Forbidden Worlds - Box Set (6 page)

Damon ignored Lea’s steely gaze. She obviously didn’t like the insinuation that her brother-in-law might have developed feelings for another woman. To her credit, though, she said nothing.

“What will you do to Alor if you find her?”

Mojar’s pale gaze dropped to his hands. His reply was laced with regret that rang of insincerity. “She will need months of medical care and psychological reconditioning before she’ll be able to receive punishment for her actions.”

“
Punishment?
” Lea’s outburst drew the attention of both Edmun and Tak, and Mojar’s lips lifted in an odd smirk when Damon clamped a commanding hand over her wrist.

“Quiet.”

“No! You told us Alor didn’t leave the Citadel willingly, but you’re going to punish her for being kidnapped? What’s wrong with you?”

“Enough.” Damon rose, hoping his disapproving stare would be enough to silence her.

Mojar’s expression was bland, but the guards snickered and exchanged furtive glances. Damon’s inability to control his property would surely make for interesting gossip when they returned to the Citadel.

Mojar’s smirk made her ball her fists. She ached to deck him. His calm, placating tone, directed at Damon, did nothing to soothe her indignation. “Alor acted inappropriately. She led Troy to believe he had a right or an obligation to rescue her. She knew her actions would lead to disaster. Once she’s recovered from the physical ordeal of living with the converts for months, she’ll be ready to accept her censure, as any properly trained female would.” His last words held weight, obviously meant as a reprimand to Damon for allowing his woman to speak out of turn like this.

Lea seethed at the pompous response. A sharp reply had already formed on her tongue when Damon rose and tugged on her hand. Reluctantly, she followed him to the back of the transport where a narrow door led to a small storage compartment. As soon as he’d closed the door behind them, she turned to face him. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t sit here and—” He clamped a hand over her mouth.

Her eyes flared, but she sank into his rough embrace. “A Braxan man would have put you on your knees for speaking out like that. They’ll see me as weak for not punishing you.”

She nodded and he let his fingers slip down from her lips and trail into her shirt where he pinched a nipple. She gasped and thrust her hips toward him.

“They might assume you need rough treatment to keep you in line.”

“Do you want to fuck me in front of them to show them I know my place?” The challenge in her eyes made him instantly hard. He pictured it, pulling her back out of the private compartment and stripping her down, taking her while the others watched and showing them not only that she belonged to him, but that she liked being his possession.

He jammed a hand into the front of her pants and brushed at her clit. She leaned into him, curling forward at the intimate touch. “No. Sex isn’t a punishment, but staying in here alone, wanting it until we reach a landing site, is.”

She moaned when he withdrew his fingers from her pussy and she pouted. “Damn you.”

He smirked before turning his back and letting himself out of the compartment. “Maybe boredom and frustration will teach you a lesson that a good fuck won’t.”

* * * *

Lea rammed her shoulder against the bulkhead in frustration. She’d promised herself she would play along with the misogynistic mind games that passed for proper social etiquette on Ambrax, but her curiosity was killing her.

She wanted to know everything about the transformation so she could figure out if she really had a chance to rescue Troy or not. If he’d actually fallen in love with a Braxan woman, it would break Darya’s heart, but at least if Mojar cured her, she’d have a heart to break. Seeing her sister in emotional pain would be preferable to watching her soul die by degrees each day until she could do nothing but stare uselessly into space.

In the windowless compartment, the movement of the transport made Lea a little woozy. After half an hour of restless pacing, she folded herself up on the floor and closed her eyes.

She hadn’t realized she’d drifted off until the door of the compartment swung open. Everything seemed still, and the rumble of the engines had ceased.

Good. Back on terra firma. Did that mean they’d located some converts for Mojar to scan?

When a blond head peaked around the door, Lea rose. Instinctively, she curled her fingers around the hilt of the dagger Damon had given her.

“Are you hungry?” The one Mojar had introduced to Damon as Tak stepped into the compartment. He held a small container filled with protein cubes from their off-world supplies in one hand. “I asked Captain Cantor’s permission to bring you something. He’s gone outside with Mojar to look for converts.”

Suspicious, Lea held her ground, ignoring the stiffness in her limbs and her desire to stretch the kinks out of her back.

“Here.” Tak held the food out to her, his movements slow and deliberate as if she were some wild animal he wanted to coax into eating from his hand.

She took the container.

“It’s all right to speak to me. I won’t tell Captain Cantor.”

She eyed him. He was the younger of the two guards. She liked his bulging pecs and ridged abdominals visible beneath a tight white shirt. He wasn’t bad to look at, though he possessed none of Damon’s commanding presence.

He had a look about him that told Lea he probably didn’t have a woman of his own, and she was a test subject of sorts. He clearly wanted to impress her. She could work with that.

Allowing herself a shy smile, she mumbled, “Thank you.”

Now, with the door closed behind him, the compartment had become impossibly small. The testosterone charged scent of his skin reached her, and in response, she stepped back, feigning nervousness.

“It’s all right. I just wanted to find out about you. I don’t think it was right for Captain Cantor to lock you in here.”

She shrugged. “He could have done worse, I suppose.”

“What’s your name?”

“Lea.”

“Lea. You’re not used to this kind of treatment, are you?”

She shrugged, letting him draw his own conclusions. While he eyed her, she fished a protein cube out of the container and nibbled. Tak moved closer and one of his large hands came up, cupping her breast. She stilled.

“It’s not so bad here, you know. Most Braxan men take very good care of their women. Our population is small. We keep it that way deliberately so we don’t outgrow the Citadel and the protected zone, but that means there aren’t many females available for people like me.”

Poor baby, she thought, but kept her expression neutral. A few flicks of his thumb had her nipple erect beneath her shirt. He noticed, and she smiled in response. She held her breath while he lifted the neckline of her shirt and slid his other hand inside.

“Edmun is eager to get his hands on you, and he’s not known for his gentleness. If you like, I can challenge him, and then you would only have to deal with me, and Mojar and Captain Cantor, of course.”

Lea let her head drop back, pretending she was enjoying the contact. Tak’s hand slid down, opening her shirt to the waist, revealing her upper body to his inspection.

“Do you have permission for this?” She made her voice a breathless whisper as he drew her hips against his, and the bulge of an impressive erection nudged her mound.

“Where you come from, it’s the woman who gives permission, correct? Why don’t you tell me what you’d like me to do? If you’re willing, then I will gladly challenge Edmun to keep him away from you.”

He wanted her to pay for his protection. Clever boy, making it seem like it would be her idea. Would she really need Tak to protect her from Edmun? If she told Damon to deny the other guard access to her...

The door burst open then, and Damon filled the space. Tak’s hands dropped from Lea’s breasts, but he didn’t move away from her until Damon laid a hand on his shoulders and pulled the younger man out of the compartment.

“You’re finished here,” he said, his tone dangerous. Tak retreated quickly, without comment, and Lea closed her shirt, wishing her nipples weren’t standing out in hard peaks against the fabric.

Damon glared, as though the little tryst had been her doing. “Having fun?”

She allowed herself a smirk. “He was just sampling the merchandise, trying to make friends.” She lowered her voice. “It doesn’t hurt to have an ally.”

“He wants to fuck you, not be your friend. Don’t get comfortable with him, and don’t forget where you are.”

“I won’t. And by the way, where are we? The view from here sucks, Captain.”

Damon leaned back and glanced over his shoulder. “We’ve located a band of converts, several dozen moving together. Mojar is outside scanning them now.”

“I want to see them. Maybe I can recognize Troy.”

“I doubt you’d know him even if he were standing right in front of you.”

“I know my brother-in-law. He can’t have changed that much in two months.”

Damon moved out of the doorway and gestured for her to pass. “You have no idea.”

* * * *

Damon leveled a hard look at Tak on his way out of the transport with Lea in tow. No formal agreement had been made giving Mojar’s guards access to Lea, and Tak had apparently lied his way into the storage compartment. Not a good sign. This one was going to be trouble. He looked at Lea like a lovestruck teenager, and that meant he’d probably do something stupid to try to win rights to her.

Edmun, on the other hand, seemed disinterested. He’d given her a curious glance when they’d first boarded, but nothing more after that. Apparently she wasn’t his type, which suited Damon just fine.

He and Lea walked down the ship’s landing ramp and onto the springy moss of the jungle floor.

It was dark here. The thick canopy of leaves blocked almost all of the coppery orange sunlight of midday, leaving very little visible beyond the transport’s faint landing lights. Mojar stood in shadow, pointing his scanner at the seemingly empty jungle.

“There are twenty-four individuals nearby. They’re curious about us but still cautious,” he said. “We can’t stay long enough for them to overcome their fear or they may attack. You should put the woman back inside. Her scent will draw them closer.”

Damon glanced at Lea, but the set of her jaw told him he’d have to drag her back inside to get her to budge. “What does your scan tell you?” he asked on her behalf.

“They’re mostly males. A few females, all non-Braxan. Alor is not among them, and Troy is not among the ones I’ve managed to scan so far.”

“There...” Lea breathed the word and her hand came up to wrap around Damon’s forearm.

Naked and crouched in a feral stance, a creature hovered at the edge of the pool of illumination cast by the transport’s inner lights. A male, with dark claws and deep-set brown eyes. A tawny pelt covered its body leaving only the face and genitals bare.

“That was a man once?” Lea seemed to choke on the words.

“Probably not that long ago.” Damon recalled his former crew mates. Two dozen sturdy men, many of them Sparthans but a few from Earth, had fallen victim one by one. Would they all still be alive four years after he’d watched each one run screaming into the untamed Braxan jungle? If not for his own stubborn determination to survive, that might have been him at the perimeter of the foliage, grunting incomprehensible things, drooling at Lea and palming a growing erection in his dirty hand.

“He sees you. Go back inside now.” He pushed her behind him and, gratefully, she obeyed. Her footsteps retreated up the ramp, and Damon moved to flank Mojar, opening the sheath of his dagger with one hand and priming his shock-stick with the other. He could have disbursed the whole band with a well-aimed shot from his blast rifle, but then they’d lose any chance of locating Troy.

“I’ve got a perfect reading on that one. He’s not Troy,” Mojar said. “There are four individuals I can’t pinpoint, but this tribe all seem to match DNA samples from quite a while back. We should forget the others and move on farther southeast.”

“Fine,” Damon agreed, eager to get back inside the ship. The sounds they made, and the smell of them made him uneasy and reminded him of the moment he’d nearly succumbed himself. The fact that such a transformation could happen to formerly civilized men was one of the few things in the universe that made Damon Cantor afraid. “Just remember, two days is all we can spare out here,” he said before following Lea inside.

* * * *

Lea paced inside the transport until Damon returned. “I had no idea,” she said when he settled in one of the seats along the bulkhead. “How does this happen? Is it a virus?”

Mojar came up behind her and dropped a hand onto her hip in a familiar gesture that drew a disapproving glance from Damon. “It’s not viral. That much, we know. In fact, the DNA of the coverts remains intact, which is why we’re still able to identify them. Only those of us actually born on Ambrax seem to be immune, and we have yet to figure out why. We estimate the population of converts to be in the hundred thousands only, and their life spans are short. Where they live, the growth rate in the jungle doubles as if the planet itself takes sustenance from them.”