Harem (Alien Authority 2)

For now, I can do nothing except make myself as uninteresting as possible. He’s made me come, and that has cleared my head. I can think clearly, while he has wound himself up with no release.

Fifty-five minutes. That’s the time I have left to either escape or be rescued. It’s not time to move yet. I have to sit here and gather all my resources, become as calm as I can be.

I meditate as the ship rockets toward the border.

Fifty-one minutes.

Sithren is back. He sits down in front of me. I expect him to make me suck his cock. That’s the sort of thing tyrannical men do with captive women. They take advantage. I prepare for that, determined that he will come away wounded from such an attempted encounter.

He reaches for my hair and yet again draws me close between his thighs. I brace myself, but he does not stuff my face into his crotch. Instead he keeps me there, encouraging me to rest my head against his inner thigh, his fingers scratching lightly across my scalp. I try to resist the impulse to relax, but after a few minutes, I decide to stop fighting. He's not hurting me. He wants me to relax, and it will not hurt me to do that. Will it?

I close my eyes. Forty-eight minutes. Nearly a quarter of an hour has gone by now. If my absence has not been noted, then they will have some trouble scrambling to come after us now. Perhaps there are other units deployed along the way. There are always border patrols, which will be Sithren’s greatest challenge to circumvent. Maybe he’ll thread the needle based on the fact we’re in an Authority shuttle, but…

“Will I be put into your harem on arrival?”

He chuckles. “You would like that, wouldn’t you. The opportunity to corrupt and interrogate my women. No. At first you will be kept in solitary. I will be your world. I will be your breath.”

He doesn’t trust me with his harem — and it is also possible that something is happening inside the harem that would give me an advantage.

If I am not rescued, I think I might devote myself to the unofficial mission of infiltrating his harem. I can only imagine what those women know. Far more than the men I encountered in my hidden cover as a post box, I will warrant. They will have intimate knowledge not only of Sithren, but of the places from which they came. Those poor women caught in Sithren's web might yet be his downfall.

But first, let me try to leverage this.

“Keeping me is a mistake. You should let me go now, or you should kill me. If you don't kill me, I will eventually escape and take your secrets back to the Authority. If you let me go now, I will know nothing more than I already do. If you keep me in your intimate realm, I will know you so well that there is no doubt in my mind when I tell you this: I will destroy you.”

He laughs and he blinks down at me, both in slow and malevolent ways. “You will never escape me again, Tess. I know how to keep a human captive. When I am done with you, you would not tell them my secrets even if they were to put you through the worst tortures imaginable. I am going to make you mine to the very core of you.”

He strokes my cheek. His skin is rough. He is a scaled beast and there is nothing human inside him. It would be a mistake to compare his motivations to ones I might have encountered before. Sithren does not want simple revenge, he wants absolute conquest.

A man might hate me for what I did and want me dead. Sithren wants me to belong to him. He will not destroy me. He will consume me. If he succeeds, I will become part of him, losing myself in his being.

I am prepared for him, however. I know who I am, and I will cling to the values, thoughts, and beliefs that make me myself. I will hold onto the rules of the Authority. They will be my guide.

“I can see your resistance,” he smirks. “Do you know how brainwashed you are? When was the last time you had an original thought? Years, I imagine. There is corruption at the core of the Authority, and you know that intellectually, but you're not going to let that stop you from believing, are you? No. That would be a pain you could not bear. That will be the last barrier with you. You will cling to your belief in the Authority against all odds. And yet, here you are. I have taken you from the very heart of your territory. You must already have considered that you have been betrayed.”