Captured Boxed Set: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys Who Will Capture Your Heart (96 page)

Antrox 785 ground his gums together
in frustration. Throwing up a hand to the guards below him, he signaled for
them to take all the men to the cavern assigned to the female. With a jerk of
his head, he motioned for the two guards standing back behind Riley to come
forward.

"Take her to her living
quarters where her mates are and bring me the trader who brought the female
here," Antrox 785 said harshly.

One of the guards looked cautiously
from Riley to Antrox 785 before replying. "The trader has already left,
785," Antrox 921 said.

Antrox 785 looked down at Riley who
was baring her teeth at him and snapping them together. He took a step away,
curling his clawed fingers into the palm of his green hands. With a nod of his
head, he watched as the two guards escorted Riley out of the choosing room.
Antrox 785 had already decided if it had not been for the law preventing an
Antrox from harming a female—any female—he would have gleefully fed the female
to the pactors, the large creatures they used to pull the ore out of the mines
as food. Antrox 785 made a note to himself that the next time the trader came
to the mines, he would not be leaving.

Chapter
2

Vox jerked at the collar around
his neck and received another burning zap from it. He growled at the other
males who watched him. He knew two out of the four. Tor was his chief of
engineering, and Lodar was his medical officer. They had both been with him
when he left his warship, the
Shifter
, to purchase crystals at the
Valdier spaceport. All three of them had been enjoying some refreshments when a
Valdier warrior approached them and said one of the members of the royal house
of Valdier wished to speak with them. Vox vaguely wondered at the time if it
was in reference to the tentative peace agreement they had established almost a
hundred years before. As the ruling King of Sarafin, Vox d’Rojah, was expected
to produce a son who would be joined in marriage with the first-born daughter
of the King of Valdier. The problem was Vox had no intentions of having any
sons, at least not in the near future. He was quite happy with the wide
selection of females he had at his disposal.

They had sat down to drink with an
older Valdier warrior named Raffvin. He said he had news for Vox that concerned
the peace agreement between the two former warring species. He had already made
up his mind to ignore whatever the old warrior was going to say. The male had
been pestering some of his councilmen to meet with him. He was annoyed the
Valdier had not taken the hint he wasn’t interested in meeting with him. As far
as he was concerned, if he wasn’t their leader, Zoran Reykill, or Zoran’s
brother Creon, he really didn’t give a damn what the man had to say. He had met
Zoran Reykill off and on during their many years of war and respected the man
for being a strong and fair warrior who fought with integrity and cared about
his people. It was his friendship with the youngest royal, Creon, that had
sealed the end of the war and produced a long and lasting alliance. Creon had
saved his life during an assassination attempt by some of his own warriors
aimed at igniting fury at the Valdier during the Great Wars. The resulting
friendship had led to a collaborative effort to discover who was behind the
war. A small group from the elite royal houses of Valdier, Sarafin, and Curizan
were
discovered to be working
together to bring down the current ruling class of each star system so they
could gain power.

Vox was determined to cleanse his
star system of those who would betray their own people. He had gone after them
without mercy, whether they were male or female; to him, a traitor was a
traitor. He knew it had affected Creon badly when he found out the female he
was in love with, a Curizan princess, was one of those responsible for
instigating the war. They had discovered it almost too late to save their
friend. Ha’ven, the ruling Curizan prince, had been kidnapped in a plot to
implicate the Sarafin and Valdier and to gain important information about the
location of the Curizan warships. Vox had discovered one of his warriors returning
late one night after sneaking off. He and two of his brothers had confronted
the man. They discovered he had met with Aria, Creon’s lover. The warrior had
been passing Sarafin information on to her. Vox had tortured every last piece
of information from the man before he killed him and left his body on display
in front of the palace for any others who thought to betray his trust.

He had approached Creon with the
information he had discovered. At first, Creon had not believed him, but
eventually he could not deny the evidence building up against Aria. They
decided to set a trap for her. It had worked too well. Only he, Creon, and Aria
knew of their reported secret mission to transport a captured prisoner. When
the mercenaries Aria hired showed up at the trap, they had killed all but the
leader of the group. Creon had extracted the information from him. The man’s
dying words were of Aria’s betrayal. Later that night, Creon had the location
of Ha’ven’s prison, and Aria was dead. Vox never asked his friend how he got
the information out of her; he knew what he would have done. They had found Ha’ven
three days later in a mining asteroid not unlike the one he and his men were
currently imprisoned in. Ha’ven had been tortured and was more dead than alive.
It was a miracle he had survived as long as he had, considering what Aria’s men
had done to him.

Vox jerked back to the present when
the door to the rooms he and the other men had been escorted to suddenly
opened. He watched as three Antrox males entered. Two had long stunning rods,
and the other had a strange-looking rectangular pink object on wheels. They
were followed by the female he had seen earlier. She was talking to a fourth
Antrox male who was following several steps behind her.

"Oh dear," she was saying
as she looked around the room. "This place screams classic caveman! Fred
and Wilma really outdid themselves this time. I’ll have to be sure and send a
thank you note for the lovely rock walls. Really, would it have hurt to have
updated the décor by a few million years? I really am going to have to mark you
down on Trip Advisor. This is simply too blasé considering today’s fashions and
travelers’ expectations."

The Antrox male behind her was
grinding his gums together as she continued to ramble on about the furniture,
floors, ceiling, and everything else in the room. Vox’s eyes followed the
female as she tapped a slender finger on her chin when she stopped in the
center of the room to look around once more. Heat filled him as her eyes swept
by him. He wasn’t sure at first if the heat was from irritation that her eyes
kept moving by him as if he didn’t even exist or his reaction to having her
closer to him. One thing he did know, she was his and he wanted her now!

"Darling, you can put my
luggage next to the bed. I hope you changed the sheets. I absolutely refuse to
sleep on someone else’s dirty linens. Oh, Sticky-pooh, be a sweetheart and take
off these adorable bracelets. As much as I like them, they really do clash with
my outfit and totally say ‘prison inmate’ all over them," the female said,
walking up to the Antrox who was standing next to the one placing her suitcase
next to the bed.

She smiled up at him and innocently
fluttered her eyelashes. Instead of making the tall Antrox feel better, he
actually took a hesitant step backward, looking at the male behind her for
guidance. The one who had carried the strange large pink box looked relieved
that she was focusing on someone other than him. Vox’s blood heated to boiling
when he saw her beautiful face glow in amusement as she watched the way the
Antrox moved nervously around her. Her plump pink lips parted to show off
smooth, even white teeth and a small indent appeared on her cheek. He had never
thought smooth-edged teeth were sexy before, but he decided right then and
there he loved the way they looked on her.

The Antrox behind her nodded once
to the other male and stepped back another step. The Antrox lowered his
stunning rod and held out the key to the locking device. He motioned for the
female to extend her hands in front of her. She did with a wide-eyed look and a
nibble to her lower lip. Vox’s eyes followed the movement, and he almost
groaned out loud as his cock swelled to a level of pain he had never
encountered before.

The female gently rubbed her wrists
and wiggled her little nose. "I hope you aren’t expecting a tip," she
said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Because I have to say, I am not
sure of the hospitality yet, much less the rest of the accommodations,"
she added as she put her hands on her hips and tapped her booted foot.

"We must leave," Antrox
264 said from behind her. "You will keep your mates calm and satisfied.
They will be working the first shift so you may be near them."

"Whatever," the female
said with a casual shrug. "I want clean towels brought in daily, and I’ll
need a line of rope and several blankets delivered immediately."

Antrox 264 nodded at the other
guards to move toward the entrance to the cell. "Why do you need these
items? They are not budgeted for workers."

The
female turned and glared at 264 through narrowed eyes, causing him to jerk backward
another step. "Darling, put it in your budget unless you want me upset.
You won’t like me when I am upset, do you understand? I am
not
a nice
person when I am upset," she said, taking a menacing step toward him with
her eyes glittering with fury and determination. "Now go get me what I
requested! Chop, chop!" she growled out with a snap of her fingers,
causing all four guards to jump and hurry out.

* * *

Riley drew in a deep, calming
breath to steady her nerves in preparation to meet her five new "mates."
She was shaking like a leaf on the inside, but she had learned a long, long
time ago not to let it show. She put her hands back on her hips, drew in
another deep, steady breath, and tossed her heavy mane of blond hair over her
shoulder before turning around to face the five males again.

At five feet ten inches tall, she
was a big woman. When you added in the fact that she was a solid size sixteen
on a good day with double-D cup breasts, she was Xena on steroids. She had
learned to live with her big-boned stature a long time ago. She didn’t have
much choice since she practically towered over everyone she’d ever met between
the ages of four and eighteen while she was growing up. She had reached puberty
early and had to live through all the Amazon and she-giant jokes that any
sensitive young girl would have to endure. Only other sensitive young girls
didn’t have Grandma Pearl raising them. Grandma Pearl showed Riley how to punch
anyone who made fun of her in the nose. When the fourth school’s social worker
threatened Pearl that Children’s Services would take Riley and Tina away from
her, Pearl showed Riley how to use her mouth as the weapon of choice after
that. Riley had excelled at that much better than she had the physical forms of
retaliation. Over the years she had plenty of opportunity to perfect her talent,
as her grandma called it.

Releasing the breath she had been
holding, Riley smiled brilliantly at the five alien males staring at her. "Well,
boys, it looks like Auntie Riley is going to have to set some ground rules
while we are together," she said, looking at each one of the males
carefully to assess how she was going to handle them.

Alien number one was about three
and a half feet tall, had two heads, and looked like a combination of a lizard
and ET. He was cute in his own special way. Each head had large, black eyes
that moved nervously back and forth between her and the other four men. He was
a dark green with areas of tan, black, and red on him running in long lines
down his body. He was wearing a small leather vest and cloth, plaid-colored
pants with child-size boots to match. He must have decided she posed less of a
threat than the other males because he emitted a weak squeak and scurried for a
corner of the room. She also decided he looked like a "Fred."

Her eyes moved to the next alien
creature. He—she was assuming it was a he since the Stickman called him one—was
almost eight feet tall. He towered over all of them, including the other three
males standing next to him, but he just wasn’t all that scary. He reminded
Riley of the big tub of Jell-O in the movie
Monsters vs. Aliens
. He was
green instead of blue, but he had "Bob" written all over his wiggling
body. He even left a light liquid that she hoped wasn’t radioactive or anything
behind him. He appeared to be wearing some type of robe over most of his body.
She didn’t even want to think what might be under it. It was his eyes that gave
her the feeling he wouldn’t hurt her. They were big, round, and the color of
peach gumdrops with tiny black pupils in the center. He was emitting a low
humming noise that struck her as if he was terrified. She wasn’t sure what he
was so scared of. So far, she felt like everything was going pretty damn good
considering she had been kidnapped by aliens. At least Daddy and Dudley
Dip-shit back in New Mexico couldn’t find her here.

Her eyes finally moved over the
last three males. She felt like she needed an old fashioned fan like the women
in the movies used to fan themselves to keep cool, because she could definitely
feel the heat increase when she looked at them. The first one was hot! He had
his long hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. It was a long, golden blond
with different shades coursing through it. He had patterns on his chest and
left arm that looked like spots and was wearing a black vest, black pants, and
black boots. Against his lighter color they really stood out. His dark golden
brown eyes remained focused on her as she assessed him. He looked more curious
about her than "interested." Riley was thankful for that because she
had a feeling that her mouth and her one physical ability to bop someone on the
nose wouldn’t stop him for long if he decided to sink those sharp teeth of his
into her.

Alien number four was the same
height as the first one. She figured based on her own height they were probably
about six feet four inches or so. It should have been nice to finally meet some
guys she actually had to look up to except for the fact they were aliens! Alien
number four was looking at her with the same curiosity as number three had. He
had more of a reddish-brown-colored hair and a darker tan. His hair was short
and had stripes of darker reds and browns running through it. His eyes were a
light greenish-tan color with specks of dark green in them. He was dressed in
the same type of clothing as the other guy. Riley assumed it must be a uniform
of some sort. It was kind of like a biker outfit that the guys back home
dressed up in on Sundays when they put their three-piece suits up for the
weekend. Only she got the feeling these guys dressed like this all the time,
and this wasn’t a costume to just look bad for a day. She got the impression
from all the muscles on the guys that they were bad all the time.