“Done.” The male punched something into his wristband and a beep sounded on the director’s handheld communication device.
The director glanced at it and smiled. “When do you want her?”
The male gripped her upper arm. “I’ll take her now.” He bowed. “It was nice doing business with you.”
She swung around to meet him, terror screaming in her chest. “I can’t—wait—”
The male ignored her, pressing a device to the back of her neck.
She felt a sting before everything went black.
Chapter 2
She awoke on her back, naked in a well-lit clinic of some kind. The same male bent over her, taking blood from her arm.
“Ow.” She attempted to move her limb but found her wrists and ankles strapped to the table. “Where am I? What are you doing?” Her tongue felt too thick in her mouth.
As before, he ignored her. He injected her blood into a test tube and shook it with a solution then inserted it into a machine and watched the readouts.
When he returned, he put on a pair of protective gloves. He had five fingers, like a human. He wore a lab coat with a name tag that read DANETH.
She licked her dry mouth. “Daneth?”
He gazed directly at her for the first time. “It is not your place to address me, slave.”
It wasn’t her place. Right. This must be the “house training” the director had referred to. Though she’d been a slave all her life, other than suffering hard work and poor conditions, she’d escaped the subtleties of groveling indoor slaves were taught. “Are you my master?” She needed to get clear on what was going on.
“No. Your master is Lord Zander, Prince of the Zandians.”
Prince of the Zandians. But Zandia had been taken over by the Finn solar cycles ago. So if this man was a ruler, he was king of nothing. Just another wealthy statesman living in exile in Ocrea territory.
“His name is Lord Zander. What, was he named after his planet?”
Daneth brought the pads of his fingers to her right breast, massaging in small circles around the nipple then squeezing it, hard.
She gasped and jerked.
He repeated the action on the other side, checking the readout on his armband, as if following a protocol. With two fingers in her mouth, he pried open her jaws, adjusting the light from his wrist cuff to shine inside.
“Lift your tongue.”
It was stupid, but she refused to obey. She’d inherited her father’s rebellious mind, she supposed. Knowing he died trying to free his daughters from this exact situation obligated her to resist.
He nudged her tongue up with his finger. She attempted to snap her teeth closed, but he was far too strong, and she only succeeded in straining the muscles of her jaw and throat. Her rebellion did not seem to bother him.
He traveled down the length of her body, palpating every inch. Her nudity felt shocking after a lifetime of baggy clothes. Someone had washed her and even applied a shimmery powder over her skin. Her hair sprawled in soft waves around her head. It, too, had been cleaned and smelled sweet, like citrus blossoms. Violation at being touched so intimately—especially when she’d been unconscious—coursed through her. She had to get out of here. To escape and—
Veck. She didn’t even know where “here” was.
She thought they were finished when he unclipped her ankle cuffs, but he only readjusted them, placing her feet in stirrups to lift and spread her legs.
Her bare sex lay open to him for his examination. Her belly quivered, every muscle in her body tense.
“This shouldn’t hurt.” His tone was matter-of-fact. With his thumbs, he pried open the outer lips of her sex and spread them wide. He prodded her anatomy with a light touch, pulling back the hood of her clitoris as if to make sure it was there.
She whimpered when he shoved two fingers inside her and used his other hand on the outside to massage her inner wall.
“Does it hurt?” He sounded curious, rather than concerned.