Caught by Menace (6 page)

I don’t want a war with you. That’s the very last thing I

want from you.”

She swalowed hard. “What do you want from me,

Menace?”

“I want…” He faltered and search for the right words.

“I want a wife and a family. I want you to be here when I

come home in the evenings, Naya. I’ve spent the last

twenty-four years of my life training, fighting, training

some more and trying not to get kiled. I’ve earned the

right to some comfort, to some happiness. I want—I

right to some comfort, to some happiness. I want—I

want that with you. Let me make you happy.”

She moved closer, the caginess gone from her once-

mistrusting gaze. Now she looked at him with sadness in

her dark eyes. “That’s not the way happiness works,

Menace. The people in a relationship have to be happy

by themselves before they can be happy together.” She

hesitated. “Are
you
happy, Menace?”

“I am,” he replied honestly.

“But?”

“But I’m lonely,” he admitted, baring his secret to her.

“Were you happy in Connor’s Run?”

“Most of the time,” she confirmed.

“But?”

“But it’s a hard life down there on Calyx,” she said.

Menace seized his opening. “I can give you a better,

easier life here, Naya. You’l never be hungry. You’l

never be cold. You’l have access to medicine and

technology. You’l never be alone again. I wil take care

of you.”

“Why?”

“Because owning a wife, mastering a woman, it’s a

precious thing. It’s the one thing I’ve strived for al these

precious thing. It’s the one thing I’ve strived for al these

years. Owning you is my reward.”

Her voice grew tight and annoyed. “I don’t want to be

owned.”

He understood her frustration with her new

classification. “The laws are the laws, Naya. I own you

now, but that doesn’t mean you’re property. It simply

means that I’m responsible for you. I wil never treat you

any differently.”

“Yeah, sure you won’t.”

“I won’t,” he insisted.

“You
own
me, Menace. We’re different.”

“On paper,” he said. “In real life, it’s nothing like that.

Don’t think of yourself as being owned. Think of yourself

as my partner.”

“Your partner?” she repeated in disbelief. “You just

said that mastering me is something precious. How can

we be partners if you’re my master?”

“I want to be your master when we’re in here or in my

—
our
—bedroom. The rest of our relationship would be

equal.”

She rubbed her cheek and shook her head. “I don’t

understand, Menace. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

understand, Menace. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It’s because we’re from two vastly different cultures.”

His gaze skipped around the playroom as he tried to

think of a way to explain this to her. Noticing the way she

rubbed her upper arms, he unbuttoned his uniform shirt

and slipped it off his shoulders. “Here. Take this. You’re

cold.”

She eyed the offered shirt for a distrusting moment

before finaly taking it. “Don’t think this is winning you

any favors.”

He chuckled softly. “Believe me, Naya. I’m starting to

understand just how hard I’m going to have to work to

earn your trust.”

“Good luck,” she said grumpily and slipped into his

shirt. “That extra appendage between your legs has

automaticaly put you on my shit list.”

He grimaced. “Could we maybe tone down the

language a bit?”

She blinked at him. “You have a problem with

cursing?”

“I do.”

“But you’re a soldier. You’re, like, a souless kiling

machine. You hunted me down like a rabbit and dragged

machine. You hunted me down like a rabbit and dragged

me back to your ship like a prize. I’m supposed to

believe someone cold enough to do that to me doesn’t

like to hear a good
fuck you
once in a while?”

He gritted his teeth at her description of him. “I am
not

a souless kiling machine. Every single life I’ve taken in

battle has stayed with me.” He tapped his chest. “I carry

the horror of war with me every day. It’s not a game to

me, Naya.”

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she

finished buttoning the shirt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have

said that.”

He sighed and slashed his hand through the air. “It’s

fine. It’s forgotten. I’m sure you’ve spent most of your

life hearing awful things about my people.”

She nodded. “So far most of them have proven true.”

He folowed her gaze to the wal of impact-play

implements. Remembering her earlier statement, he

clarified, “This isn’t a torture chamber. This is a

playroom.”

“Playroom?” She laughed. “I think words may not

have the same meaning in your culture as they do in mine.

A playroom is where kids keep their toys.”

“Wel, this is a playroom for adults. These are our

toys.”

“Your toys, maybe,” she replied hotly. Pointing at the

wal, she said, “I am brutaly aware of what
those
felt like

on my bare ass. I assure you there was nothing playful

about it, Menace.”

His gaze moved to the thin, snappy cane. “You’ve

been caned?”

“Yep.”

“By a lover?”

She snorted. “By a principal and a teacher.” She

pointed out a long leather strap. “My mother was rather

fond of one of those.”

He was taken aback by the idea she’d been struck by

her mother and in school. “Your teachers hit you?”

She stared at him as if he were the dumbest man in the

universe. “Wel, yeah. It’s caled corporal punishment,

Menace. You know, that thing you want to do to me.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to beat you as

punishment. What adults do in the privacy of their

playrooms is in no way comparable to a grown adult

beating on an innocent child.”

“To be fair, I wasn’t always innocent.”

“To be fair, I wasn’t always innocent.”

Menace grunted in irritation. “It doesn’t matter. We

don’t strike children in my culture.”

“But you go to military school at like, five, right? You

honestly expect me to believe no one at the academy

ever knocked you around?”

He shook his head. “Never. Not once.”

“You were obviously luckier than me.”

He was beginning to see that. Her obstinate behavior

made more sense. “Why did your teachers strike you?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes it was for fighting. Most of

the time it was for code infractions. My mom…” Her

voice trailed off to nothing. “I didn’t always have a clean

uniform for school. That was a big no-no. I finaly figured

out how to do my own laundry. Then, after my dad died,

I missed a lot of school or I was late. Eventualy I just

decided it was easier to leave school than have a

permanently black-and-blue ass.”

Menace let that tiny glimpse into her childhood sink in

and take hold. The similarities to Halie’s miserable

childhood were so obvious. He finaly understood why

Vicious had taken such a drasticaly different route with

Halie—and why he was so overly protective of her.

Halie—and why he was so overly protective of her.

Wordlessly Menace strode to the wal and started

yanking down the canes and crops and striking

implements. He stuffed them in one of the drawers in the

corner cabinet. Glancing back at the wal, he spotted the

floggers. Those would have to go too.

“What are you doing?”

He started to take down the floggers. “I’m putting

away the things that scare you. There’s no reason to

keep them out if I’m not going to use them.”

She stepped forward and hesitantly touched one of the

soft tendrils of a flogger crafted for teasing and warming

up a sub. “Why do you do it?”

The siren cal of her body heat filed him with need.

This was the closest they’d been without cursing or

fighting. Calm and curious, she tempted him even more.

He couldn’t help but compare her to the friend who had

escaped him. He’d considered that one the epitome of

his desires. Standing this close to Naya, gazing down into

her dark eyes and breathing in her scent, he realized his

first instinct had been dead wrong. It wasn’t the docile,

sweet thing he needed. It was this young woman, this

spitfire who drove him crazy.

“It’s our way,” he said finaly.

She frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means that our women are different than yours.”

He placed his armful of floggers on the nearby restraint

table. He selected the one she’d touched, the easy

warm-up flogger, and handed it to her. “This is a flogger.

It’s used for hitting fleshy parts.”

“Fleshy parts?”

“Buttocks, thighs, breasts…”

“I see.”

“There’s some new research that shows that the

biochemical makeup of our Harcos women is vastly

different than yours. Your bodies react much differently

to endorphins, adrenaline and oxytocin.”

She glanced away from him. “I don’t realy understand

what that means. I never—I didn’t finish school,

remember?”

His gut clenched at the shame filing her voice. Daring

to touch her, he tipped her chin and forced her to meet

his gaze. “It’s al right. You may not have book smarts,

but you clearly have street smarts.”

She didn’t pul away from his touch. “You learn

quickly how to survive. I can do math and I can read,

quickly how to survive. I can do math and I can read,

obviously. I just don’t have much of a science

background.”

“Would you like one?”

She looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Some of the wives have lobbied for a school

program. It starts in a few weeks, I think. I’m sure Halie

can fil you in on the details.”

“Halie?”

“My friend’s wife,” he explained. “She was Grabbed

six months ago. She’s from Harper’s Wel. That’s close

to you, right?”

She made a face. “It’s nearby—and a helhole. I

mean, even when my life was at its shi—crappiest,” she

hastily corrected, “I gave thanks that I wasn’t born in

Harper’s Wel.”

His lips twitched with amusement at the way she’d

skipped over the profanity. There was hope for her yet.

“So tel me about these endorphins,” she instructed.

He let his fingers drop from her chin. “Women from

our planet require pain to find pleasure. It’s just the way

their body chemistry works. It might be something as

simple as a nipple pinch to send them over the edge into

simple as a nipple pinch to send them over the edge into

climax. It might even require something as hard as a

thorough caning and predicament bondage. But your

women?” He eyed her carefuly. “Your bodies respond

much more quickly and easily to pleasure.”

“I guess.” The prettiest shade of pink colored the very

tips of her ears. She kept her gaze averted and gestured

with the flogger. “So people—my people—realy enjoy

this?”

“So far,” he confirmed. “The locker room talk is that

most of your women enjoy multiple orgasms under the

hands of their mates.”

Her shocked gaze snapped to his face. “Multiple? Is

that even—I mean—no way, right? That has to be

bulshit tal tales between friends.”

Menace decided it was now or never. He fingered one

of the long, wide strands of the flogger and held her

disbelieving gaze. “Let me show you good I can make

you feel, Naya. Hop up on that table and give me an

hour. We’l test out the locker room stories.”

Mouth dry, Naya licked her lips and stared right back

at Menace. Was he serious? He looked deadly serious.

Emphasis on the deadly. She marveled at his thickly

corded arms and ridiculously broad chest. With his gray

undershirt stretched across his muscled form, he looked

a little less intimidating. She noticed the heavy tattoos

running from the edge of his neck to his wrist but only on

the right side. The long stretch of tanned skin on his left

remained unmarked.

“Naya?” he prompted gently and took the flogger

from her hand. “What do you say?”

She considered his dare. Multiple orgasms? Surely

that couldn’t be true. She had a hard enough time finding

one climax on her own and had never been able to find

one with a partner. Of course, she’d never had a partner

as dangerously sexy as this man. Menace scared her with

his hulking size and fierce features, but he exuded such