Once the ship cleared human-patrolled airspace, it shifted smoothly from a leisurely stroll to a lightning-fast slingshot through the galaxy. The trip would take approximately two more weeks according to primers on current Yadeshi technology. During that time, Gayle would be out of contact with her parents; at that speed, there was no way for an intergalactic call to get a fix on a satellite. Gayle was fine with that. She’d been with her parents for over twenty-five years. A few years away from them would do the entire family good.

She snagged Mila for a workout, signing them both up for a training session later with the other YETI students who were traveling to posts. Because the women traveled as spouses, they weren’t required to train, though it was encouraged.

“Ithann promised to beat my ass into gear when we get to Yedahn,” Gayle said.

Mila grimaced. “You know he means that literally, right? It’s so weird. Jaron freaks out if he even bumps into me.”

“Ahhh… Ithann’s nerves aren’t quite that delicate.” She shuddered, recalling their last bedroom session. He’d done things to her that drained the blood from her cheeks even as her body throbbed in hungry anticipation for more.

After their workout, they showered and chose a cafe to sit and watch foot traffic. The ship had rendezvoused with a smaller vessel at a point in space, picking up several passengers, including a group of school-aged children on the equivalent of their senior year trip. Gayle and Mila watched the group of Yadeshi teens with amusement when a lift belched a group of ten, with their chaperone, onto the shopping level.

The women observed. The teenagers were quieter, but they moved faster. Their expressions were livelier than the Yadeshi adults Gayle was used to being around, and their eyes continuously scanned their surroundings, soaking everything in.

“They aren’t quite like human teenagers, are they?” Mila asked.

Gayle grinned, enjoying the dubious, sidelong looks a pair of girls gave a passing human couple. “They appear to be more devious.”

The group of blue-skinned youths strolled alongside their instructor in a casual, double-file line, hands clasped behind their backs. With all the appearance of innocence.

But the two women watched as one tall teen, hair short and spiky, waited until the instructor’s back was turned and then withdrew a small, gray ball from his vest, almost like a lump of clay. The girl next to him gave him a quick elbow, her eyes scanning the shopping area.

So, she was the scout.

Gayle made certain her gaze was averted so the teenagers would feel comfortable to pull off whatever prank they were about to entertain the entire deck with.

“What do you think it is?” Mila asked, voice low. Yadeshi had sharp ears. No reason to assume the same wasn’t true for their youth.

“Probably something loud, smelly or flashy.”

“Should we observe inside a shop?”

“Don’t be a wuss.”

Mila sighed, patting her wavy hair. “I like this style. I hope I don’t have to wash anything out of it.”

The boy flexed his hand, and the ball of clay shot up into the air, morphing as it did into a beach ball-sized sphere of translucent material. It promptly flickered, then blared into a chorus of raucous, heavy metal-type music, twirling maniacally while flashing several different colors like a strobe light on steroids.

The chaperone stopped short, turned, and looked up, her face impassive, hands clasped behind her back. Gayle assumed there was nothing to be done but let the—toy? weird alien firework?—run its course.

The other students giggled, a few urging each other while others rolled their eyes. Gayle watched one boy, though, who slowly backed away from the group, his face white. Eyes darting from side to side. No one else watched him and Gayle knew the kid was about to make a run for it.

“Just a minute,” she told Mila and rose, calculating the boy’s trajectory and with casual swiftness shadowing his movements until she intercepted him.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to leave the group, right?” she asked him.

He was about her height, and lean, but a softness to his face told Gayle he was a younger teenager.

The boy made an aborted movement, one she recognized and automatically countered from her training, following through on the Form to put him into a light hold.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that. But you attacked with a Form and my Adekhan is an anal hole who drilled the proper counter response into us until we wanted to barf—you okay, kid?”

He shook, beads of sweat at his forehead. She released the hold and led him out of the way to a wall, getting him to sit and put his head between his knees.

“Just breathe,” she said, rubbing his back. “Hey, you didn’t mean to attack, did you? Something about that flashy thing spooked you. What assholes.”

“My apologies,” a voice said.

Gayle looked up, saw the female chaperone/instructor approaching swiftly. “Hi. I saw him darting away and realized you had your hands full.”

“I was careless.” The chaperone knelt at the boy’s feet. “I saw him attack you—thank you for using a non-violent counter response. You’re trained well.”

“I’m a beginner.”

“You honor your Adekhan. Garen, can you look at me?” the woman asked her student.

The boy looked up. “Apologies. The noise sounded like a Darsor raid cruiser.”

“I understand.”

They rose, the woman with an arm around the boy for a moment before he straightened, then turned and bowed formally to Gayle.

“My apologies.”

“No problem.” She glanced at the hovering ball, which had attracted a crowd. It began to dim. “Looks like the prank has run its course.”

The instructor sighed. “Our second chaperone has food poisoning. Of all things. Thank you, again.”

Gayle joined Mila, who was grinning. “That was fun, huh? The boy almost tackled you.”

“You know—that’s the first time I’ve actually used our training in real life.”

“And your deadly warrior foe was a teenager.”

“Figures.”

Mila paused, face solemn. “Honor to your Adekhan.”

Gayle sighed.

* * *

She told Ithann about the incident, and of course, he thought it was funny.

“Honor to your Adekhan,” she repeated, voice sour, then sighed. “Maybe I should get a job babysitting. Who are the Darsor?”

His face tightened. “One of the reasons we are forced to seek soldiers on Earth. We’ve been at war since my grandfather’s time.”

Gayle studied him. “Was that in the Academy brochure?”

“If you read it carefully.”

She sighed. His closed expression told her he didn’t want to pursue the topic. She mentally filed it away as future research. “How long does citizenship take anyway?” she asked, turning back to the original topic. She could hold a job on Yedahn without citizenship, but the taxes were murder.

He snorted, and didn’t look up from his screens. There must have been a microphone in his ear because he gave voice commands and she saw glimpses of people speaking here and there. For the most part, she minded her own business, especially since he gave her a baleful look every time she tried to peer over his shoulder.

“Years,” he replied finally, curt.

Gayle sat up. “Excuse me? I’m your sex slave… for how long?”

He glared at her. “I thought working from our rooms instead of my office—”

“You have an office on a ship? How do you have an office on a ship?”

“I am a part owner of this ship. Don’t you read anything?”

She’d slap him. And when he was down, she’d dance on his body with high, pointy heels.

Instead, she took a moment to throttle her temper. “So, tell me exactly what I need to do to get citizenship, other than open a vein or suck your cock?”

His mouth quirked. “I don’t know, Abigail. That sounds like an eminently reasonable way to gain favor.”

“Really?” She rose, smoothed her hands down her skin suit, and approached him casually, sitting next to him on the couch and crossing her legs. He eyed her, stiff and wary—obviously knowing that there would be consequences for pulling the tiger’s tail. She smiled, pleasant, then shifted, straddling his lap.

“Gayle, I’m on a conference call.”

“Can you explain the technology involved in connecting a conference call in the middle of deep space? Never mind. End the call. I need to work on my… citizenship papers.”

She nipped at his neck, taking the tail of his hair and pushing it aside so she had access.

His hands gripped her waist, as if to lift her off. Her hands wrapped around his wrists, teeth sinking into his neck.

Ithann hissed. “Female—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like it. I can feel how hard you are.”

He swore, a string of words in his native tongue that her translator prudishly refused to process. She really would have to learn the language manually.

“Since you’re asking for it,” he said, expression cruel, “then fuck me. Earn your papers.”

Gayle smiled, rising from his lap to tug the skirt of her dress up around her waist, revealing her smooth, newly bare mound. He gripped the cloth and yanked it all the way up, baring her breasts and latching onto one plump nipple as she reached for his hard length, freeing him from his loose trousers.

She rose, positioned him at her entrance, and impaled herself.

“Fuck,” he swore, hand tight in her braids.

“That’s the idea.” Gayle gasped, angling her hips and sliding up and down his length to her own advantage, mewling when he continued to hit her spot.

“My human pleasure provider,” Ithann said, voice a cutting croon. “A natural. Your lust betrayed you on the field the first time I saw you. Your eyes begged me to fuck you.”

His hand tightened in her hair, tilting her head to the side as he leaned forward, teeth grazing his favorite spot in the hollow between neck and shoulder blade.

“I think you would have let me take you in broad daylight, with everyone watching.”

Gayle inhaled, the dirty words, the nasty erotic tone of his voice increasing her pleasure. Partly because she didn’t know if he was serious, or just indulging in his own brand of sex talk.

It didn’t matter—he could whisper the crudest odes to her cunt and she would beg him for more.

“You’re all talk, Ithann. But can you do more that run your mouth?”

She watched his face, the sensual cruelty, the strength of the man who held her so easily in his arms. Casually, as if he knew she could only escape if he allowed it.

“What?” She was barely able to form a coherent thought with his cock inside her, his hips surging in short, jagged strokes.

Ithann pulled her off him, speaking a command in his tongue, another word she didn’t recognize. She didn’t protest, in a sexual haze where she didn’t know where her status as servant and the reality of feeling completely, thoroughly served ended and began.

She was on her hands and knees, Ithann beneath her. And behind her. She reared up, shock lurching through her system.

“Relax,” he said beneath her, a devilish spark in his glacial eyes.

“B—but.” She looked over her shoulder. He was behind her as well, smiling. Deep, wicked, even as his hands grasped her hips, knee nudging her thighs apart. And his cock plunged into her.

The Ithann beneath her grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back around to him. He lifted his head and shoulders up to ravage her mouth with a kiss, the edge of his fangs nipping at her lips, drawing blood. He suckled at the drops and suddenly the Ithann behind her went wild, pounding into her, shifting the angle of her hips so that every stroke drove a cry from her throat.

A hand on her breast, twisting one of her nipples and the other at her clit, toying with her. She didn’t know which one of him was real. The cock filling her pussy or the sensually cruel man playing with her body, eyes saying he knew exactly how helpless she was to how he made her feel—that he craved that helplessness. Savored it.

“Serving me means more than sucking my cock, Abigail,” he said, his voice coming from beneath and from behind. They spoke as one, a sonorous unison sending prickles up her spine. “Any pleasure worker can swallow cum. Look at me.”

Her head had drooped, hands trembling from the beginning of sensual fatigue. She snapped to attention at the tone of his voice, meeting eyes that glowed with white-hot fire.

“What do you want?” she asked, voice hoarse.

He caressed her hip. “A feast. A woman who is a marvel for her strength, cunning and beauty, but when in the room alone with me, she is simply mine. To do with as I please.”

She understood his fantasy. The fantasy of submission—but so many men wanted a weak woman because they were weak. Ithann wanted to test his strength against strength, and experience the thrill of conquest every time. But the conquest would mean nothing to him if she couldn’t match him.

“My turn,” he said, looking at his twin over her shoulder.

The other Ithann obeyed with a snarl, but suddenly she was empty, though not for long. Ithann beneath her grabbed her hips and positioned her, maneuvering her body with the ease of a master. She sank onto him, leaning forward with a gasp. His hips surged up as the silent twin caressed her buttocks. Fingers squeezed each cheek and spread flesh.

“What are you doing?” she snapped, voice trembling.

“Whatever we want,” they replied in cruel unison.

A velvety head nudged her nether opening. Gayle inhaled, arms tensing. “Calm,” Ithann said beneath her, his voice a rough, strained growl. “We won’t hurt you.”

“Only pleasure,” he crooned behind her.

A thick, callused finger pressed just inside her ass, teasing her with the agonizingly slow entrance. The cock stroking her pussy slowed to match the rhythmn of this new penetration. She adjusted, closing her eyes and relaxing her muscles when the finger play had fully prepared her for the pressure of a hot, satin cock entering her ass.

“Does it feel real?” Ithann beneath her asked. And Gayle opened her eyes, watching the avaricious, lust filled look on his face as he increased his pace, watching as he took her ass at the same time as her took her pussy.

Their strokes synchronized. Gayle moaned, mouth trembling from the fullness, the double stimulation of her g-spot. He would ruin her. What regular man could give her this mind numbing pleasure?

She climaxed in a sudden, wrenching wave of pressure, Ithann raising up to swallow her scream with his lips.

The Ithanns pulled out of her wrung out body, and the duo rearranged her as they pleased, rising with her in their arms as they went to the couch. Ithann sat and she rested her back against his chest, his strong arms wrapping under her breasts, teeth nuzzling her sweat damp throat. The other knelt in front of her and yanked her legs up over his shoulders, taking an ankle in each hand and spreading her legs wide open.

“Ready or not, Gayle,” he said, and plunged into her again. “Here you cum again.”

She reached behind her and buried her fingers in Ithann’s hair, needing to grip something as a buffer against the pleasure and pain of him completely overtaking her.

“Which one of you is real?” she cried out.

“What is real?” he whispered in her ear. “My teeth in your neck? My cock in your pussy? What is real?”

“Fuck you, Ithann.”

“I thought that was… what… I was doing.” His eyes had long since paled to a lighting bright color, face drawn, shoulders tight. His lip curled back over sharp teeth, even as the tattoos along his arms swirled and trembled with flashes of light. She watched, dazzled, as they began to crawl down his arms and over his hands.

“No!” She struggled, yanking her arms away from him. “No, Ithann.”

“You refuse to be mine?” His voice was low, cold. Dangerous.

“Not while I’m your pet. Not while I’m not your equal.”

A pause in the room and then the tension melted away. “That’s reasonable,” the Ithann in front of her said, voice warming from frigid to merely cool. “But stupid. If we are mates, you have automatic full citizenship.”

“I don’t care.”

“Females.”

And then there was no more conversation, no more arguing while he was fucking her. Her body, hovering at the precipice of a terrible pleasure for so many minutes, tumbled over. Head and heels over, her head battered by ocean waves. She shuddered, the liquid heat between her thighs evidence of her own climax and his, when a low, hoarse growl signaled Ithann’s peak.

She shut her eyes, counting the beats of her frantic heart, and suddenly she felt the cold cloth of the couch at her back. Gayle’s eyes opened, and Ithann was leaning over her, a half-feral crouch, cock glistening from their mingled cum, a savage expression on his face. His fingers sank into her pussy, as if he were grabbing and holding her by her mound.

“I don’t force women,” he snarled, “but don’t think that means I’ll never relinquish you. Whether you are my slave or my mate is your choice. But you are enja. Mine.”