Illicit Desire: Outlawed Realm, Book 2 (20 page)

“Then tell me, please,” she asked.

Easing back, Lukan removed his cock from her cunt. Seated next to her, he spread his legs wide and patted the space between them.

Arez accepted the invitation, releasing her weight into him. Lukan draped his arm across her waist, settling his hand on her naked breast. Although they faced the mouth of the cave and whatever was still outside, when Arez glanced at Lukan, he was already regarding her.

“Time moves more swiftly on her plane than it does here,” he explained. “Everything is a blur at first, but you adjust quickly. The air is different too. Not only sweeter but lighter, not as dense. It’s as though a weight’s been removed from your body. It doesn’t take as much of an effort to move.”

Arez nodded to let him know she was listening and trying to absorb what he said.

Lukan rested his chin on her shoulder. It pressed into her as he continued to speak. “They have all kinds of devices to make their lives easier or more enjoyable. There are things called cars that you sit in, and they take you to wherever you want to go. You never have to walk unless you want to.”

“Are the cars the slaves on that plane?”

He shook his head. She caught his smile.

“The cars are no more alive than the stun gun I used on the guards,” he said. “They’re machines that Regina’s people have built. They have this instrument called a TV. It plays pictures all day.”

“Why?”

“To sell things. The men and women on it keep ordering you to buy, buy, buy.”

Arez wasn’t certain what he meant by the word buybuybuy. Not wanting to admit ignorance, she asked, “And do you have to do as they command?”

He dragged his thumb over her nipple and kissed her shoulder. “Not unless you want to. From what I’ve observed, the children are the most susceptible to those ploys. In the stores I told you about, they frequently run up and down the aisles shouting, ‘I want this, I want this’.”

Arez tried to picture that and could not. As a child, she never dared speak or move unless ordered to do so. The caretakers had always demanded full obedience from her and the other children her age. Their days were predictable, filled with scrubbing the Palace’s floors or the rulers’ chambers, then hearing stories about how wonderful their lives would be when they would be old enough to serve as pleasure slaves, seeing to their masters’ every whim.

She asked, “Do their caretakers punish them for such behavior?”

“Most of the time their mothers either pretend not to hear them or they take the package the child wants and put it inside their basket to buy later.”

Filled with new questions, she asked the most pressing one first, “What’s a mother?”

Lukan’s thumb stalled on her nipple. She felt his body tensing.

Why? Had he noticed something troubling outside the cave?

Expecting to see a subhuman or something worse, Arez was surprised that nothing had changed. Sparkling insects bobbed about, illuminating patches of the heavy vegetation.

Lukan’s hand dropped to her waist. He held her close but not tightly, as though he’d depleted his strength.

Alarmed at the change in him, Arez asked, “What’s wrong?” Had she been too selfish in not allowing him to rest? Was he growing weak as he had when the guards withheld food from him? “Do you need to eat?”

“No.”

He sounded so forlorn, Arez turned in his arms so she could see his face. “Then what is it? What have I done?”

“Nothing.” He pressed his cheek to hers. “It’s what the rulers have done to you and every other slave in the Palace. What they denied you.” He inhaled deeply, then spoke on a ragged sigh. “A mother is the female who birthed her child, giving it life. No one is more important to her, not even the rulers. She’ll do all that she can to protect her offspring, even dying for it if she must. Her love is the first a child knows and comes to depend upon. Do you recall anyone holding you when you were younger? Drying your tears? Telling you everything was going to be all right when you were afraid?”

No. Tears weren’t allowed any more than defiance, questions or apprehension over what might happen to her. The few times Arez had thrown her arms around one of her caretakers, driven to do so by some internal urge she hadn’t understood, the individual had pulled away immediately. Arez hadn’t seen shock or revulsion on the person’s face, only indifference.

Somehow, that had seemed so much worse. As though she hadn’t mattered. As though she was invisible.

After so many years, she still recalled her initial frustration and panic. Eventually though, she accepted the treatment as normal. None of the slaves received affection, simply enough food to keep them alive and training to submit. It was all she’d ever expected before Lukan.

She touched his bristly cheek. “Did you have a mother?” Did she? If so, what had happened to those women? Had they died trying to protect her and Lukan?

He covered her hand with his. “We were created, Arez. Don’t you remember me telling you that, and about Meelo and Damir, the genetic scientists? Instead of us growing in our mother’s bellies as children usually do, we grew in an artificial womb in a laboratory.”

His dismay and anger was so obvious, Arez was reluctant to ask any more questions. She nodded. “I see.”

He laughed bitterly. “No, you don’t. You have no idea what I’m talking about. How could you? You’ve never been allowed to have a life or a future.” Pulling back, he rested his hand on her belly. “This is where a child is supposed to grow within a woman. When a man takes her and reaches orgasm, he spills his seed inside…the white ejaculate from a man’s cock that you know too well. Within it is life to create a child between the man and the woman, one that will have a combination of both their features. For us, it might be your violet eyes and my blond hair. In some cases, the child looks remarkably like the mother or the father. It’s how our race on all the planes reproduces. How people are created outside of the lab.”

Arez could see he was serious and telling her the truth as he believed it. However, she didn’t see how it could be possible. “You’ve taken me before tonight, Lukan, but you never gave me a child. None of the guards or rulers did either.”

“They can’t,” he said, “nor can I.”

“Why?”

He grabbed her upper arms. “Because you and every other female slave in the Palace was bred to be sterile, Arez. You can’t reproduce. The rulers didn’t want anything to interfere with their pleasure.”

His outrage surprised and worried her. “And you?” she asked. “You can reproduce with another woman, one from Regina’s realm?”

“What are you asking?”

Wasn’t it obvious? “Do you think less of me? Will your love eventually die because I can never give you a child?”

“No!” He wrapped her in his embrace, holding her so fiercely it knocked the wind from Arez. “Never say that. Never think it.”

She hesitated before returning his caress. “I want to be able to measure up to you, Lukan. You know so much. You can fit in so easily with those in the other realm, while I—”

“You will too, I promise. I’ll teach you everything I know. If you want, I’ll ask Meelo and Damir to try and make you fertile again so we can have a child. Would you like that?”

How was she supposed to consider such a possibility when she hadn’t even known it existed until now? What kind of mother would she make when no one had taught her how to care for a child? Was love enough, or were there a myriad of other considerations that she couldn’t even imagine?

“I don’t know,” she answered. “What if someone took our child away? What if it ended up in the Palace as we did?” She pressed her fingertips into his back. “I couldn’t bear that, Lukan.”

“You wouldn’t have to. I won’t allow anyone to hurt you or a child we might have. Haven’t I proven that tonight?”

Repeatedly. But she didn’t want him coming to harm either. Nor did she want to have to choose between protecting him or their child. The thought was too awful, sapping what remained of her energy.

Lukan noticed. He settled her more comfortably against him, supporting her weight with his. “Tired?” he asked. “Or are you still worried?”

Both. She lied, “Neither. You?”

“Hungry.”

Arez expected him to reach for the peanut butter or the other food he’d brought. Instead, he moved his feet inside hers, using them to spread her legs widely. Once he had that part of her exposed, Lukan again held her wrists in one hand while using his other to explore her cleft, wet from her arousal and his seed.

Oh.
It felt so good, she purred, powerless against his touch.

Encouraged by the sound, he headed for her clit, playing with it.

In no time at all, the small rise of flesh was exquisitely sensitive. Her cunt thrummed with need. Pressing her mouth into her shoulder, Arez muffled her cry of delight, knowing that Lukan was using sex to distract her from what they’d discussed. He succeeded beautifully. Gone was her concern for his safety or that of children they might never have. No longer did she consider the barren childhood she’d known or that she’d never have a mother to love her.

Lukan’s arms were around her, his focus on her pleasure. For Arez, it was enough that she mattered to him.

She surrendered to her body’s need, yielding to his stroking and lusty kisses, climaxing twice before he allowed her to rest.

Her lids were gritty with sleep, her limbs too heavy to move. Beneath her huffing, Arez heard a curious sound that resembled fingers tapping against something solid, such as stone or wood. She wanted to be alarmed but couldn’t find the strength. “What is that?”

“Rain.”

Another answer she had difficulty understanding. “Is it bad? Will it harm us?”

He whispered, “No. From time to time, water drops from the sky to nourish the plants. It’s falling now.”

She fought fatigue to look, seeing golden strands of moisture sweeping the area, scattering the insects and causing the vegetation to bob. A gust of wind pushed inside the cave, its cool breath smelling fresh and clean.

Rarely had Arez experienced anything as pleasant. If she’d had the stamina and courage, she would have stood beneath the rain, allowing it to wash her.

As it was, she rested her head on Lukan’s shoulder. In response, he cupped her mound, claiming it again. She hoped he’d always do that.

“Sleep,” he murmured. “When Nikoli comes for us, I’ll wake you.”

“Will he come here as you did for me in the Palace?”

He kissed her cheek. “Yes.”

Despite how tired she was, Arez still had so many questions. “How did you get inside my room? You never told me. You said you would.”

He rocked her gently. “Through a portal. It’s a kind of path from Regina’s dimension to this one, much like a hall in the Palace that leads from one place to another. However, the portal creates a doorway where there wasn’t one before.”

“How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know. But the light within it is so intense it hurts to keep your eyes open. Cold wind always blows there.”

“The chill I felt,” she said, remembering, then asked, “Did you know when you entered it that you couldn’t go back without Nikoli’s help?”

“I knew I had to come for you. Nothing else mattered. I told him that. He promised to find us.”

“Soon?”

Lukan stopped rocking. He squeezed her gently. “Yes.”

He was lying. Arez heard his uncertainty. She felt it.

“We’ll be safe shortly,” he assured. “We’ll share our lives on Regina’s plane. Nothing will ever harm us again.”

Arez wanted to believe what he said. It was too frightening to consider anything else. Turning her face into him, she inhaled deeply of his scent, comforted by it. “Have I thanked you for saving me?”

He chuckled. “You will in the coming days, months and years. I’m going to make certain of it.”

“Tell me how,” she said. “Tell me what I’ll see when we leave here. Tell me everything you know.”

She wanted a taste of what they’d both miss if Nikoli failed to come for them.

Chapter Eleven

Nikoli stared at the materials Meelo and Damir had brought him, recalling his hope that the pieces of metal he held, the compound he’d used, would solve all the problems he’d had with the device.

Each was proving to be as inferior as the first set he’d worked with and far below E2’s standards for even its simplest materials.

Fuck.

He stopped himself from throwing the components against the wall. Rubbing his temples, he tried to regain his composure.

As much as he loved the emotion and vibrancy on Regina’s side, he loathed its antiquated knowledge. The scientists here had minds as good as those of his colleagues on E2, but endless rules hampered their efforts. None of those edicts made any sense to him. Just recently, he’d watched a female geneticist and a politician debating a new procedure that could spare their people the ravages of an inherited disease. The government official kept interrupting the woman, arguing that she wanted to play God.

Even if a deity existed, did the individuals on this side actually believe suffering was what it wanted for its creations? And to what end, if it had already allowed men to wage endless wars, create pockets of starvation and threaten the planet’s existence with nuclear and biological weapons?