“Sorry, little Mistress. I told you it was a sad tale,” Kalis rumbled. “Anyway, after I lost them, I didn’t want to go on living myself. I’m a B’varren Kindred and we mate for life—I knew I would never find another to love and care for and I couldn’t fathom spending the rest of my time in this universe without my sweet Kara. It was more than I could bear.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jillian whispered again. She could almost feel his pain—the unbearable, crushing agony—the wish to die so he could be with his loved ones again in the afterlife. “What…what did you do?” she asked, sniffing back tears.
“Why, I went out looking for death, didn’t I? I went to the worst places I could find and picked fights. Drinking and brawling became my life for a year after I lost Kara and our babe. I know now that I was hoping to die by the hand of another because I was too much of a coward to kill myself. But at the time, I only thought to numb the pain.”
Kalis’s voice was still calm. He had moved down her spine now and was working on her lower back. He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, but Jillian could still picture his words in her head. She could see him as a young warrior—his eyes red with drink and grief, fighting and brawling in the darkest corners and alleys, picking fights in the most dangerous bars he could find.
“What…what happened next?” she whispered.
“Well, one night I found this dive on the far side of Yonnie Six. Males aren’t supposed to go to that planet, but I didn’t give a damn. I was traveling blind from place to place, trying to get away from my past. Anyway, I got myself good and drunk and found the biggest male I could to pick a fight with. A real bruiser, he was—a Brontian with piss-yellow skin, two sets of beady, black eyes, and two feet taller than me. Oh, and four arms,” he added.
Jillian could see this in her mind’s eye—an alien that looked something like a spider, she thought. With the extra arms and eyes…weird.
“Who won?” she asked softly as he continued to massage and caress her.
“Why neither of us, for his Mistress came looking for him at that moment. Turns out he had escaped from her the day before but the bastard was too stupid to get off-planet. He hung around and got drunk instead,” Kalis said. “Anyway, when she saw me fighting him—she was invested heavily in the Blood Circuit and he was her best champion—she decided she’d have me. So she took me.”
His words were so matter-of-fact that Jillian was startled.
“How can you sound so calm about being enslaved?” she demanded.
“At this point, I’ve lived more of my life as a slave than I have free,” Kalis told her. “I’ve had to make peace with it, little Mistress. Though I wasn’t at peace at first,” he added. “I was enraged the first time she put a pain collar on me—if she hadn’t been a female, I’d have taken my other form and ripped her to shreds. But being that I’m Kindred, I can’t do violence to females,” he added. “And the pain collar kept me in check long enough to make changing impossible.”
“Changing into what?” Jillian asked, fascinated.
“My other form, as I said,” Kalis said, which didn’t really answer the question. “Anyway, she told me, ‘if you want to die so badly, I’ll give you the chance.’ She put me in the ring—my very first match. And I couldn’t help fighting—though I had spent that last year seeking death, I couldn’t just let myself be killed. So in a way, she did me a favor—taught me that I wanted to live. And I fought for her for seventeen years—until she died and I was sold off at auction.”
Kalis sounded like he was shrugging, as though his entire bloody history of fighting for his life wasn’t a big deal, though Jillian found it fascinating. He had finished with her back and now he went back down to the foot of the table, got some more oil, and began massaging her feet.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that!” Jillian exclaimed, trying to draw away. She had never liked feet herself, although hers often hurt from being on them so much during the day. “I mean…ohhh…God, you’re good at it, though,” she moaned, for Kalis wouldn’t let her pull away and was firmly massaging her right foot.
“Why would I not massage your feet along with the rest of you, little Mistress?” he rumbled.
“Well, I mean…feet are kind of gross,” Jillian murmured.
“Not yours,” Kalis said firmly. “They’re little and adorable. I’ve never seen such tiny feet.”
“I wear a size eight,” Jillian objected. “That’s hardly tiny.”
“Look back,” Kalis told her. “Your little foot isn’t even as long as my hand.”