Dammit, the last thing he wanted to do was take Margie along. Every time he even looked at that human, all he wanted to do was take her, kiss her, and lay her in his bed—do everything he had ever learned of sex with her.

That was the problem.

He was about to have to pretend that she was his slave; whom he controlled, and not only that, she was the woman least likely to concede control, ever, but she was the woman that he wanted the most.

That would present a problem. A large one.

How was he supposed to parade her around for everyone to see while pretending he cared nothing at all for her?

“I don’t care for her,” he muttered as he strode into his hut. “I want her, yes, but that is not at all the same as caring for her. I am going soft in the head if I think I care for her. No way. She’s a giant pain in my ass most of the time. There was that time she bit a Mecalan in the face when he tried to stick his organ onto the stage by her feet. Everyone knows that race has a foot fetish and they love human feet and worship them for some reason I never figured out.

“Then there was the time she slapped a Harlender for taking a credit back when she wouldn’t smile at him. As I recall, she shouted, ‘You smile you ugly four-faced motherfucker!’ but why she would think he fucked his mother is beyond me. Their kind isn’t born of mothers; they come from eggs.”

Margie was a foul-mouthed, highly-tempered creature who just happened to have a body that drove him mad—and why wouldn’t it? She was elegantly petite and thin with a set of firm, high breasts and a swell of hips that drew his eyes and made him want to travel his hands along the dangerous curves of her skin. He wanted badly to let his fingers come to rest there between her thighs, to see if she would be wet and willing for him. And that hair, like the finest spun silken web, how it would feel tangled into his fist was something that he often found himself pondering. That smile of hers, all red lips and shining and strong white teeth, made his eyes go right to her mouth and think of kissing it until she was breathless and weak against him.

Those thoughts weren’t making it any easier for him to reconcile himself with the fact that she was the one his siblings had chosen to go along with him. He had argued until he had literally gone blue in the face, but they had pointed out that she was the best suited to it given that she had been a gurley girl, had been aboard a slaver ship, and would absolutely know how to talk to people who were held as slaves, whether willing or not.

The crux of the matter was that there was no way in the world that that woman was going to even attempt to pretend to be happy to be with him.

Of course, that could actually be a large selling point for their ploy. They left in the morning and he did not have time to think the situation through as much as he would’ve liked.

He had to go for various reasons. That gift of his would be incredibly helpful if they found somebody who might have information that they could use to discover what it was The Federation was now planning. It had to be something big. They had to move quickly, and they had to be able to decide whether or not it was worth going to war or if they should adopt a wait-and-see attitude about the current situation.

His muscles stiffened as he walked. With The Federation, there was rarely any use in adopting a wait-and-see attitude. He knew that. Even his brothers knew that. This new martial rule that they had laid down was chafing the hearts and minds of quite a few races that held their planets and systems outside of Federation role.

It was chafing quite a few under Federation rule as well.

But those most used to the yoke were usually the last to throw it off, and he knew that too well to hope that those who had been under that rule the longest would ever do anything more than mumble and grumble about the situation.

There was little to be gained by entering into The Federation at this late date. Once upon a time, The Federation had been created for good—it had been created in order to keep war at bay and to assist all citizens regardless of race or system or planetary origin in living in peace and harmony with other races and planetary systems.

But that Federation was long gone. Over the last few centuries, The Federation had existed solely as a profiteering company. They took what they wanted by either force or credit. They subjugated those who would fight against them. They destroyed those that they could not subjugate. They were violent, and they had a massive army at their back. Many of those in The Federation’s service had no love for The Federation. They did, however, have massive amounts of love for their planet, and they did not want to see that planet destroyed.

They also had a strong sense of self-preservation and didn’t want to die, the punishment for refusing that service. All living creatures had a natural instinct to do whatever it took to survive, to extend their lifespans, even his race—which had the added advantage of being some of the longest-lived beings in the universe.

The Federation was known for destroying the planets of those that rebelled against them or who refused to be a part of their ruling class.

They were known to kill any and all who refused them anything, especially if that something was something The Federation thought it was owed.

There was no way to know if the universe would simply accept this new development or rebel against it. Given the history of The Federation’s rule, and the way they had always just kept right on making things worse for the very beings they were supposed to care for, and the way that those beings just continued to allow them to govern, it was unlikely that The Federation would grow less tyrannical, ever.

That Federation had to be wiped from existence.

He had heard that centuries before, from his grandfather, then a very ancient being that had watched The Federation warily over the centuries and rather accurately predicted that they were growing in power. His grandfather had also said that when it came to something that powerful, one must not just kill it but burn the very earth it had stood upon, even if it meant giving one’s self to the fire as well in order to ensure that that thing could never grow again.

This thought stayed with him as he strode to the small hut that was now his home.

He entered slowly, all of his senses tingling as they always did. It had been so long since he had had a space that was solely his own that the strangeness of it hit him again as he settled the door closed behind his body. He looked around the one room carefully. Everything appeared to be in place, and nothing looked disturbed. He sniffed the air, letting his mouth open widely so he could taste the air on his tongue. There was no scent there, and no sign that anyone or anything had been within the room.

His sleeping pallet sat high above the floor with the aid of a platform that he had built with his own hands. There were a few small shelves on the wall that held the things that he liked the most, mainly books. There was a small wardrobe that he had also built for his clothes and a small area for bathing.

His lips twitched as he surveyed that area. Once upon a time, he had bathed in freshwater as a daily routine, but then he’d gotten used to a life aboard a ship and then in the mines. Freshwater had been either a luxury or something unknown. The cleansing units aboard ships used a combination of ionized water droplets hurled through a dispenser at high speeds and air as well as scrubbing brushes to clean whoever stepped within those chambers.

He much preferred the freshwater bathing method to that. The cleaning units, especially the ones upon ships and on pleasure planets, always held a stale, flat smell. They stunk of antiseptic and antifungals as well as water that had been used and re-filtered, not just hundreds, but probably thousands of times. His skin always felt raw and flayed after being in one of those things, which he supposed equated to feeling clean if one had no other choice but to clean themselves that way.

There was, along with the ocean, a massive amount of freshwater upon the small planet. The water did not come in rivers or in streams like he had seen on some planets. Instead, it was centered within long and clear circular pools that could go hundreds and sometimes thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface, plunging downward toward the core. Nobody knew exactly how deep they were.

Talon had used some sophisticated equipment to try to measure several of them that seemed to be the deepest and had come back baffled and shaking his head, saying only that he couldn’t measure the depth of those waterholes.

One of the humans who had worked in the Above had devised a rather ingenious system of tapping into one of the largest ones that sat right above the small city on a little crest of the hill. Small lines snaked over the land bringing the water from there to the garden section of the land as well as to the greenery house.

In addition, he had added lines underground, each one with a small branch in the tube that led water to the huts. Each line ended with a single small handle in the hut that the hose’s branching end fed into. Turning it would lose freshwater, but not much; the human who had created the system said that they needed a pump, and so far they had not yet been able to either manufacture or find one for sale.

Gravity did most of the work, but the result was a sluggish trickle of water instead of a full stream. Jeval had no problem with that. He stripped his clothes off gladly and stepped over to the small, sunken in depression of the floor that had a drain cut into it. The water used for bathing was not wasted. Instead, it ran back to a cistern where it was cleaned by a spinning filter and then used to wash clothing.

Several of the humans created wonderful smelling stuff they called soap. It smelled good, like the outdoors. It was fresh and clean and foamy when combined with the water, and he lifted a small chunk of it away from the leaf on which it sat then stepped up to the little water pipe. He flicked his wrist as he grasped the little lever and the water began to flow.

The water was chilly, but not chilly enough to take the edge off the burning desire that had gripped him during his meeting with Margie. How he could be so lust-stricken at the very sight of her was beyond him. No human had ever had that type of effect on him before. The water hit his head and then his extremities, running down toward the floor as he rubbed the soap across his wide and broad chest and then under his arms and down lower. His fingers found his swollen member, and he winced as his organ stiffened even further as he attempted to wash it.

He growled angrily at his traitorous flesh, but it stayed rigid and tense. “Dammit. The woman somehow always flusters me. This will be extremely problematic when she is with me on this mission. There must be someone else.”

The soap was silky, and it smoothed and soothed his skin. His palm, still bearing a thin skin of that soap, moved to the shaft of his cock. Pleasure rippled up along his body, spreading from the feel of his hand gripped tightly around his rigid and pulsing flesh.

His eyes closed. He could see Margie there. See her red lips pursed and wrapped around his member, see her dark hair swinging forward over her face, hiding it as she sucked hard and let her fingers go to his balls, scratching lightly at the delicate skin there.

His hips pushed forward, his ass cheeks jiggling a bit as his fist gripped his thick and long shaft more tautly and his toes curled into the floor as pleasure spiked and jolted along his body. His shaft thickened again, his organ filling with blood. Veins, heavy and blue, wrapped around that skin and the smooth and blood-swollen muscle below. Pulses of desire came in, making his teeth grit and his ass clench as he drove forward again, letting his hot and pulsing rod fill his fist while that image of Margie pleasuring him filled his mind, blotting out all else.

His sac climbed higher. The blood swept into his cock’s head, turning it a dusky-purple. Heat came off that member, making his hand work faster. The soap laid a slick and slippery trail, and his hand made a tight little tunnel, but it wasn’t enough.

He wanted her.

His seed spurted and splashed out of his body, falling like rain along the floor. He grunted, his muscles all jumping and jerking as the thick white seed came again, spilling onto his fingers and making his breath come in a hard and low gasp that turned into a throaty growl.

He shook his head to clear it.

The momentary pleasure passed quickly, and it did nothing at all to lessen his appetite for Margie.

He stood before the door to Margie’s chamber a few days later. The ship was fast and had cut through the skies toward the pleasure planet known as Moni-world far too fast for his liking.

Jeval would have liked to have put the mission, and it’s necessitating his being close to Margie, off for a few weeks. Time was something they did not have, unfortunately, so there he stood, trying to work up the nerve to knock on her door and tell her that the ship would be docking soon.

He knew that she had been angry earlier, furious over the necessity of donning the outfit that had been chosen for her to wear in order to give her more of a look of a slave. He had no doubt that she was still angry, in fact, and the last thing he wanted to do was face either her temper or the sight of her in that costume.

Before he could raise his hand to knock, the door slid open. His mouth dropped open. Margie stood there, a sullen glower on her face, which she had made up cleverly with cosmetics. Her lips were colored to the rubiest red he had ever seen. Thick black liner accented her long eyelids and lifted them slightly at the corners, giving her a more exotic look. She had done something to her eyelashes to make them look thicker and longer as well, and the overall effect was devastating. She had fixed up her silky hair to make it wave and curl around her face before pinning it up high on the back of her long and milky neck.

And that outfit!

It was all the typical things seen on most sex slaves. But by all of the gods of the old worlds… His organ gave such a heavy throb that he had to step back and turn slightly sideways. He wasn’t even sure if that would help. His prick was sticking out, pulsing like a weapon cocked and ready and the blood had hit there so hard he was pretty sure he was never going to be able to think at all.

To make matters worse, and yes, there was a worse it seemed when it came to his body betraying him, his heart hammered hard into his ribs and his breath stilled in his throat as he stared at her.

She wore a top that barely covered her breasts, but which held them up high in the air. He knew it was some sort of sly and cunning contraption made of wire and fabric, but at that moment, he was sure that top was made out of absolute lust and temptation.

Her bare midriff drew his eyes. Her flat stomach and cute little naval glimmered from the oil she had applied to her skin. The shape of her hips drew his eyes and made his fingers itch with the longing to grip her there, pull her to him so that he could tilt her pelvis into his and feel her lower body against that throbbing girth in his trousers.

She wore a billowy, diaphanous set of gurley girl pants. They were transparent enough for him to see every line and angle of her legs and just thick enough to disguise her crotch with a little assistance from the small band of fabric that she wore within like underwear.

She said, “I still don’t see why you couldn’t have been the slave. This is utter—”

He spoke hastily, “There’s no time to argue. The ship’s docking. I know you understand how grave a mission this is, but I must demand, right now, that you behave with some subservience.”

Her jet-hued left eyebrow rose upward. Her lips pursed. A gleam hit her eyes, and he was not at all sure he liked the looks of it. He had seen her go after a being that pissed her off already, and he knew she could be as cunning and vicious as a little raptor-bird when she chose to be. He also knew she had a bad habit of kicking males in their most tender anatomy. “Oh really?”

His hands rested on his waist. His cock throbbed, and his pulse raced higher. He had to search for words, but he finally found them. “Yes. Listen to me. Here, slaves who misbehave are seen as things that need to be broken. I do not want to have to explain why I have not yet broken you and I damn sure don’t want to have to publicly break you; do you understand?”

The pout left her mouth. Her face took on a worried expression. He felt a pang of sympathy for her, but he quickly quelled it. The words he had said to her were true. One wrong move and they would both be caught up in a system that demanded that unbroken slaves be broken and that if the one who owned them could not break them, that the slave be given over to those who could.

She must’ve read all of that on his face because fear struck its way across her expression. She asked, “What the hell did you get me into?”

He said, “Don’t blame me. You were the last person I wanted to take along.”

She smiled suddenly. The sight of that smile, so wide and white and utterly lovely, took his breath away, making it hard for him to think. She said, “I feel the same about you.”

He regarded her. There was no love lost between them. She had disliked being forced into a position in the gambling and dance hall that he and his brothers owned. She felt that since they had wrecked the ship that she had been on through no fault of her own, and taken her hostage through no fault of her own, that the very least they could do is release her into the world unburdened by debt.

The world didn’t work that way.

Still, there was a part of him that wished that they didn’t dislike each other so intensely. Or rather, that she didn’t dislike him so intensely. The truth of the matter was that he was highly attracted to her, whether he wanted to be or not, and while he found her irritating, he also found her quite amusing. She was quick-witted and very intelligent; she could grasp the situation quickly and act appropriately. He had seen her do it before and he knew she could do it now.

All those things just made her even more attractive to him. He had to remind himself again that he was not meant to mate. That the gift that had been bestowed upon him was so powerful that passing it on would be a terrible thing. Most children born with that gift died, their little frail bodies unable to withstand that gift.

His mother had fully expected him to die, as had every elder of their race. They had hovered over his crib for weeks, just waiting for the gift to take him. That gift was the one that he never spoke of because it was so powerful and so violent that just mentioning it frightened both him and his siblings.

He had rarely had cause to use it. He had used it in the mines. When a particularly brutal overseer had decided to beat Renall to death after Renall had lied and claimed that he was the one who had stolen an extra portion of that miserable slop that passed for food, Jeval had had to use that gift or lose the brother he held so dear.

His siblings and the few other crew members that had been sold to the mines with them had been so horrified by what that gift had been able to do that they had made him take a blood vow to never use it again—unless the circumstances came down to his own life or death.

So far, he had always kept that vow.

Even in the heat of the greatest battle, he had remembered how horrible what had happened had been, and he had not used that gift, surviving by skill and wit and luck instead.

He also had not mated with any creature capable of reproduction. Mating with any race capable of reproduction, of procreation, would mean potentially passing on that black and cursed gift.

He could not watch a child he created die. He would not watch a child he had helped create die.

There had been another one with him, a twin. A child nobody spoke of. It was as if that child had never existed. A beautiful little girl they said, with eyes of pure silver and skin the same color, with the blue tracing the vein that bespoke royalty already growing in her temples. She had died, and he had lived. He was no prince. If he had been, he would never have withstood the dark gift.

The Elders said that had that child lived, she would have been their Oracle, one born to replace the aged and withered Oracle who had served her race for so long and so well.

But she had not been born.

He gulped a little, setting those feelings aside. He said, “Come on, we need to get to the Hall.”

She gave him a sardonic smile then ducked her head and said, in a meek and little voice, “Yes, Master, as you wish. But when this is over, someone owes me something, and it better be a big something too.”