“Yeah, right, whatever,” I muttered, feeling like a scolded child. “I guess we did. But we had no idea there were aliens looking to abduct us as mail order brides!”
“How could you not?” Bambi asked in his piping voice. Now that I’d been watching him for a while, I realized he looked different from the other Commercians—his wormy hide was a slightly lighter shade of blue. “For the past fifty to seventy Earth years or so we have been testing our transfer equipment by abducting one or two Earthlings every year and then returning them,” he informed me.
I looked at him in horror. “So all those stories about being taken by aliens are true? Not just crazy people saying crazy things?”
“I am afraid so. We had to test and perfect our equipment, after all.” Bambi shrugged—or what I assumed was his version of a shrug. His wormy body rippled with the gesture.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “But in all those stories—or most of them—the abducted people get…get probed.” I looked at Sarden quickly. “You’re not going to…I won’t let you! I’ll fight every step of the way if you try to stick something up my…”
I trailed off, finally registering the look of amusement on his sharp features.
“No, no—please go on.” He made a sweeping gesture at me with one big hand. “Where exactly did you think I wanted to, ah, probe you?”
“Never mind,” I said grumpily, seeing he was laughing at me. Clearly some of the crazy abduction talk was just that—crazy.
“The captured Earthlings were probably referring to our sensitivity tests,” Bambi informed me, making me feel nervous all over again. “We are required to run certain examinations to be certain that our subjects are healthy and that the transportation process did not injure or mutate them in any way.”
“Mutate them?” I looked down at myself, wondering if I had grown a third nipple or an eleventh toe or something awful like that.
“Don’t worry,” Sarden rumbled, giving me that annoying, sardonic smile I was beginning to really dislike. “You’re fine.”
“Technically we cannot say that for sure until she is tested,” Bambi pointed out.
“No—no tests!” I insisted, trying to keep my chin up and my voice strong. But the awful reality was, if they wanted to test me—to probe me—they could. There were too many of them and I was just one naked, unarmed Earth girl.
God, what I wouldn’t give for the little canister of mace I carried around in my purse right now! Or maybe Charlotte’s taser—she was attacked once, back in college and now she doesn’t play around. She will straight up taze a guy if he comes at her in any kind of threatening way. I wished she was here with me now to taze the big, red son of a bitch alien who was smirking down at me.
Speaking of the red son of a bitch, he seemed to read my mind.
“No need to fear, little Pure One—no one will be probing any part of your lush body. Though I confess it’s a tempting idea,” he murmured. “You’re safe enough while you’re with me. Of course after I trade you, I can’t say.” He shook his head. “You’re even more beautiful than your image on the viewer. It’s a damn shame to trade you to Tazaxx.”
The way he was eyeing me made me realize I was exposed—my arm had slipped and one of my nipples was peeking out at him. I readjusted quickly, but I was damn tired of feeling at a disadvantage just because I was naked.
“Listen, you’re going to have to stop talking like that because you can’t buy or trade what’s not for sale,” I said, glaring up at him. “Now give me some clothes and let me go home because you’re not trading me to anyone. Read my lips—you don’t own me and I am not going with you!”
It’s hard to make a point sitting down while the other guy is looming over you. I started to struggle to my feet—not easy with one arm locked in a death grip over my ta-tas and the other shielding my lady-bits.
“Here.” Sarden reached down a hand to help me up. My impassioned little speech didn’t seem to have fazed him at all. Not surprising since he apparently thought he held all the cards. Well, to be honest, he pretty much did, I had to admit to myself. But still, I’m no quitter! I wasn’t going to let him just steal me away and march me off to some Godforsaken planet where—
My thoughts cut off abruptly when his big hand made contact with my skin for the first time. I felt a shock of something like electricity go through me—a jolt that seemed to sizzle through every nerve in my body. It raised chill bumps over every inch of my skin and made my nipples into two painfully tight points.
“Ah!” I gasped, stumbling back from him and nearly falling.
“Gods!” he growled at the same time, jerking his hand away. Whatever the weird jolt was, clearly he had felt it too.
“What…what was that?” I gasped, standing shakily, still trying to cover myself.
Sarden didn’t answer me. Instead, he looked at the blue wormy Commercians.
“You didn’t tell me when I picked her that she was a La-ti-zal! Quick—get an inhibitor on her—now.”
“A what?” I demanded but the wormy little aliens were already snapping some kind of bronze metal bracelet around my wrist. I looked down at the band and saw it had a little window on it that had glowing, incomprehensible symbols jiggling across it.
Great, I was wearing the Alien version of a Fitbit.
I could imagine the readout now—You’ve already gone three hundred miles today, just a few million more into outer space and you’ll reach your abduction goal! Har-har, very funny.
The strange jolt I’d felt was still making me tingle in the most uncomfortable places. And it appeared to be affecting my captor too. Sarden was pressing his thumb and fingers to his closed eyelids and rubbing like a man trying to drive back a migraine.
“Gods, the colors I saw,” he muttered. “Whole spectrums of light…” Looking up at me he said, “Your hair—it’s the color of flames. And your eyes…I’ve never seen anything so blue.”
“Um…okay,” I said carefully. “Are you just now noticing all that? Look—what just happened anyway? What was that word you called me before you jerked away like I was a hot stove?”
“A La-ti-zal,” the proper butler voice informed me and the golden dragonfly fluttered on Sarden’s shoulder. “One especially bred by the Ancient Ones to have extra gifts. They are very rare and valuable. A tingling sensation during first contact between such a gifted one and one of another of the Twelve Sentient Peoples she is sexually compatible with is normally the sign of a La-ti-zal. Which is, I believe, how Master Sarden ascertained your abilities.”
“Which is good. It means Tazaxx will have to make the trade. He won’t be able to resist her.” Sarden straightened up and I saw for the first time how truly immense he was.
Earlier I’d thought that he just looked big because I was sitting and he was standing—but it hadn’t just been a trick of perspective. This alien was huge. He had to be seven feet tall at least, I estimated. In fact, the top of my head barely came up past his elbow and his shoulders were easily twice as broad as mine. He was muscular too but not in a gross, over-the-top, ropey-veiny way. He just looked incredibly cut and intimidating, standing there in his tight black trousers and his black sleeveless t-shirt looking thing.
With his incredible abs, neatly clipped mustache and goatee, and those intense golden eyes he looked positively mouthwatering. If you’re into Devil worship, that is, which I most certainly am not.
But hot or not—and he was, most definitely huge and hot—I didn’t like the way he thought he’d bought me and he was already planning to trade me away.
“She’ll do,” he said to Bambi who was watching, his stalk eyes wide. “I’ll take her back to my ship at once since our transaction is completed.”
“Negative,” Bambi protested in his piping voice. “You paid only enough credits for a standard Pure One—an Earth basic female. The charge for an elite La-ti-zal is much higher.”
“Then you should find a way to test the females
and be sure of what they are before you sell them,” Sarden growled. “All sales are final—it says so in your own brochure.”
For the first time, I noticed he was wearing a large, chunky silver ring with a black stone on the middle finger of his left hand. He made a motion with it and a holographic display, showing all kinds of Alien symbols I couldn’t read, appeared and started scrolling through the air.
“There—see?” he said, pointing to a bit of floating green text that looked like squiggles and lines to me. Apparently the translation viruses the aliens had sent down through the hole in the ozone layer only worked for spoken communication. I was on my own if I wanted to read something.
“This is true,” Bambi agreed, sounding very unhappy about it. “But we have been meaning to refine our testing for some time. If you had not come so early, we would have had time.”
“So now you’re complaining that I’m your first customer?” Sarden raised one arched black eyebrow at him. “You shouldn’t have opened for business if you weren’t ready.”
“You must at least allow us to perform the sensitivity tests,” Bambi exclaimed.
“Well…” Sarden appeared to consider the idea. “It would make trading her to Tazaxx easier if I had a certificate of sensitivity on file.”
“Very good.” Bambi made a motion and two of the wormy Commercians slithered away only to return with a large contraption that floated through the air between them, guided by the lightest touches of their long claws.
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to freak out and scream. The weird machine the Commercians were bringing looked like a high-tech version of the Iron Maiden I’d seen in a Medieval museum once. It had a padded upright table with straps on one side to hold the victim in place. The other half, which was clearly meant to close over it and trap the victim inside, was a bristling mass of needles and wires with sparks coming out of them.
Worse even than the awful instruments of torture I saw sticking out of the second side of the upright table, was their placement—they appeared to be clustered into three specific areas. Studying them, I was certain if they strapped me to the table, those needles and wires were going to be aimed straight at my breasts and crotch. Which, I think we can all agree, are the areas you specifically don’t want needles and sparking wires making contact with.
Great. I was about to be the star of an alien torture porn film.
“Is…” I had to clear my throat before I could get the words out. “Is that going to hurt?”
“Oh, yes—of course. It should be quite excruciating, in fact, as long as all your nerve endings are intact,” Bambi said cheerfully, as though he tortured girls just for fun every day. As far as I knew, he did. Who knows what gets an alien centipede off?
A low humming sound filled the air as it got closer and I could feel the short hairs on the backs of my forearms standing up as though I was in a room with an immense generator. My heart was pounding so hard it seemed like it was trying to get out of my chest and run away—which was pretty much what I wanted to do. But one look at Sarden’s long, muscular legs told me he would catch me before I got three feet from the torture table. My only hope was to change his mind about letting the Commercians test me.
“No,” I whispered, my voice almost too dry to speak. “No, please.”
But the other four Commercians already had their long, chitinous claws on me and were dragging me over to the table. They pushed me back against the cold, padded part of the table which felt like some kind of slick plastic against my bare skin. They forced my arms down by my sides and I felt my cheeks grow hot with embarrassment as my breasts and the small patch of red curls between my thighs was revealed. Oh God, if this was a nightmare, I needed to wake up now!
“Please,” I begged, looking at Sarden, feeling so scared I was sick to my stomach. “Please don’t let them do this to me. I don’t like shots or sparks or being electrocuted. I promise I’m really sensitive—you don’t have to test me to know that.”
He frowned but said nothing.
“Ready the testing subject,” Bambi declared in his high, piping voice. “Start with one hundred volts and continue from there until maximum pain threshold is reached.”
“No!” I gasped as the other side of the table started moving towards me. I could see the silver needles gleaming and the wires were spitting sparks in my direction with an ominous sizzling sound.
I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. How could I be hiding in the restroom bitching about my boss to Leah and Charlotte one minute, and strapped to an alien torture table about to have my ta-tas and coochie pierced and electrocuted the next? I wished like hell I was back in the office brewing yet another pot of coffee for Dayton Lauder the third and listening to him yell-talk while he waved his arms and wafted his awful BO everywhere.
Suddenly having a stapler thrown at my head didn’t seem so bad.
This has to be a dream! It has to be a dream!
But so far I wasn’t waking up.
“No, you can’t!” I heard myself begging shamelessly. “You can’t do this to me!”
Forget suffering in silence, I’m much more of a plead-for-my-life-at-the-top-of-my-lungs type of gal.
“Please!” I cried again, through a throat that had grown so tight I could hardly get the words out. My eyes were stinging with unshed tears and I felt like my heart was going to gallop right out of my chest. Every nerve in my body was on edge, ready to feel the pain. The tip of one bright, shiny needle was just about to poke my right nipple (my right boob is slightly perkier than my left. Don’t tell me you don’t have one that’s just a little perkier—I won’t believe you. Everybody does.)
Anyway, as I was saying, I could feel the cold, sharp tip of the needle just about to pierce my nipple…
And then Sarden barked, “Stop!”
Chapter Three
Sarden
I don’t know what made me stop the testing. It was certainly true that having a certificate of sensitivity would make the little Earth female easier to trade. And the Gods knew I needed every advantage I could get when dealing with that two-faced bastard, Tazaxx. But still…I couldn’t let it continue.
I suppose it was the look on her face…the tears standing in her large, lovely eyes. Throughout the ordeal of being transported and informed that she had been bought and would be leaving her home world and her friends forever, she had remained stubbornly courageous—refusing to cry. I knew many females who would have been weeping and howling long before they were strapped to a testing table but not this little Pure One—only now when she was about to be subjected to intense pain did she allow tears to rise to the surface.
I admired her courage, that was all, I told myself. Also, though I am half Vorn and have the horns and markings to prove it, I’m no sadist to take pleasure in the pain of females. My other half—the refined half, as my little sister, Sellah, is always laughingly pointing out—is Eloim. We don’t worship our females as the Majorans do or feel the need to share them in the manner of the Denarins, but neither do we believe they are inferior.
“Females are equal to males.” I could almost hear Sellah’s voice echoing in my head. “Just because you’re stronger doesn’t make you any better or smarter!”
The thought of my little sister raised an aching pain in my chest. She was the reason I ought to let this testing continue—she was the cause of all this in the first place. But I knew what she would say if she could see me—she wouldn’t want the little Pure One punished or hurt. After all, the Earth female had simply had the bad luck to catch my eye on the Commercians’ light-viewer when they powered up the Alien Mate Index.
The mercenary Commercians had showed me many females—flicking first through images of what was considered attractive by Earth standards. Many tall, thin, boney creatures with long, sleek hair and wide eyes had cycled over the light-viewer. They had put me in mind of the graceful tallaths which galloped with impossibly long, fragile legs
over the fields of Yanus Six. With their cool, vacant stares and slender, brittle-looking limbs they did nothing to arouse or excite me. I doubted they would interest Tazaxx either.
Then the AMI happened to flicker over this particular female—I realized I didn’t even know her name. Anyway, she had been having a heated discussion with an Earth male—a puny creature in rumpled clothing who shouted and threw something at her head. She ducked, her wild curls flying, and went storming out of the room. Char’noth, the lead Commercian had been about to flip to another subject but I stopped him.
“Wait,” I had told him, fascinated by the plump little female. “I want to watch her—this could be the one.”
And so she had been taken on my request—because I bought and paid for her. But not just because she was beautiful, I was quick to tell myself. After all, I wasn’t looking for a mate for myself—I was looking for a female that would tempt Tazaxx. I was certain she would do that—watching her with her luscious curves exposed certainly tempted me. And the fact that she was a La-ti-zal could only help. My head was still ringing with the vivid colors she’d shown me when we touched, although my vision had mostly gone back to its usual shades of sepia.
At the moment, though, I had other things to think of beside her beauty or her unique abilities. Such as the fact that Char’noth and the other Commercians were staring at me in incomprehension, wondering why I had stopped their sensitivity training.
“What is the problem?” Char’noth demanded, his eye stalks wiggling in a way that showed intense displeasure. “The table is all charged—the test will take but a few moments.”
“I…er…” I cleared my throat, feeling foolish. “I don’t want my property damaged.”
“There will be no damage,” Char’noth protested. “The test is pain through nerve conduction. There will not be a mark on the female when we are finished.”
“Yes, but your little test will still hurt like a bastard and I’ve never been interested in causing females pain,” I snapped. “There are other ways to test sensitivity.”