Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Shan growls.
“Good idea. We’ve heard about their suits. Full of tricks. Enough to level a bar,” Wrath says.
I wonder if I am going to pay for the sins of all the humans who’ve already come down here. Probably. And that will likely only be the beginning of it. I’ve already heard all the filthy, carnal plans these creatures have in store for the crew of the Mare. I’m the only one they have. And that means I’m going to get it.
Wrath looks me up and down. Or side to side, given this angle that Shan insists on continuing to hold me at. I have to wonder how he feels about all these plans, given he is holding me the way you hold something slimy you found in the drain. Maybe there’s some chance I’ll escape all the ravaging by merit of being unappealing. I’m definitely not the most attractive member of the crew. Sometimes I think I’m the least of them all in pretty much every respect. It’s part of why I volunteered to go. We’ve lost our captains, our best. It’s time a pawn was sacrificed. That’s me.
“You caught her, Shan,” he says. “She’s yours to breed.”
Fuck. Me.
That announcement brings out a round of howls of annoyance and disappointment from the other outlaws. They start to offer their own ideas as to what should be done with me.
“We should pass her around. See what seed takes. We don’t even know if Shan can get it up.”
“No,” Wrath growls. “Shan caught her. She belongs to him. I don’t want to see the rest of you so much as looking at her, let alone laying your filthy fingers on her. You want your own human mate? You find your own human mate.”
There’s a rumble of general discontent that settles down into acceptance. They do not dare to continue to question Wrath. That saurian runs the criminal underworld with whatever the elemental equivalent of an iron fist is here. I know what a motley crew of rough criminals looks like, and this is the roughest, motliest crew I’ve ever had the misfortune of encountering. The tell-tale signs are all there, including the general mismatch of types and temperaments you always get in proper bands of true outlaws.
Organized criminals, they always tend to look the same, because they share cultural values. But outlaws? They’re the ones who ended up on the outside of whatever bit of society they were supposed to fit into. A proper band of outlaws is like a drawer of mismatched socks. If those socks were filled with knives and had rage issues.
“Let’s get her under the lights,” someone suggests. “See what Shan got.”
Now I am the toy all the alien boys wish they’d gotten for their birthdays. If they can’t have me, they at least want to have a good, long look at me under some proper lighting. They want to commit every part of me to memory so they can compare me to others, or just to the idea they have in their own heads.
I am carried over to their transport, which, to not put too fine a point on it, is an alien van. It’s a big transport space with six wheels and enough room for a sports team. It is colored in a sort of camo-tone, but that is about all that distinguishes it from some very ancient human tech. The maintenance team on the Mare would love to get a look at this thing.
As for me, I am the thing being looked at. Shan holds me in front of the headlights and I am turned slowly while the surrounding saurians make grunting, growling sounds as they decide whether or not they like what they see.
I also get to see my captor for the first time. What I see takes my breath away.
Shan is green and gold with horn-like protrusions on his shoulders and two on the top of his head. They make him look like a devil — as does the rest of his visage. He has the face of someone who is very purposefully up to no good. He stands a fuckload of feet tall, which is a lot taller than I am. He holds me quite easily in a single fist, his fingers curling in my suit as I dangle tantalizingly close to the ground. There is not so much as a tremor in his scaled arm, as if my weight is completely meaningless to him in terms of load.
He’s more handsome than I had imagined. He’s much more handsome than anybody I have ever been involved with. He’s frighteningly sexy, and I feel tingles of excitement rushing through me as I realize all the implications of the fact I have just been gifted to him. I am loot being handed out.