sasha, you don't know. You don't understand. Where are these brothers and sisters of yours?"
"He had to send them away because of Maura. She would have killed them." He'd told her that once. Sasha thought it was just an excuse. He didn't want them around, and she didn't know why.
"Where did he send them?"
"I don't know. He said he fostered them with good families, friends of his." Sasha fingered the list of names. "I was hoping to find a record of them in the safe so I could find them."
"Sasha, I saw that safe. It's quite a piece of work. Unusual for Sector 10, don't you think? Would you give me the combination if I promise to bring you the contents? I'll bring everything to you."
With one hand he gripped her ankle, then slid his palm over her foot. She was tiny in his hand, and he was so gentle. Pleasure pulsed through her when she remembered how he had pushed her foot against the root of himself, used her to touch himself through his pants.
"I would like to go with you. How are the workers? How is everyone now that Merrick and Maura are gone?"
"For those workers who you say were indentured, I offered them a severance package, debt free. They could go to their homes, if they had them, with something to help them get back on their feet."
She felt him smile. She'd been watching his hands, drooling over them, and missed it, but the stretch of his lips across his face changed the tension in the muscles of his neck and chest so much that she felt it come and go.
"However, Beauty, your people are very loyal to you. Only those who had come with Merrick chose to leave. As you know, Lanny and Lilla insisted they come to you. Even those drones who were badly abused refused to leave your service."
"I tried to protect them."
"They tried to protect you. You might ask them about your father and how he used them. Him and his friends." He let that sink in. "Sasha, are you listening?"
"Kane, you don't know what you are talking about. My father was a charmer, and he was lonely. He may have manipulated some human emotions, but he didn't use anyone."
She would have gotten up in outrage, but his lips were pressed right against her temple, warm and sweet, and his hands played over her feet and legs as if he couldn't stop touching her.
"I know you went to school," Kane said, his warm voice low and close. "Did they not teach this in basic anatomy? In all of my sectors, it is illegal for alphas to have sex with drones because it is impossible. An alpha will rip a drone apart every time."
Sasha shook her head. That couldn't be right. She had half-brothers and sisters who were drones. There was all kinds of mixing happening. Everyone did it.
He shook her gently. A lift of his knees. "Every fucking time, Sasha. Even a smaller, weaker alpha like your father, like Merrick. Humans cannot take breed.
"I know you have seen babies. You have siblings. An alpha doesn't need to knot to make a child. He can force an unknotted cock into a human vessel, but it is painful and damaging. He can give his seed, giving no pleasure.
"It helps to give a human shine. It loosens them up. It relaxes the pelvic floor and causes euphoria. Helps males too by loosening the bowels, the anus. But human men and women can't come when they are high on shine; it deadens the nerves.
"Prolonged use, coupled with multiple rounds of sex, can do permanent nerve damage.
A human female who has been raped using shine will never vaginally deliver a baby.
It must be a C-section. Basically, for a human to get pregnant from an alpha, the human has to be drugged and raped, or else the human loves blood and doesn't mind a bleeding pussy.
It's like sex between a bull and a poodle—a win only for the bull.
He gets off on a human pussy that's nice and tight like a breeder pussy. "
Kane's hands were still moving, sexy and reassuring.
Sasha's stomach was rolling, though. "So, because it is basically rape to sleep with a human, it's illegal," he continued.
"But it's only illegal if the human is an actual person.
This is why your father aligned with men like my brothers.
This is why you lived in that shitty fucking sector.
"My brother, Ebbon Blaze, runs that sector.
They are so poor because there are sanctions against them.
No one trades with the slave sectors; no respectable alpha will build there.
My father gave my brothers their Administration rights, and he can't take them away without use of force.
He will not fight a war against his own sons, so there are trade sanctions and other embargos meant to cripple them. "
At some point, without realizing it, Sasha had started crying. Kane was taking everything from her. Just like he had during those first days of meeting him, he was taking what she thought she knew about the world and herself and destroying it.
"Sasha, there's more. Oh, Beauty, there's more. I know you loved him. But I need you to let the fantasy of him go."
His arms tightened. Sasha twisted so that she could bury herself in him, her face seeking his armpit, one arm thrown up his chest to his neck, stroking the strong column.
She was a fool. This male kept destroying things around her, killing people, chopping off body parts as casual as you please, and she kept going to him for comfort.
Sasha wrapped herself around him. She spread her legs and felt that hard male cock of his, untamable beneath her, but he did nothing with it. Instead he rubbed her back, combing his fingers through her hair.
And he purred for her.