I didn’t want to be responsible for forcing some poor girl into disgrace and abject poverty just to get my dick wet.
But it wasn’t just that consideration that kept me from fully utilizing any Blood Bride I happened to hire—it was the look in their eyes when they saw me and understood it was a half-bloodhsh’fruxthey were expected to service. I’d had some break into actual tears at the prospect of me even touching them—those I had to send away—it’s not in me to take an unwilling female, not even just for a bite to get a little sip of blood.
But even when a girl was calm, I could see the look of coldness in her eyes—the barely concealed revulsion when she bared her wrist or throat for my fangs. None of them reallywantedto be there—even if Iwasthe richest son-of-a-bitch on the whole fucking planet. So I always promised I would only take blood—no fuck and suck for me—I was strictly a suck only customer.
But I’m a purple-blooded male with needs, after all. I usually got them met when I traveled to my father’s home world. Braxian whores are different from Naggian ones—alotdifferent. They’re almost as brawny as Braxian males are for one thing and they like to get rough for another. Making love to a Braxian female is more akin to a wrestling match than the cold, sepulchral sex they practice on O’nagga Nine.
What I wanted—what I fuckinglonged for—was something in between. I wished I could find a willing female who didn’t recoil from the sight of me, but who also didn’t immediately want to tussle. I wanted a female I could take my time with—one who wanted me as badly as I wanted her.
But it didn’t look like I was ever going to find someone who fit that description—at least not while I was strictly dividing my time between O’nagga Nine and my father’s home world.
“Well, I suppose I could have a bite before I go home,” Azz’lx said, interrupting my thoughts.
“She’s in the other room,” I repeated. “Just don’t keep her too long. Once the Sweepers are finished, she’s supposed to go right back to her Madam.”
If I kept the girl overnight, it would be automatically assumed that I’d had her sexually and she would be ruined.
“Very well—I’ll make it quick,” Azz’lx said. “Thank you.” He turned to go and then turned back again. “Don’t worry about that little Blood Whore, all right?” he said. “I’ll take care of her first thing in the morning.”
“All right.” I nodded neutrally. But as he finally left, I had to admit I was more intrigued than ever.
I wanted to go see the littlehsh’fruxfemale who had somehow gotten hold of my sigil and was bold enough to use it without my permission.
THREE
NATALIE
My pimp, R’xs was waiting for me to come out of my hole the next morning, but I didn’t know that as I puttered around the tiny space I rented by the month.
The hole was kind of like a really shitty studio apartment—if the apartment was a cave with walls and a floor and ceiling made of rock-hard, ice-cold dirt. I had done my best to dress it up a bit, but my money was severely limited. I couldn’t afford to spend a lot on home décor when I was worried about making the rent and getting enough to eat. Still, I had scavenged a few things here and there and sometimes another Blood Whore would give me something she didn’t want anymore.
The door to the hole was a round metal one set into the side of one of the lesser tunnels. After coming though the door, (you had to duck your head to get in) you went down three steps and found yourself in my tiny living space which was a single room. The space was mostly filled with a bed, which had no frame. It didn’t have a box springs, either—it was basically just a lumpy, smelly, used mattress stuffed with prickly, dirty hay.
As ugly as the mattress was, I considered myself lucky to have it. The entire first month I’d been on O’nagga Nine, I had slept on the bare floor, which was like sleeping on rock-hard ice. Then one of the other Blood Whores had gotten lucky with a client who really liked her and wanted to spend more time with her. Since he had a wife, that wasn’t possible unless they spent time in her hole. So he bought her a nice new mattress and I got her old one.
I had covered the mattress with some faded quilts and lumpy pillows I had scavenged from the Naggian equivalent of the dump. It’s a large ice cavern where everything nobody wants is sent to be sorted and stored until the two short warmer months when some of the snow melts and they can drive it off to a landfill somewhere or else burn it. You can find a lot of good things there—I had gotten the wobbly nightstand, a crooked lamp with a tattered shade, and a two-burner hotplate where one of the burners was still functional, at the same place.
The problem with going to the dump is the amount of time it takes to get there—walking through what feels like miles of underground tunnels—and the fact that you have to lug whatever you find all the way back home again. It was difficult to justify spending a whole day I could have been working going on a dumpster diving expedition just to make my horrible little hole a bit nicer.
Still, I tried to make the trip at least once a month—it was the only kind of retail therapy I could afford now. Plus, it always made me feel marginally better to find something I needed or could use to brighten up my dark little world. Call it a mental health day.
Anyway, back to my hole. Across from the bed is the “necessary chair”—the only piece of furniture the hole actually came with. It’s basically a wooden commode with a hole cut in the seat. Mine was covered with a neatly fitted chair cover I’d also found at the dump, which disguised its true purpose.
I’d also had to scavenge a heavy, flat piece of wood to fit over the round hole in the middle of the chair. Moving it in the middle of the night if I had to pee was a pain, but it served several purposes. First, it kept the terrible smell of the sewage system that ran below from filling my little space. And second, it kept out thenarchers—which were the Naggian equivalent of rats. Only these were the size of small cats and they had weirdly mutated-looking heads with two sets of eyes and two mouths—one right beside the other. Basically they looked like an animal that was supposed to be twins but had stopped dividing at the head, if that makes any sense.
The first time I saw one of these monstrosities poking its horrible double-faced head out of the necessary chair, I screamed so loudly the girl in the hole next to me came banging on my door to see if I was being murdered. When she found out it was just anarcherin the toilet,she was disgusted at my weakness—but that awful double-head and those four beady red eyes really scared the hell out of me! I guess the mutation allowed them to eat with one mouth and bite and fight whoever was trying to steal their food with the other—I don’t know. I was getting my PhD is Sociology, not Biology before I got abducted.
Needless to say, the idea that a horrible, mutated rat thing could bite my ass at any time I was using the toilet kept my bathroom trips to a minimum. I waited until I was nearly bursting before I went and I always threw a few small stones down the hole first, hoping to frighten off anything that might be waiting down in the darkness before I sat down.
Beside the necessary chair was a rickety counter space which folded out from the wall. This was where I kept my hotplate with its single functional burner and my limited supply of water in a large plasti-glass jug. Because of course there was no running water on most of O’nagga Nine—it would freeze in the pipes immediately—so indoor plumbing was only for the rich. Which meant there was no way to take a proper shower.
One of the Blood Whores down the tunnel from me had a larger “deluxe” hole that included an ion shower. I could usually pay her a cred chip to use it once or twice a week, as long as I happened to catch her when she didn’t have a client with her. It got me clean but I never felt really refreshed, the way you do after an actual water shower.
On a shelf above the hotplate and water bottle was my meager pantry, which at the moment was bare, since I hadn’t had the time or the money to do a grocery run, down to the little bodega-type store that serviced my tunnel. However, even when it was full, it mostly consisted of the Naggian equivalent of instant ramen.
Only instead of nice, springy noodles, the pasta the packets contained were brown and flat and brittle. They tasted like some kind of whole grain like buckwheat with a bitter aftertaste and they fell apart the minute you added hot water to them.
Still, the noodles were cheap—almost as cheap as the tubes of nutritional paste, which were my main form of nourishment—and they came in a variety of flavors. I had tried almost all of them by now and knew which ones I liked—and which ones to avoid.