Page 2 of Tamed By the Alien Warlord
“You bastard,” I spit.
He just smirks. “Welcome to life as my pet.”
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They call it The Ravager, but it might as well be called The Compensator. The ship is ridiculously huge—shaped like a weaponized stingray and bristling with enough firepower to make a small moon nervous. I’d roll my eyes if my neck weren’t constrained by a thick black collar that clinks every time I turn my head.
My wrists are still shackled behind my back, and he walks in front of me holding the leash like it’s just another Tuesday.
“Try to keep up, Human,” he growls over his shoulder, never breaking stride.
I do. Partly because I refuse to be dragged like a sack of space potatoes—and partly because I’ve got this low-level panic humming just beneath my skin. The leash tightens if I fall behind. The manacles dig in when I move too fast. And my brain? It’s doing an incredible job of screaming get out and jump him at the same time.
It’s the worst kind of contradiction. I should hate this. I do hate this. The whole being-collared-by-a-space-warlord thing isn’t exactly the dream. But my pulse says otherwise. My breath comes faster than it should. And every step he takes, I find myself staring at his broad back, the flex of muscle beneath that scarred armor, and thinking things like: He could do anything to me right now. Anything.
And that maybe—I wouldn’t stop him.
Which is disturbing. And possibly some kind of intergalactic Stockholm flu.
He leads me through the corridors, each one pulsing with dim red lights and the occasional Reaper pirate who pretends not to stare as I pass. I hold my head high, like dignity’s something I still have. Each guard post, every blast door, every access panel—I clock them all.
Because while I’m internally fantasizing about how his hands might feel if they were doing literally anything but dragging me to pirate jail, I’m still Georgia Lancaster. And I don’t go down without documenting everything first.
“You realize I’m still reporting, right?” I mutter as we stop outside a lift. The leash jerks lightly as he hits the call button. “This whole thing? All going on the record.”
He doesn’t even look at me. “What, gonna whine about pirates being pirates?”
“I’m going to expose what’s happening in the Badlands. You people are being squeezed out. Territory’s shrinking. Combine’s advancing. You’re being erased.”
He pauses, turning slowly. His eyes gleam in the low light—crimson and cutting. “You’re not wrong,” he says. “But that doesn’t make you safe.”
The lift opens. He yanks the leash gently and I follow, trying to pretend my legs aren’t jelly. I can feel every inch of him beside me, radiating heat and danger and something that short-circuits my brain.
We arrive at what I assume is the brig. Except, it’s… weirdly nice?
There’s a cot with sheets. A clean water basin. Even a plush chair. I blink. “What is this? The luxury suite of doom?”
“You’re a guest,” he says, walking me in. “Not a prisoner.”
I laugh. Bitter, breathless. “Is this a Reaper version of foreplay? Because newsflash—I’m not into leash kink.”
His eyes narrow. “You don’t shut up, do you?”
“Only when I’m?—”
He steps forward. Fast. I instinctively backpedal, but the leash snaps taut and jerks me to a stop.
My heart lurches. He’s inches from me now. I feel him watching every twitch of my mouth, every rapid rise of my chest.
He leans in. Voice low. “Careful, Human. You're one purr away from asking me to prove it.”
I hate the heat that floods me. The rush that follows. I hate that I want him to.
He reaches for the wall panel, slaps it. The door hisses shut between us, cutting me off mid-glare.
Hours pass. Maybe. Time bends in weird directions when you’re stuck in a plush brig, adrenaline crashing, heart pounding, and your wrists tingling from restraints that are no longer there—but might as well be.
He took them off. The manacles. The leash. Wordlessly. Like it was a chore, like I was a cargo delivery that needed unpacking. But the collar—he left that on.
