KIVIAN

It’s good for me that Jth’Hnai pays his guards so cheaply. If they were decent mercenaries, they’d have already disarmed me and splattered my brains all over the gaudy carpets of the room. As it is, they’re just looking to their boss for direction, and he’s not giving them any.

Works for me.

I give another gentle tug to the human female’s chains, doing my best not to harm her. “Go and open the door, little one.” I keep my gaze focused on Jth’Hnai, because I don’t trust him not to worm his way out of this. He didn’t get to be a rich ooli by playing by the rules, after all. “Do me a favor and have your men move to your side,” I tell the idiot I’m robbing. “So I can watch all of you.”

Jth’Hnai scowls at me and then flicks a hand at his men, indicating that they should join him. Just as I suspected. Cheap labor. It makes things so very easy it’s practically criminal.

Oh wait. It is criminal. Oh well.

I wait patiently for the men to get next to their leader, and then I toss cuffs at the first one. “You know what to do.”

He doesn’t seem all that concerned, cuffing his buddy and then his employer before slapping the final pair on his own wrists and waiting for them to auto-link.

I give my blaster a little circle. “Now turn around, facing the wall.” When they do, I look over at my female, who’s watching me with narrowed eyes. She still hasn’t moved from the bed. “Come, little one,” I entice her. “We’re going to have a hard time escaping with their loot if you don’t start the getaway.”

She looks surprised, then scoots to the edge of the bed and gets to her feet. “You’re…taking me with you?”

Jth’Hnai makes an angry sound, but I ignore him. He no longer matters. “I’m afraid no one’s going anywhere very fast if you don’t open that door, my sweet.” I gesture at the entrance to the room, still locked and still preventing my crew from entering.

The female nods slowly, dark eyes wide. “And you won’t leave me here?” She glances over at the ooli. “With them?”

“I’d sooner shoot myself in the groin.”

Jth’Hnai snarls. “Save that pleasure for me.” He doesn’t turn around, though. Coward. He’s all talk and nothing more, just like I figured.

My little human gives me one last wary look and then moves to the door of the apartment. She studies the panel and then looks at me helplessly. I have to coach her through how to input the sequence to open it, but a moment later the doors open and both Sentorr and Tarekh enter, armed with their own weapons. The female skitters back a foot or two, casting an uncertain look in my direction.

“About time,” I chide Tarekh and Sentorr. “Where’s Alyvos?”

“With the ship.” Tarekh tells me. They muscle in, casting a brief look at the female. “What’s with the change in plans?” the medic asks, clearly in a bad mood. “We’ve been waiting on your ass for a good ten minutes to get back to the dock.”

“I was busy wooing my female. Is everything loaded?” I avoid answering his question and move forward, nudging the ooli and his guards into the water closet. Jth’Hnai doesn’t seem all that eager to go inside, but once Tarekh’s massive bulk—massive even for a mesakkah—looms over them, they march inside without complaint.

We strip them of any sort of communicators, look for weapons, and then lock them into the water closet. Tarekh shoots a blast into the control panel, locking the door and preventing them from coming out for quite some time.

I turn to see that Sentorr has the neck chain of my little human female, holding her hostage once more. Her arms are crossed over her breasts, and she shivers, looking worried and scared, her face pale. “What do you want to do with this one?”

For some reason, the sight of him holding her chain fills me with an irrational flash of jealousy. Fighting the possessiveness surging through me, I force myself to walk calmly to her side and take the chain from him. He doesn’t know that she’s mine, so there’s no need to grab him by the throat and choke the life out of him. “I’m taking all of Jth’Hnai’s wealth,” I tell the others. “And that includes her.”

Tarekh makes a frustrated sound as he rejoins us. “What are we going to do with a thing like that? They’re illegal.”

“So is stealing crystal, but I didn’t hear anyone complaining about that,” I tell them lightly, and then touch my fingertips to the human’s delicate chin. “Look up, please.”

She scowls at me but does as she’s told, and I attach an override key to her collar. A moment later, it falls from her neck, revealing the stark bruises that have been left behind. I make a low growl in my throat at the sight, and the urge to go back into the water closet and blast Jth’Hnai’s slimy head off grows. Instead, I toss the chain to the floor. “You’re free.”

The human blinks at me in surprise, and she doesn’t move when I do the same for her wrist-cuffs. Even after the metal clanks to the ground, she rubs her wrists and just watches me.

“Do you want to come with us?” I ask her.

Sentorr makes a noise of protest. I know what he wants to say. We’re wasting time.

I ignore him, focusing on her.

She just gazes at the water closet, where Jth’Hnai and his men are trapped, then glances back at me. “What are my options?”

“Time to go,” Tarekh says impatiently.

I pay no attention. He can wait a moment. She’s more important. “You can stay here,” I answer her. “But not many will help you. Even if I gave you clothing and money, a human is considered contraband. Others would immediately try to take you for their own and you might end up with a worse master than before.”

“Will you take me back home?” she asks. “To Earth?”

“If I tell you the truth, little one, I must say no.” It pains me to tell her the truth, but even my innocuous ship cannot get anywhere near that star system without risk.

She sighs. “Well, at least you’re honest. All right, I’m coming with you.” She points a finger at me. “No rape.”

I’m amused at how she’s making demands, despite the fact that she’s clearly not the one in power in this situation. Fierce little one. I love that. “If I wanted to rape you, my sweet, would I have not done so already?”

“Not if your little Kivian doesn’t like a show,” she retorts.

I burst into laughter. So she caught that, did she?

Sentorr just gestures at the door. “If we’re all done here, can we please go before the station security is alerted to our actions?”

I nod and put a hand on the human’s back. “Come. Stay close to me.”

She automatically moves closer, and her hand goes to my belt, as if she needs to latch on out of fear of being left behind. It fills me with a near-unholy sense of pleasure.

“Is that your name?” she whispers a moment later. “Kivian?”

“Sav Kivian Bakhtavis,” I tell her with a playful grin. “At your service. And now, it’s time for us to go.”

FRAN

The unreality of the situation keeps growing. I keep expecting to wake up and find this all to be a dream. Or only half a dream, and I’ll wake back up in the cage with someone throwing “human feed” at me like I’m a pet chicken.

Instead of being the slave of frog-men, I’m…free? I think.

And instead of being surrounded by frog-men, I’m with big blue guys with horns that look a bit like I imagine the devil might look if he decided to be a space alien.

It’s all so bizarre.

“This is The Dancing Fool,” Kivian tells me as he leads me out of the narrow passageway and onto the dimly lit deck of what must be his ship. There’s dark metal and lit-up components everywhere, and all of it looks smooth and important and I’m afraid to touch anything. “She’s my ship, and she’ll be your home for the next while.”

“Dancing Fool, huh?” I rub my arms and hug them, because not only is it a little chilly and I’m wearing less than a diaper, but it helps keep my tits covered. “Doesn’t sound very pirate-y.”

“And that is exactly the point,” Kivian replies with an irrepressible grin. He immediately starts to strip off the layers of his ornately embellished clothing, like any man that’s just been given reprieve from going to a fancy dress party. “No one is going to stop a ship called something so ridiculous and assume they’re up to nefarious deeds.”

The other two aliens busy themselves removing their guns and then move past us, heading down the hall.

“Come,” Kivian tells me after he loosens the tight fabric at his neck and removes a layer of clothing. “Let’s get to the bridge so we can get out of here.”

“Wait,” I tell him as he moves past me. “Can I have a shirt? Or something I can wear to cover up?”

He turns to me and rubs his jaw. “Of course. I don’t suppose you run around in little more than a scarf on your home world, do you? I’ve heard humans are primitive, but I imagine that’s a bit more than primitive.”

“Yeah, sorry, I must have left my stone tools at home back in my cave,” I tell him sarcastically. “Can I have a shirt or not?”

Kivian watches me for a long moment, and my skin prickles. Maybe I’m being too lippy with him and he’s going to punish me. A slow grin spreads across his face, and then he shakes his head. “It seems I’m good at charming everyone but you.” He opens his shirt, undoing complicated fastenings with the blink of an eye, and then shrugs it off.

My body prickles with alarm, wondering if this is when the rape happens. I step back warily, but he only holds the shirt out to me. Oh.

“I’m not going to touch you without your permission,” he says in that calm, smooth voice. “When I said you were safe with me, I meant it. I won’t harm you, and neither will my crew.”

I study his face, wondering if this is a trick. If he’s fooling me like he fooled the frog-guys. But I see nothing but calm confidence in his expression. It takes me a moment to realize his words aren’t being filtered in through the ear piece. “You…you speak English?” I take the shirt from him and wrap it around my body, shoving my arms through the sleeves. It’s like wearing a blanket because he’s so large compared to most human guys, but I don’t mind. It’s warm and it covers everything, and that’s all that counts.

Kivian moves forward, all bare skin. I notice for the first time that he’s got a few old scars on his chest, white against the blue hue of his skin. Along one arm, dark black tattoos dance up his muscles in fascinatingly foreign patterns. He’s impressively built, and not just because he’s seven feet tall. It’s clear he works out. It’s also clear that the “armor” I thought I felt under his clothes was actually on his skin. He has hard ridges along shoulder and arm and across the center of his chest. He reaches for the front of the shirt and begins to move his fingers along the complicated knotwork of the ties, doing them up for me like I’m a child. Three fingers and a thumb, I notice. Just another bit of alienness.

Funny, because he’s the first guy that’s treated me like a person since I woke up a slave.

“I had my chip download your language the moment I saw you,” he says. “Thought it might be easier to communicate.”

“Chip?”

He taps one big finger against the back of his ear. “Language implant. They’re common these days, just like anti-virus implants and the like. Yours is…cheap. Effective but cheap and uncomfortable.”

I touch my ear, where the big bulb rubs against my skin. He’s not wrong.

“Come,” he says, finishing the ties on my shirt. “Time to go to the bridge before the others wonder if I’ve dragged you to my bunk.” Kivian gives me another flirty, easy grin and then turns, heading down the hall after the others and treating me to a show of upper-back plating, lower-back dimples, and a swish of his tail.

All right, then. I can go and find a shadowy spot to hide like a coward, or I can suck it up and go hang out on the bridge. Much as I want to hide—or sleep, sleep would be nice—I force myself to follow him down the passageway. His shirt’s so big that it brushes against my knees and the sleeves bury my hands. I shove them up my arms and then roll them up as I walk, trying to absorb everything about where I’m at.

I hate to say it, but the entire thing looks like it could have come out of a Star Trek episode or a space movie. I wonder if that’s coincidence, or if someone in Hollywood’s been visited by aliens himself. There are all kinds of panels on the walls—some dim and blank, some lit up with graphs and images and lights. There’s something that looks like a keyboard with a lot fewer keys, and Kivian moves his hand over it—not touching it—to open a door. The floor underneath my feet is cool and feels like ridged metal, and as we go inside the bridge of the ship, I see several workstations with big chairs, all of them occupied except the central one that clearly must belong to Kivian.

One of the big blue aliens turns and glares at us. His head is shaven, making his horns seem almost as prominent as the hawkish nose on his face. “About time.” His gaze flicks to me. “It’s bad luck to have pets on a ship, Bakhtavis.”

“She’s not a pet,” Kivian says easily. “She’s our guest.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and leads me forward. “Come sit in my chair. You can belt in so you’re safe on take-off.”

Well, that’s a welcome change from how Froggy treated me. I perch on the edge of his chair, feeling dwarfed by its great size. “What about you?”

He shrugs his big shoulders, moving forward to tap a button that makes straps spit out and conform to my body. “Do me good to get pitched around now and then.”

“So, wait. We’re keeping the human?” The shaved-head one frowns in my direction. “I thought we were just going after lethiul crystal?”

“Kivian found something else he wanted,” the biggest of the aliens says.

Someone groans.

“All of you, silence.” Kivian doesn’t sound irritated but amused. “Just tell me if you were able to swing the crystal while I was busy distracting our ooli friends.”

“Got the shipment…and a bit more, but not too much more. It’s not all that the kaskri asked for,” says one of the men.

“It’ll have to do. We’re leaving.” Kivian grins at me and grips the arm of the chair. “Hold on tight, little one.”

Hold on? Why?

“Surging,” one of the aliens says, and that’s the only warning I get before we shoot forward like a slingshot into outer space.