Delivered by the Defender (Kindred Tales)

The attendant, who had small, shapely breasts, adorned with elaborately colored nipple rings, only shook her head.

“What a very backwards place your planet must be.” She shrugged. “But if your Master allows it, I cannot say anything. Though please be aware that you must not come out of the privacy bubble until you are modestly uncovered.”

“Modestly uncovered?” Selena repeated, frowning.

But the attendant had already busied herself with the silver tray she held. Feeling under the bottom of the gold couch with one foot, she pressed down on what must be a hidden button, causing a small, round coffee table to rise up out of the carpeted floor.

“There,” she said, placing the tray with its contents onto the table. “Now can I get you anything else, Miss? If not, I must return to my post.”’

“Uh, no. I’m good—thank you,” Selena said, trying to be polite. “This looks wonderful,” she added, nodding down to the tray, filled with unfamiliar fruits cubes and little round balls she supposed must be cheeses.

The attendant nodded.

“Please remember to uncover your breasts on the way out of the privacy bubble,” she said again, frowning in apparent disapproval. Then she tapped the smoked glass bubble and left when the doorway formed, just as Valen had.

12

Valen couldn’t find her Seal of Independence anywhere, though he searched the whole hallway where the attempted abduction had taken place, from front to back. Possibly the wounded slave-taker had come back for it. Or the roving gangs of orphaned children who lived in the spaceport might have found it and taken it to sell.

He growled softly to himself in irritation. Either way, it was gone, and there was no getting it back again—or getting a new one, without an elaborate months-long process involving the courts, a review board, and getting three upstanding male citizens of Ma’shorka Centra to testify before a judge that the woman applying for Independent status was, indeed, completely self-sufficient financially and professionally.

He wasn’t sure what the curvy little Elite—whose name he still didn’t know—was going to do. She would have to take the first shuttle back to the Mother Ship, he supposed. There was no way she could survive here alone on Ma’shorka Centra without someone to look out for her—she hadn’t even been able to make it out of the spaceport without being attacked!

She’s too damn beautiful for her own good, he thought grimly. Certainly she was beautiful enough to tempt him, despite the vow he had taken—which was a damned nuisance. He wasn’t used to even noticing females—they usually didn’t even register for him, unless they were clients that had to be defended. But the little Elite was one member of the opposite sex he couldn’t ignore.

And it wasn’t just her beauty that drew him—the taste of her blood was incredible—as rare and luscious as she was. He could still taste it on the back of his tongue—a sweet, rich flavor that satisfied him and yet made him crave more at the same time.

It was completely different from what he usually got from the professional donors he visited—probably because they had to constantly take iron supplements to keep themselves from getting anemic, which gave their blood a bitter, metallic tang.

Valen had felt it was his duty to heal her, but he wondered now if the little Elite might be one of the fabled Gold-bloods he had heard about but never thought to meet. A Gold-blood was a female with an extra special nourishing quality to her blood—it was said that a swallow of such blood would keep a male like him going far longer than drinking three times as much of the ordinary kind.

Valen had always thought that the Gold-blood females were a myth, but now he wondered. In healing her arm, he had taken far less blood from the little Elite than he usually drank from a donor. And yet, he felt energized and alert as he almost never did when he drank donor blood. Also, for the first time he could remember since reaching maturity, the Blood Hunger wasn’t tormenting him.

I feel fully satiated, he realized. Incredible!

When had he ever felt that way before? Never except when…but he pushed the thought away. The point was, just a little of the curvy Elite’s blood had made him feel stronger and better than he’d ever felt when drinking from a donor. It was wonderful to feel so satisfied—to not have the Blood Hunger gnawing at him constantly and to feel always on the edge of starvation.

Maybe she is a Gold-blood, Valen thought, as he gave up his search at last, and returned to the private VIP lounge. Or maybe he was just imagining things. But the fact that a few swallows of her blood had made him feel so good, added to the further fact that she was so beautiful, with her long dark hair and full curves, made the little Elite entirely too attractive for comfort.