“There!” Ass-licks gave me a triumphant glare. “Now we’re getting you out of here and as far from the Baron as possible!”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Just let me go back down to the Central Hub!”
“So close to where Baron Vik’tor lives? I don’t think so,” he snorted. “No you are going tomove, whore. All the way to Gaz’snx!” he said, naming the next largest city on O’nagga Nine.
“What?” But that’shoursaway, even if you can afford a ticket on a public tunnel crawler!” I protested. “It would bedaysof walking.”
“Exactly.” Ass-licks gave me a self-satisfied smirk. “Which means that even if you try to get back to the Central Hub, the Baron will have forgotten about you and gotten over you by the time you manage to get back. Although I very muchdoubtyou will get back,” he added, his smirk growing into an ugly grin. “After all, what is your pimp going to think when I tell him that you’ve run off and you’re missing?”
“What?” I exclaimed. “But if you tell R’xs I’ve run away…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. Horrible visions of Ger’tha and her ruined, raw-meat face filled my brain. If Ass-licks called R’xs and told him that I had run away from a job and was trying to go off on my own to a whole new city, the pimp would come after me and probably punish me in the worst possible way!
“You can’t tell him that!” I protested again, just as the elevator dinged.
“I can tell him whatever I want—do you understand that, you filthy whore?Icontrol the narrative of your miserable life now,” Ass-licks snarled as he dragged me off the elevator. But we weren’t getting off at the Central Hub, I noticed. This was the second floor—the place where the walkway area led to the VIP parking cavern.
“Let me go!” I cried again, but he only grinned savagely as he tugged me along down the walkway leading to the cavern.
“I’ll let you go once I’ve gotten you safely to Gaz’snx! Now come on!”
He dragged me to the parking cavern towards a sleek yellow super-speed tunnel-crawler. He opened the passenger side door and shoved me roughly into the seat. Before I could try to escape, he pressed a button and a bunch of black straps criss-crossed my body, effectively trapping my arms at my sides as it secured me in place.
“Now!” he exclaimed, going around to the driver’s side and punching coordinates into the Auto-Drive unit. “Let’s get you to Gaz’snx. I’m fairly sure it’s a trip you’ll never forget…orrecover from!”
He pressed the activate button and slammed the door behind him. The tunnel-crawler’s engine roared to life and it took off with sickening speed.
I was on my way to a distant city with no way to get back to the Central Hub or to Vik’tor. What was I going to do?
SIXTEEN
VIK’TOR
Isighed tiredly as I scrubbed a hand over my face. The negotiations with Zyr’nx, the Chief Officer of the Bros’ner Corporation, had taken fuckingforeverto settle. He was about a hundred solar years old and it was fucking difficult to explain things to him. But he was also the owner of the company and it was a business contact I couldn’t afford to lose.
A lot of people think I’m into some kind of organized crime, which isn’t true. I’ll be the first to admit that I take matters into my own hands at times and I’ve been known to give out some much needed retribution in the form of a fist to the face when the situation calls for it, but I’m not a fucking gangster. I’m an importer and exporter and the Bros’ner Corporation made a lot of the goods I exported, so I had to keep on their good side.
It had taken hours to soothe Zyr’nx, though. It was almost as though someone had given the old male wrong information deliberately to rile him up. I had to explain everything over and over until at last I convinced him that no one had changed our business contract and Iwasn’ttrying to pay him half as many credits for twice as many goods or some such fucking foolishness like that.
When at last it was over, all I wanted was to get back home to Natalie. I kept remembering how soft her smooth brown skin was and the look in her eyes as she admitted I had made her come when I bit her. My fangs were itching to sink into her flesh again and my hands wanted to explore her lush curves. Also, have I mentioned her blood was fucking delicious? It had a salty-sweet tang and it was warm, unlike the bitter, cold stuff that runs in the veins of pure-blooded Naggians.
But it wasn’t just lust or the Thirst that made me long to see her—there was something between us—a connection. I had felt it the very first moment I touched her. I know it sounds crazy, but I almost felt like I had beenmeantto meet her. I wanted to hear her sweet, melodic voice again and look into her big brown eyes. Hell, I just wantedmoreof her—I can’t put it any better than that.
So imagine my extreme fucking disappointment when I came home and found she was gone.
“I’m so sorry, Baron…” Azz’lx raised his hands, palms up in a “what can you do?” gesture. “The minute you left, she was determined to go too. Nothing I could say would persuade her to stay and wait for you. She put on all her new clothes and bolted for the lift before anyone could stop her!”
“I don’t fucking believe it,” I growled, shaking my head. “She hates the cold here—why would she go back out into it when she could stay here and be warm?”
“I really don’t know.” Azz’lx shrugged. “She said something about selling the clothing and buying what she wanted with the credit she got.” He cleared his throat delicately. “I, er,thinkshe might have been planning to buy drugs. We both know her pimp is aTskhead. Maybe she is, too.”
“She’s not a fuckingTskhead,” I growled. I was pacing in front of the fireplace in my study and Azz’lx, as usual, was staying well back from the heat of the flames. “Maybe she intended to sell the clothes and buy herself passage off-planet.”
“You know, you could be right!” Azz’lx remarked. “Now that I think of it, shedidsay something about the spaceport. Isn’t that how she came here in the first place?”
“She was brought by an Eloim merchant called Gumpas or Cumpas or something like that,” I growled. “He thought she was a La-ti-zal and when he decided she wasn’t, he left her here. She told me all about it when we were talking over breakfast.”
I looked at the chronometer on the wall and winced. Was it really nearly dinner time? Soon the Sweepers would be coming out and I would be stuck in my building until their hour was over. I couldn’t let that happen, I decided. If Natalie was at the spaceport, I needed to go track her down and beg her to stay. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were supposed to be together. I could have sworn she felt the same way, so why had she run away from me?