Chapter Ten
I don’t think I’ve ever woken up in so much pain in my life; I also don’t think this much pain ever felt so good. My body is sore all over; my ass and pussy throb, every movement causing fresh aches to flare. Yet, it’s a reminder of the most impossibly mind-blowing orgasms I’ve ever had.
I don’t feel as though I’ve slept for more than a couple of hours; I go to look at my phone to check the time, but it’s gone. What time is it? What day is it? Where am I? I have no idea.
Coming to my senses, I shoot up out of bed. I’m in my tiny room again, alone. I don’t remember how I got here—Kest, I’m sure.
Can the nanites tell me where he is? Maybe not. I’m not sure how to even control them, or if they can be controlled.
“Where’s Kest?” I ask, out loud.
No response.
“Call Kest.”
Nothing.
For fuck’s sake.
I slide off the bed, wanting to get dressed, but the motion awakens seemingly every source of pain in my body at once. This time, it’s more than I’d like to feel.
And just like that, the pain fades away, extinguished like a bucket of water dumped on a campfire.
Wow.
It had to be the nanites.
That shit really works!
However, though I’m glad for their aid, I still wish Kest had told me about having to have the nanites. All I have is his word that they’re not affecting me in other more sinister ways. How do I really know they’re not turning me into a robotic, sex-craved freak? Before last night I’d never had my ass penetrated like that—is it weird that I enjoyed it so much? Or were the nanites telling my brain to like it? How am I supposed to know what’s real?
Goddamnit, Kest. This wasn’t part of the deal!
Finding a singlet like the one I wore earlier—maybe even the same one—I get dressed. The planet looms out my window, but it doesn’t bring me the comfort it did before, and soon I begin to long for something else to do.
I nearly shriek when a hologram fades into existence in front of me.
Freaking nanites!
Several lines of text hang in the air—a list of options. It’s written in an alien alphabet, but now I understand the language.
Of course. Because that’s not totally fucked up.
I don’t know how Kest and the others do it. One second, a language is complete gibberish—the next, you’re fluent, like you’ve spoken it all your life. I’ve seen the idea of downloading knowledge in movies and on TV, but it’s something else to experience.
From the list of options, I find the search function and try to look up Earth. A hologram of the planet appears in my chamber, and through a series of hand gestures (also learned via nanite) I can zoom in on specific locations, or travel the whole world in moments as easily as spinning a globe. I turn the world until I reach the Golden Gate Bridge; I’ve never visited San Francisco, and now it looks like I never will. Then I cross the Pacific and see the Sydney Opera House. I fly north to Tokyo, then west to China’s Great Wall.
For more than an hour I examine my home. The irony of seeing Earth from a space station on the other end of the galaxy is not lost on me. If I’d known I’d be abducted by an alien, I would have taken more vacation days and left Manhattan more often.
When Kest arrives, I’m staring at my old apartment building, wishing I could lie in my bed and watch Friends reruns while eating the raspberry toaster strudels I always kept stocked.
“Hi, Haley,” he says happily. His face falls when I turn to him, a mess of resentment and homesickness. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not. I want the nanites out, now.”
Kest shakes his head. “I can’t. You’re going to need them for further testing.”
I snort. “Yeah? Well, from now on I’m not doing anything unless you’ve told me about it in advance. And no beaming it into my fucking brain unless I say so. I want you to talk to me with fucking words.”
Moving like a demon possessed, Kest strides across the room and practically pounces on me. In a moment I’m pinned against his body and wrapped in his arms. “Is that all, your highness?” he whispers in my ear.
“If I think of anything else, I’ll tell you,” I snap, despite my trembling. He’s so strong, his arms feel like iron bars.
He grunts a laugh. “You’re lucky I care about you, pet. Not every Dominar is as patient as me. You think the keera stick hurts? I can show you the Yckjer clamps.”
Did I know what Yckjer clamps were a second ago, before he mentioned them? Not sure. I do now, though, and I wish I didn’t.
“Just tell me about the next stage of the testing.”
Kest laughs, sitting down on my bed and pulling me up onto his knee. “The next stage, my terribly misbehaving human, is forging a meaningful master/slave bond.”
Oh. Great.
“What makes you think that’s still possible?” I ask. “What made you think it was ever possible?” Does he think I’m going to succumb to Stockholm syndrome?
“Haley, I don’t need any nanites to see the way you react to being dominated, to having your ass spanked raw and your holes filled. The way you scream and shake is like nothing I have ever seen, and I’ve been to more worlds than you can count.”
Before I can say anything, he turns me over, laying me across his lap. He tears my singlet apart, exposing my ass, and swats my cheeks a few times.
Wriggling against his grasp gets me nowhere; neither does kicking my feet or yelling a stream of flowing invective. He keeps spanking me until I stop, which takes a while, because my instinct is to fight until I’m too exhausted to resist. By the end, my ass feels like an ember stoked by a steady breeze, and my throat is raw. Betraying me completely, my pussy throbs, wet and hungry.
“You can forget it,” I protest unconvincingly. “I’ll never be your slave.”
Kest sighs, caressing my punished cheeks. “You’re going to be somebody’s slave, Haley. You’d rather belong to Bakan?”
The thought makes my skin crawl, I admit.
“And that’s assuming the Council opts to grant our one and only human to a single Dominar. They might just make you available for use to whomever asks.”
“You people do that?” I ask, shivering.
“Not often, no. But sometimes, if no one can make a lasting claim on a particularly disobedient slave, special arrangements are made. It’s either that, or sending the slave to a prison planet.”
He’s messing with me. He has to be. How could they be so cruel?
“Is that what you want, pet?”
“No,” I mumble.
“Then you best behave,” Kest growls in my ear. “Now get up, and fix your clothes.”
I slip off his lap and turn to look at my torn singlet. “Fix it? How?”
By the time I’m finished asking, the cloth has already finished knitting itself together in front of my eyes. In seconds, there’s no evidence it was ever ripped.
“You’ll get used to things like that,” says Kest. “You’ll see. Now, come along.”
He leads me to the tram, which takes us to the docking bay. I feel surprisingly happy to see his ship, as plain as it is. We board, and in minutes he’s piloting the craft away from the station, toward the planet.
Despite my lingering anger at Kest, I can’t help getting excited as we enter the world’s atmosphere. Since I’m not bound like the last time I was on his ship, I stand next to him at the cockpit, staring out the window. As beautiful as the planet looked from space, it’s even more gorgeous up close.
“Welcome to Ohalessa, Haley.”
We fly over a continent full of lush forests, the craft low enough that I can take in some of the plant and animal life, which is both alien and beautiful. Eventually the land transitions into a majestic, snow-capped mountain range. The ship even has to climb in altitude to not hit the peaks.
Lost in the beauty, I don’t notice Kest flying us lower until we’re weaving through the high summits, moving so fast I think we’ll crash. Flinching violently, I nearly fall over myself. Kest laughs, but then apologizes.
“That was mean. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
I punch his shoulder as hard as I can; from his reaction, I think it hurt me more than him. “You’re an asshole,” I mutter.
“I’ll make it up to you, pet. I promise.”
Kest lands the ship on a flattened mountaintop. The sun is going down, tinting the sky peach, with scarlet streaks of cloud in the upper atmosphere. When we step outside, cool air hits me in a rush. I breathe in deeply, enjoying an exotic aroma that reminds me of sweet mesquite.
Fuck me, this is an alien planet.
“This world is safe for me?” I ask, though I’m already sure it is, or we wouldn’t be here.
“Yes. There are some dangerous animals, but only in certain areas. There’s no microscopic organisms that will make you sick, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good.” As annoyed as I am at my captor, the view off the side of the mountain is breathtaking.
Kest takes my hand. “Come, pet. I owe you some explanation.”
I let him lead me to a tall wooden bench that looks organically grown, rather than carved. A breeze kicks up, but my thin singlet keeps me surprisingly warm. When we sit, my feet don’t reach the ground; I’d never thought of myself as short before, but I am, compared to the Dominars.
“What year were you born, Haley?” he asks.
“Uhh, 1991. Why?”
Kest grins, shaking his head. “You’re so young. You’ve seen so little. Haley, I’ve been to hundreds of worlds. I’ve watched societies rise and fall. I don’t expect you to understand life the way I do, but I hope you’ll believe that I mean well for you, and for humanity.”
“Why?” I say. “If you’ve been to so many places and seen so much, what makes Earth so special?”
He shrugs. “Every world is unique, Haley. Each one has something to offer my people—that’s why we… why we visit them.”
Did he just pause? Was he going to say something else?
“And I like Earth because it became my home for a long time. I arrived in 1925. It was a fun period to be exploring a young species; the music and fashion, art and culture. But then came the Great Depression and, later, World War II. That was when I filed my first report on humanity, which was scarily similar to the one I made days ago. To report back after only twenty years… it’s unheard of in my field. Yet, humanity seemed on the verge of annihilating itself. I had to act.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Sighing, Kest looks out into indigo tones of the darkening sky. “My recommendation in 1945 was the same then as it is now: an immediate invasion. Back then, it was dismissed. Humans were deemed far too primitive for an incursion. They hardly knew about electronics and computers, let alone aliens and space; the shock would have been too great. And, more importantly, they were too barbaric to warrant saving. Nuclear weapons? Genocide? There were times I agreed with the Council. They recommended I move on to another world, but I decided to stay, hoping Earth would recover. It did, vindicating my position, but also obviating the need for an invasion. So I kept waiting… Waiting, once more, until I couldn’t.”
A tear rolls down my cheek, unbidden. I’m not sure why his story saddens me; it’s overwhelming, in a way. Back home, people are going about their lives, and have no idea that everything might be about to change if the Dominars invade. And a lot of that, somehow, depends on me. It’s too much responsibility. It’s not fair.
“Haley, I took you to this particular spot because it’s one of my favorites in the entire galaxy. As it happens, it also reminds me of Earth. I lived there for almost one hundred years, and I fell in love with it. I’ll do what I have to in order to protect it, even if that means helping conquer it.”
Kest pulls me onto his lap and hugs me close against his chest. We watch the sun sink beneath the peaks, night falling on Ohalessa.