Pleasure Bound - Complete (61 page)

“These Death Valley Boys,” Piper breathed harshly, as she struggled to keep pace with his long stride. “Exactly why are you so scared of them? I mean if you were one of them, wouldn’t they be your friends or something?”

“Cath has put a death bounty on my head. I am sure they would not hesitate to collect on it by killing me and returning my body to her. Also, I am afraid for you. The things they do to women…” To his surprise, he couldn’t even finish the sentence as visions of naked women tied to trees getting whipped daily, and many other atrocities zapped into his mind. Just the thought of what could happen to petite Piper brought an icy wave of chills cascading through him.

“You’re worried about me?” Surprise was quite evident in her voice, and he looked down to see her delicate brows knitted together with confusion.

“If you are who you say you are, the Hero brothers would never forgive me if something happened to you.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed at his answer.

“Just as I would never forgive them if something happened to my twin who is in their care.”

“Your twin?”

“Yes, Virgin, she is with the youngest Hero brother, Buck.”

Piper nodded. “I have a twin, too. Her name is Kinley.” By the pain quite evident in her voice, he knew instantly she was one of the missing women. He remembered she’d said Kayla was the jogger. Kayla was the one who’d joined the Breeders group so that meant Kinley had been the one in the struggle with the two males.

“Does she look like you?” he asked, suddenly wanting to know more about Piper.

“Yes, we look pretty much alike. She’s a couple of inches taller, just a touch thinner. But our attitude toward life is very different. She’s really outgoing and popular, and I’m the quiet one who prefers to stay at home. How about you and your twin?” she asked. “Do you two look alike?”

“We look similar. But our hair color is different. She is a yellow hair.”

She looked momentarily puzzled then smiled prettily. “You mean she’s a blonde. It figures, Buck always preferred blondes.”

“And what about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Do you prefer a male with yellow hair?”

She shook her head. “Hair color doesn’t matter to me. I prefer a man who is kind and gentle, and totally in love with me for who I am.”

Love? That was a magical word with the Hero brothers and the women they’d taken for themselves. He remembered Virgin saying a word to that effect to Piper’s brother Buck when Jarod and Taylor visited their small village on occasion to learn more of his planet Merik’s language from the women and other skills from the males. He recalled how when Virgin or the other women mentioned the love word, the males’ eyes had sparkled with a strange glow of happiness. Wait a minute—there was more than one word… Jarod tried to think back.

I love you
.

That’s what they said to each other. Those were the magical words that had them in each other’s arms and kissing tenderly.

Odd how those magical words made people feel happy.

Perhaps if he used those words on Piper, he would be able to push away her worry for her sisters? Perhaps he could make that special look glow in her eyes that he saw in the others’ eyes?

He dared a quick glance at her. The sight of her flushed face, tangled dark-brown hair that cascaded down to the middle of her back, and the way her small breasts heaved against the cloth that barely covered her curves made him want to take her into his arms, cradle her protectively against his chest and never let her go. He’d felt that way ever since he’d found her in the swamp.

Every day as she’d lain on his bed, her lithe body undulating beneath his exploring hands and his eager mouth as she was ravished by the fever sex dreams, his protective instincts toward her had grown stronger along with other instincts, such as coupling with her forever and doing anything she asked of him, including leading her directly to the Hero males.

At that thought, he almost stopped in his tracks. Aside from what she’d told him, he really had no proof her mission into The Outer Limits wasn’t a ploy to make him think she really did know those Hero males. For all he knew she could be working with Cath.

He shivered at the thought of Cath and the painful things she’d done to him while he’d been locked away under her control inside the prison.

No, he couldn’t say those magical words to Piper. Not until he was sure she was who she said she was, and even then, he couldn’t say those words because she was a woman. Past experience had taught him women were never to be trusted.

“You’re too quiet. What are you thinking?”

A light breeze picked that exact moment to wash her delicate female scent all around him.

I’m thinking of mounting you
.
Of making you throb with so much pleasure
,
you will never want to leave me
.

“I am thinking it is time to eat and drink, and find some place to sleep.”

Her fingers tightened in his hand ever so slightly at his last word. He swallowed hard. Tonight he would find it extremely hard not to mount her. Tonight he would find it difficult not to show her what a male sex slave can only dream of doing to a woman.

* * * * *

They’d eaten quickly, and now Piper could see Jarod watching her through the moonlit night. He had barely taken his eye off her. Had hardly said a word to her and every time he so much as flexed a gorgeous muscle, her pulse faltered with excitement.

Those flashbacks she was having about him were increasing.

The liquid of heated desire was dripping between her legs.

No matter how hard she forced her thoughts away from the flashbacks about the shadowy figure stroking his cock while she’d lain on his bed whimpering and begging him to fuck her, they wouldn’t stay away.

The familiar stirrings of lust were beginning to grow again, and she forced herself to gaze around at their surroundings in an effort to stall the lusty feelings from grabbing hold of her yet again.

He’d picked a romantic spot for them to rest for the night. The ground beneath her consisted of soft, warm, dry moss. Their walls were rocks, which concealed them from any prying eyes that might be lurking around in the night, and their roof was a glowing sky full of flickering white clouds that danced in a black sky. Back home, they called them the Northern Lights.

The light show was capped off with a full moon shining down on them like a spotlight.

Since their earlier kiss and exploring touches, the sexual tension simmered between them while they’d traveled along the outskirts of the giant cemetery.

He’d spoken in hushed whispers, explaining that her brothers figured the skeletons had probably been here for many, many years, preserved by the sun’s unusual lack of harmful ultraviolet rays and lack of continuous severe weather. They’d even speculated that perhaps some bones were from a previous civilization that had for some unknown reason left the area of the vastly unexplored Outer Limits.

Now as he sat near her, watching her intently as if she was his prey ready to be pounced on, Piper couldn’t help but be curiously eager to know more about this sexy hunk and more about the Death Valley Boys, and why they’d been having sex with that queen in the dismal surroundings of a cemetery.

She swallowed at the excited dryness in her throat, and forced herself to ask her questions

“While you were living with those…Death Valley guys, did you…did you do what those men did? Take one woman between several of you?”

“Yes.”

Her breath caught at his quick answer.

He was watching her carefully, the corners of his sensual mouth tipping upwards ever so lightly as if he found her question amusing.

“What is it exactly you wish to know?” he asked, his gaze grew more intense.

Have mercy, the man got to the point fast, didn’t he?

“Tell me about these Death Valley Boys. Why did you think that queen hadn’t been…vaginally penetrated for some time? Why did they do what they did to her in front of a dead man? I mean you mentioned it was a ritual…how did that come about?”

His smiled widened.

“You are so curious for such a petite woman. I will tell you what I know. The Death Valley village is only a little over three years old. It was started by the males who were able to escape the Slave Uprising alive.”

Slave Uprising? How interesting.

She noted how he’d visibly tensed as he spoke of this Uprising, and she realized he was venturing into a very touchy subject.

“In Death Valley, the males are only allowed to fuck a woman anally unless they wish to breed her. It keeps the woman sexually on edge, keeps her wanting to be vaginally penetrated. She is more controllable that way. Fucking a woman vaginally in front of a fallen comrade was turned into a tradition to show the Goddess of Freedom that what she did to us males has now come back to haunt any captive woman in the severest form of revenge. It is to show the Goddess how sexually deprived a Death Valley woman can get without the services of a male, and how she becomes so eager to be vaginally penetrated she is willing to have it done to her even by numerous men and in front of dead bodies.”

“Oh, my gosh, what did this Goddess do?”

“Centuries ago, she decreed all males to be enslaved. It has been that way ever since.”

Piper’s heart lurched as she remembered her brother’s message. Remembered that men were considered nothing more than slaves. What Jarod was saying only confirmed it.

“Who was she? She must have been very powerful to change a whole way of life.”

“From what my twin taught me, the Goddess of Freedom came from somewhere in the vastly unexplored Outer Limits many hundreds of years ago. She did not agree with the ways of the males, who had enslaved all women. She led a successful revolt against them. Most males were killed. A few were imprisoned and used for breeding purposes. This eventually led to the use of specially designed machines. These machines are used to impregnate women who are sentenced to prison and to a number of babies depending upon the severity of their crime.”

Fucking machines that impregnate women? Was this guy kidding her? The seriousness in his face told that he was telling her the truth.

“Women are sentenced to babies?”
Instead of years
? It was unbelievable.

He nodded. “It happened to my twin, Virgin. Because of me, she was accused of educating sex slaves, a severe offense. She was then imprisoned and sentenced to babies for the rest of her childbearing years.”

“Why because of you?”

Jarod sighed heavily, and she could see guilt swooping in around him like a sweltering blanket.

“I was forced to lie. Forced into telling the governing Five Queens that my twin educated me and several other slaves.”

“Why would they make you say something that wasn’t true?”

“It was a partial truth. She only educated me, but I in turn secretly educated other males. But I was forced to say she had educated many and not just me.”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself. I think she did a wonderful job with you. You speak very well.”

He didn’t say anything but by the twinkle in his eye he seemed happy to hear her compliment.

“You said you were forced to lie about the others. Why would someone force you to lie?”

“Not someone. Cath.”

Piper shivered at his suddenly steely voice. He had mentioned this woman named Cath before and he was making her sound as if she wasn’t even human.

“She had me beaten, brainwashed with drugs until I was saying things she wanted me to say. She has caused much trouble. She has betrayed several queens. She has gotten them out of the way so she can rule herself. She is much worse than the Goddess of Freedom ever was because Cath wants every male dead or under strict female control. One day, if I get a chance, I will kill her.”

Piper trembled at his words, and instinctively she knew he spoke the truth. Whatever horrors he’d suffered at her hands had instilled a hatred that would only get worse in time.

“Whatever she did to you isn’t worth murdering her over.”

His breath caught and he stilled in the moon glow. A muscle flexed in his jaw. Realized a fresh brand of tension zipped through the air.

He stared at her. His one eye was unreadable but the rest of his body suggested she’d betrayed him by saying the wrong thing. For the first time since she’d known him, she recognized the tiniest tinge of fear slithering through her. Everything inside her stilled, making her wary.

He was a big man. Wide shoulders. Large hands that were clenched into frustrated fists.

Should she maybe be afraid of him?

They were all alone. He was a stranger. She knew nothing about him. He could do whatever he wanted to do to her and no one would ever know.

Her brothers certainly didn’t have a clue she was here. Her sisters didn’t know she was with Jarod. Even NASA hadn’t been informed about this secret mission to Paradise.

NASA had made it perfectly clear that from her brothers’ reports their astronauts would steer clear of this planet.