Illicit Desire: Outlawed Realm, Book 2 (6 page)

It was he, not this slave, who she felt probing her anus and slit, cleansing both openings for her masters’ use.

Would they take her tonight, or would Lukan join her on the stage as he’d done before?

Arez’s hope for that fell as her bath ended and a guard led her past the performance area to her room. What Lukan referred to as a cage. Velvet hangings decorated the stone walls, the red and purple shades rich and deep. Tall black candles burned in the corners of the space, creating a soft glow on the ebony silk draped across the bed.

Surrounding it were numerous chairs for those rulers who preferred to watch, rather than participate.

She climbed onto the mattress, large enough for herself and five men. Often, there were many more than the space allowed. Manacles lay at each of the four posts, ready to imprison her. Not that she ever had a chance of escape.

“You’ll know freedom someday,”
Lukan had said.

When? Now? Tonight? With him? How could he give her hope only to abandon her?

Why did you leave me? Come back. Please.

Even if they had nothing more than their servitude here, for Arez it would be enough. At least they’d be together, sharing whispers, perhaps a smile. Someday, they might have the opportunity to glance at each other for longer than a moment. Enough time to read an expression and to know what lay inside someone’s heart.

On her hands and knees, she spread her legs for the male slave whose fingers were slick from oil scented with lavender and vanilla, well-known aphrodisiacs. He applied the concoction liberally to her vaginal lips, clit and anus. When Lukan had done the same, she’d fought desire. Tonight, she struggled against melancholy, an emotion new to her. One she endured as the slave next applied musk to the tips of her breasts, the area beneath them, her throat, the insides of her thighs and the hollow between her buttocks. Every place a ruler might seek to enjoy her.

So many had. She’d spent a great deal of her life surrounded by others yet always alone. Prior to Lukan, she hadn’t realized something more existed or that she’d want it so desperately.

“Go on,” the guard said, breaking into Arez’s thoughts.

Obeying the directive, she remained passive as the male slave clamped the shackles around her wrists, slipping the chains over an eyebolt in the bed’s headboard. Footfalls sounded in the hall. The faint smacking of bare feet against the hard floor signaled another slave approaching, not a guard or a ruler. They began every evening fully dressed, including the shoes they wore.

“It’s to show our superiority to you,” a guard explained early on. “Your nudity proves your subservience. You have no choice to hide your body or who might use it and when. Every decision regarding your life and what happens with it belongs to us and the rulers alone.”

The footfalls continued, moving closer to this room. Arez didn’t know what to think. In the past, the slave who oiled and perfumed her was also the one she submitted to until the rulers took his place. Was tonight going to be different? Why?

The door opened.

Lukan? Had he returned?

No.

The male slave with the dark ringlets entered, carrying a tray of steaming meat, thick white bread, plump fruit, its red-and-green skin sparkling in the spare light. Beads of moisture trickled down goblets of water and another liquid Arez couldn’t identify.

Rulers poured into the room, each taking a seat, all regarding her nudity. Past them was more movement.

Again, her mind cried
Lukan
.

The man who entered had black hair, not blond. He was older than Lukan, his features rugged, not perfect, his dark eyes intense, the small scar on his cheekbone setting him apart from the rest. Identifying him.

Vakar.

Arez stared. Never had he used her. Why was he here tonight? She struggled to take a breath and failed.

With his full attention on her, Vakar closed and locked the door.

Chapter Four

Nikoli adjusted the living room shutters, watching Meelo, Damir and Lukan move away from the house to the sidewalk. There, Lukan stopped, lifting his face to the sky dusted with stars. After years of confinement on E4, he wore a look of wonder at being outside, surrounded by nothing more than the quiet night and fresh scents. To feel the breeze brushing against his skin and tugging his hair.

Blond strands fluttered across his forehead and neck. He didn’t bother to pull them away. In his eyes, Nikoli recognized the same yearning he’d known when honor and duty imprisoned him on E2. Seeing Regina for the first time, watching her through a portal, had changed that. Nikoli had wanted her so badly nothing mattered except destroying Sazaar and the other vampires before they could harm her. His actions were traitorous and could have led to execution in his realm.

He hadn’t cared about himself. Without Regina, he had no future, no life.

In that, he was the same as Lukan. The man loved Arez. Circumstances beyond his and Nikoli’s control had kept them from their women while also coaxing them nearer, as though to test what they could endure.

For Lukan, he’d had enough, reaching the end of his patience a short time before.

“You have the power to open portals,” he said to Nikoli. “You found your way to this realm. You’re going to help me travel back to E4, to Arez, so I can bring her here.”

He made it sound so easy when Nikoli knew it was not, having already done something similar. When he’d committed himself to rescuing Regina, he built a device that opened gateways at will, allowing him to travel freely from her realm to his. An act of treason on his part. At the time, he’d believed that no one, not even those in his government, had such an ability.

What the rulers had done to Lukan and countless other slaves—birthing them in the laboratories on E2 for transport to E4 and eventual servitude in the Pleasure Palace—convinced Nikoli otherwise.

The same as his father, Domm Zorr. The man had fashioned his own life, every decision he made based upon an objective appraisal of what duty and honor demanded. His happiness depended upon doing exactly what the rulers wanted. He coveted regulations that strangled a man’s soul and denied all emotion, thinking he’d found freedom.

Meelo convinced him otherwise, telling Domm the truth about Vakar and the other rulers.

“At first, your father didn’t want to believe,” Meelo had told Nikoli earlier. “Damir and I showed him images of what had been going on for nearly thirty years without his knowledge. How our rulers had duped all of us. We had a device from Vakar that would take us from E4 to our own realm but no farther. When we learned the rulers marked Lukan for execution, Damir and I begged Vakar to spare him. We promised to bring Lukan back to our lab to conduct experiments so we could perfect the newer slaves not yet born. Vakar agreed. With a chance to save Lukan, we decided to ask your father if he could help.”

“He told us the truth about you and what happened with Regina,” Damir said to Nikoli. “He misses you greatly.”

At the time, it had taken Nikoli a moment before he could speak. Too many emotions bubbled up, constricting his throat. He recalled his father’s plea for him to return to E2, then Domm’s resignation that he’d never see his son again. Nikoli knew his death would have been easier for the man to accept than knowing his child had turned his back on their people for a woman from another realm. For love, which E2’s populace were trained to dismiss as useless and possibly dangerous.

“Is he well?” Nikoli asked. A worry that had plagued him for months, along with so many others. “Is he safe?”

“Your father’s a brilliant man,” Meelo said. “No one will ever discover what he’s done.”

“What if they do?” Nikoli frowned. “Will he ever cross over to here?”

Damir shook her head. “His home is on E2. He’ll fight the corruption from there.”

“Alone?” Nikoli snapped.

She touched his shoulder. A gesture of empathy rarely used on E2. “There are others like us…like you, Nikoli. Our government didn’t convince everyone their way was best. Remaining there is what your father wants. The same as his decision to help us.”

He’d built a device to bring them from the Pleasure Palace and past E2 to here. However, the portal closed more swiftly than they’d predicted. Although Damir and Lukan were already on the other side, Meelo was only halfway through when the gateway narrowed around him. He fought to get loose, but the portal trapped the left side of his body, the intense pressure scarring his throat and cheek, injuring his arm, causing him to drop the device in the void between the dimensions.

With no desire to ever return to E2, Meelo hadn’t considered it a problem to lose the instrument. Lukan thought otherwise. He wanted a way back to Arez.

Nikoli watched Damir brushing Lukan’s windblown hair aside, resting her fingers on his cheek as a mother in this dimension might.

On what looked to be a sigh, Lukan lowered his face, his hunger for affection, his caution in believing it was real playing across his handsome features. Damir said something to him. Without comment or acknowledging her with a glance, Lukan went down the street. She and Meelo followed, all of them disappearing into the night.

Tomorrow, they’d return. Meelo promised to bring Nikoli the materials he needed to construct the device. No one asked if he’d actually do it, particularly Regina. She’d gone upstairs to their bedroom shortly before the others had left.

Nikoli no longer heard her pacing.

The thought of facing her worry or anger daunted him more than returning to his own realm to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Was she sitting in one of the chairs near the window, calmly waiting for him when they both knew she could be quite agitated at times? Would she argue against him helping Lukan, tangling objectivity and emotion until Nikoli was too confused to know how to respond? Would she withdraw into silence, her thoughts the same as his? That he’d lost all good sense in crossing over and promising to stay here, letting his feelings guide him.

Perhaps his father and the others on E2 had been right. What had giving in to his lust and love accomplished for Regina? He’d exposed her to vampires, his father’s disdain, and now two genetic scientists and a pleasure slave intent on murdering her and him if Nikoli didn’t help.

Hardly the future Regina or any sane woman expected. One that would most likely continue. Who else…what else…might cross over from the other dimensions and come here to harm her?

He should leave. It would be a blessing she’d understand, possibly one she wanted after tonight, giving her a chance to find a man from her own realm. Someone who’d love Regina without exposing her to danger.

Rubbing his forehead, Nikoli left the living room, thinking he could go to the house Meelo was renting with the cash he’d won. The older man had also purchased fake licenses, social security numbers and identities for himself, Damir and Lukan.

“At a market that’s dark,” Meelo had explained.

“Black market,” Regina corrected, sounding as though she might laugh or scream.

Nikoli couldn’t blame her. He had to do what was right.

At Meelo’s place, he’d build a device so Lukan could rescue Arez, and then he’d find a permanent place to live. By all that was reasonable, he knew his new home should be far from here, certainly on another realm. However, love—primal and deep—urged him to remain close so he could check on Regina without her knowing it, assuring himself she was safe and happy.

He stopped at the front door, his hand poised near the lock. A part of him wanted Regina to run down the stairs, demanding to know where he was going…begging him to stay. A greater part knew how sentimental and foolish such thoughts were.

Go on, get out of here. It’s what best for her.

He unlocked the deadbolt and grabbed the knob, but didn’t turn it.

Leave. Now.

Nikoli couldn’t move.

Above him, the floor creaked beneath Regina’s weight, breaking his inertia. Nikoli threw the lock and took the steps two at a time, crossing the hall quickly to their bedroom, drawn to her by a force more powerful than reason or honor.

Nightlights shaped like flowers and cats bathed the room in a delicate glow, sparkling off the brass bed, creating long shadows on the ivory comforter, making the space seem more the stuff of dreams than reality. Regina’s peaches-and-vanilla scent added to the allure. So inviting.

Her manner intimidating.

In front of the large window she stood, arms crossed over her chest, hands on her elbows, keeping her back to him.

He should have left when he’d had the chance.

He still couldn’t bring himself to do so. In her presence, Nikoli had few defenses but had never minded. Not if she allowed him to continue loving her.

For the moment, he would have been content to run his fingers through her fiery hair, the red color unknown on E2, the same as her green eyes. He glanced at her reflection in the window to see if she was frowning in concern or irritation at tonight’s events.

At this angle, her image showed little. Was she going to stand there all night? Would she ever turn to face him?

Unable to bear his doubt any longer, Nikoli moved behind Regina. He wrapped his arms around hers, loving her body’s sweet warmth and softness. “Talk to me.”
Tell me nothing has changed between us.