Dark Paradise (2 page)

Something scurried ahead of her and she paused, narrowing her eyes to better see into the shadows. Probably a goblin. The hideous little things lived in the caves and selfishly hid whatever treasures they found. They didn’t need them; they just didn’t want the humans, or anyone else, to have them.

The cavern in which she stood was long and deep. Stalactites and stalagmites taller than she hung from the ceiling and rose from the floor in beautiful, mysterious columns. A musty, damp chill crept through the room, lending relief from the heat for only a moment, before she found herself wishing for the summery warmth and cheer of wildflowers and moss, the teasing scents of cook fires, and the gentle buzz of the nightflies that carried dim green bulbs in their globular bellies.

“Sissy,” she whispered. Her words slid through the cool dark, an insidious echo that seemed to bounce from the walls of her mind, making her feel more alone, instead of reassuring her.

The caverns expanded. They looked huge from the outside, but once you got inside them, they were a whole new world. No one she’d ever talked with knew exactly how big theses caves were, or what they held. Every time she entered, she found new things. And new creatures.

The caves themselves seemed to live, to breathe, to watch and wait. But they hadn’t killed her yet, and she wasn’t planning on letting them start now.

She reached out and caressed a slimy, cold wall. Closing her eyes, she waited. At last it came, as it did nearly every time she touched them, an indescribable feeling of…power, somehow, that seeped through her fingertips and into her body.

Not even power, exactly, more like a sensation of warmth and emotions that traveled up her arm and into her mind, giving her the feeling that she was accepted here. That the caves recognized and welcomed her into their damp depths.

But it might all have been her imagination.

Finally she straightened her shoulders and walked quietly on. She kept a sharp eye out for shining treasure and her ears tuned for the sounds of lurking specials, as she thought of them.

The specials were treasures she could trade that were possessed of a certain intelligence and life. They moved, breathed, sometimes bit and pinched, and she could get more for them than for most of the items the caves held.

Two hours later, she’d found and deposited into her bag three decent items. One was a yellow rock that glowed and let off the most pleasant of scents when you touched it. The inside of her bag would retain that scent for months to come. There was no scent like it on earth, and she couldn’t have described it had she wanted to.

The second item was a water rock, and she considered keeping it for herself. The water rocks would last for about five sucks before they lost their potency. If one were stuck without access to water, the rock would deliver a long, cool drink from merely placing it in the mouth and sucking.

The third item was the most interesting. About as long as her index finger, it looked to be an ordinary stick until she touched it, when it became a tiny humanistic figure with a carved face that glared at her quite menacingly as she looked at it.

It revolted her. The cold blackness of it seeped into her skin and sent a feeling of evil deep into her heart. She shuddered and quickly threw it into her bag. Some of the strange items of this world were best left alone.

Deeper and deeper into the caves she went, until she’d found seventeen items and decided she had enough to outfit herself for a trip to the mountains. She pulled from her pocket the cavern map and found the nearest exit.

To be caught in Manitua caves without a map would mean wandering until you fell dead. No one came into the caves without the supplied maps.

When brought to Ripindal, all prisoners were given certain things that would help them supply the bosses with the items they so desired. The shrube were the most desired, not only by the Gamlogi who now owned the miners, but by the miners. The shrube would buy the miners entrance into paradise.

Her exit was close. She judged she’d reach it in less than two minutes and couldn’t wait to get outside into the fresh, warm air once again.

She headed toward the door, her footsteps light and silent out of habit. The cave floor squished beneath her boots with dampness and a variety of things she didn’t want to examine too closely.

She’d nearly walked into the exit room before she became aware the room was occupied. Quiet groans and whispered words slid through the cool, dark air, and she reached up quickly to unwind the lightstick from her head.

Its light dimmed and extinguished as soon as she stuffed it into her bag; the light generated by its contact with her skin turned green, then cold and nearly black, before she’d withdrawn her hand.

She was glad of the quickness of it, for the hoarse voices in the exit room were growing louder, more intense. Still, she hesitated to draw Saint and Satan. There could be no more threat than a couple of goblins or a human just like her, gathering items for trade.

Slipping into the exit room, she kept her back to the wall and carefully felt her way, small step by small step, more deeply into the room. The murmuring voices and rustling sounds were just around the corner, behind a particularly large, gently glowing stalactite.

In seconds she saw them: two people having what she could only guess, due to their whispers and urgent movements, an impatient and passionate encounter.

She felt a brief stab of envy. How long had it been since she’d felt passion’s forceful embrace or had the warm lips of a lover against her skin?

But the two lovers weren’t planning on continuing their sex inside the dank and dirty caves, full of creepy-crawly things and goblins that might smell their desire and come to investigate.

They groped their way out the exit through which Cin planned to leave, and she cursed under her breath. She rested her fingers against the comforting hilts of Saint and Satan.

When one of them pushed open the loud, heavy rock door to the exit, her stomach clenched. Light from the outside poured in, framing the lovers in a bright silhouette and chasing back the long-fingered shadows of the caves.

She tensed, but they were too involved in their romance to glance back and see her. Before the door could shut them out and her in, she sprinted to the door and through the opening. The door was so loud it covered her sounds, but had she been trapped inside and forced to open it again, they would have heard her.

The hours she’d spent inside the caverns had seemed fewer than they actually were. She’d gone in at early night, but now it was morning, and the sun was a striking, bright light of heat in the dewy day.

Time was different inside Manitua caves.

But her thoughts were distracted by the lovers. She slipped behind a tree and spied, unashamed and quite interested. Blinking in the harsh light, she waited for her eyes to adjust.

Then she narrowed her eyes. The lovers were two men, and they seemed caught in a half-turned on, half-enraged moment and paid little attention to their surroundings.

That was just stupid. No one could afford to let his or her guard down on Ripindal. She bit her lip and smiled.

Their bags were lumpy and large, as thick and bulging as the muscles on the two men. They’d had a productive time inside Manitua caves, and if she was lucky, she could slip off with at least one of those bags without either of the hapless men any the wiser.

But her gaze was drawn from the bags and back to the men when one of them cried out in pain, and she slid carefully to her knees to watch.

The clearing outside the exit door was small, surrounded by trees and bushes and exotic plants that she would have no more trusted near her tender private parts than she would have trusted her bag to a stranger.

The men seemed to have no such compunctions, however, and threw themselves into their lovemaking with an abandon she’d long since forgotten existed. Maybe they, being men and not alone, were simply aware they were more than capable of taking on whatever threat happened to show itself.

The larger of the two men grasped the other man by the back of his neck and shoved him against a rough tree, and again the smaller man cried out.

The big man had dark hair that ran in a straight fall down his broad back, and something about him made her clench her legs in desire. Maybe it was his forcefulness, the way he tossed the other man about with an alpha’s disregard for any but himself.

When he stripped off his shirt and showed his tanned, smooth body with its bunching back muscles and tree-trunk-size arms, her mouth watered and thoughts of robbing them became less of a priority.

He called to something primal and dark inside her when he reached around and jerked his lover’s pants over his hips, his manner almost angry. Once again he shoved the smaller man into the tree when he had the nerve to move, bringing forth another cry of pain.

Bully
. Assholes like that pissed her off. But she clenched her legs together and swallowed hard as liquid heat bathed her pussy. Pressure almost too extreme to ignore made her want to reach between her own legs to relieve it.

The big man unfastened his pants and turned toward her just enough so that she could see his cock spring free—angry and red and so very hard. Huge. She barely had time to smother a gasp. She couldn’t remember wanting to do anything as much as she wanted to run to him, shove him to the ground, and ride him until she fainted.

Get a grip, Cin.

“Mock,” the smaller man cried.

She stiffened at his voice, then realized he was calling out the big man’s name. Not mock, but
Mach
.

Mach bent his knees slightly and forced himself into his lover, and Cin cringed at the pain that must have caused. But the smaller man’s voice, though it held pain, also held a deep, uncontrolled pleasure.

He was exactly where he wanted to be.

Mach pulled the other man away from the tree and forced him to his knees, following him down in a smooth, practiced gesture.

“You want this, Elder?” Mach’s voice was low and guttural, his words clipped and awkward, as though he hadn’t quite grasped the English language.

Mach wasn’t human, not fully. She could see that in his profile and his hulking, enormous body. She didn’t know what he was mixed with, but either his mama or his daddy hadn’t been human.

She shivered.

Elder. Mach and Elder. Strange names for a couple of sexy strangers, but ones she was sure she’d heard sometime before. She didn’t care to think about it right now, though, as all her concentration and will was needed not to throw herself to the ground and masturbate as she watched Mach fuck Elder.

Her fingertips ached, and she realized she was holding on to the rough bark of the tree with a death grip. Her breath came fast and hard, but she didn’t worry about the men hearing her.

Mach’s hips pumped as he shoved his cock into Elder, and she couldn’t take her stare off them.

Then something made her look at Elder’s face. He was on his knees with his upper body on the ground, his face turned toward her.

And as she peeked around the tree like a sex-starved voyeur, Elder’s gaze met hers.

She couldn’t pull back, couldn’t tear her guilty stare away, couldn’t get up and run. Frozen, she knelt there and watched him come as he held her captive with his dazed eyes. He cried out his orgasm to her as the big man fucked him so hard he would have rammed his head into the tree had Mach not secured him.

Elder’s climax held a little more edge because she watched; she saw it in his eyes. She also knew that when his orgasm eased and his body was once more his own, he’d be coming after her. Those two would rip her apart and steal her goods, then forget she’d ever existed. It was the way of life.

Even so, her pussy throbbed, and she could not look away. The thrill of her predicament and the awfulness of the risk, combined with two mostly naked male bodies slamming against each other stamped her will into the ground and held her helpless and trapped.

Mach groaned and drew her gaze. He threw his head back and gave two more slow, heavy thrusts into Elder, then collapsed half atop the other man.

“Mach,” Elder murmured. “We have company.”

Mach was halfway to her before she even realized he’d moved.

And by then it was too late.

By then it was much too late.

Chapter Two

“Cin Trinity,” she said, but didn’t offer him a handshake. Her hands were busy holding Saint and Satan.

Mach looked down his nose at her, his narrowed gaze full of enough dark fire to burn the skin right off her face. His features were not exactly humanistic, but his alien looks were attractive, very handsome. His eyes were longer than normal, his nose a little thicker than a human’s, his lips full but with a twist to them that somehow made them look completely masculine. His face was a contrast of soft and hard, craggy slashes and olive skin, dark brows and thick, short eyelashes.

His eyes were black and brown, shot with vivid threads of green that would have mesmerized her, had she allowed herself to stare into them. He was…fascinating.

His entire body vibrated with a low, almost inaudible rumbling growl that made her wonder, once again, what he was. “Why are you spying?”

She shrugged, her confidence restored as the knives moved restlessly in her tight grip. “I was enjoying the show. There isn’t a lot of good porn on Ripindal.”

Elder walked up behind Mach, buttoning his pants, a grin on his face. She could see beneath the facade of that grin, however, and didn’t believe for a second he was any less dangerous than Mach. “Brave girl,” he murmured, his gaze on her knives. “But I see you have reason to be. Nice knives.”

She inclined her head. “Thanks.”

“How’d you get them?”

She saw no reason to lie. “A guy traded them to me for a shrube. He needed one more to make his ten.”

“Glen Turtle,” Mach said.

“He’s in paradise now,” Cin said, amazed they hadn’t tried to kill her but were instead carrying on a conversation. “Well, I’ll be on my way. Nice meeting you gentlemen.”

Elder eyed her bag. “I’m surprised Turtle held on to those shrube. You’re headed to the trading post?”