Page 31 of Taken to Kor
“Good. Because I need you here with me.”
She nods, inhales sloppily, and shudders. Then she straightens and when she blinks, I know that it’s me she sees. “I’m with you, Rhork.”
I feel my lips jerk up. I want to tell her that she always will be, but I know she’s not ready to hear that. So I just think it and out loud, whisper, “Good. Now tell me what to do with these humans.”
I release her wrists as she turns around again, as if the answer is written in one of the tanks. When she comes back around to face me she laughs lightly, but it’s a real laugh this time. One that swims uncertainly into her eyes and makes her shoulders jump in small pulses. “I have no idea, Rhork.”
“Where would you suggest we begin?”
Her face scrunches and when she responds, it’s in a question. “Getting the tanks onto your ship, but leaving the people in them until we figure out where they’ll live?”
I nod. “Good. That’s what I think, too.”
“You do?”
“Ontte.”
“You aren’t going to take the women out to perform shekurr?”
“Rip them out of their tubes and rut them immediately? That’s what you think I’m capable of?”
“I…”
I frown in the wake of her silence, then shake my head and chuckle softly, “I suppose I have given you no reason to think otherwise. But centare, Deena. I will not unleash our world onto them until we have a plan. You and me.” I advance on her in slow steps and imagine that I can feel her pulse accelerate beneath the thin bones of her chest and all throughout her lush curves.
“Me?”
“Ontte. You.”
Another deep breath makes her breasts rise. A dire threat to my cock’s already tenuous equilibrium. Luckily, what she says next helps, “Okay. Okay, I can do this. Give me back my blaster. Just in case more of the stupid bathmats show up.” She shudders again on an inhale, but I can see her fighting madly, savagely against it. She can do this.
“You can do this,” I laugh darkly as I go to her, wrap an arm around her head and bring her in to my chest. I whisper in her ear and though it is a simple statement, I mean it as a promise. “We will make a pirate out of you yet.”
7
Deena
I don’t have a complete grasp on reality when I wake up. All I know is that it’s dark and even though I’ve never been afraid of the dark before, I’m afraid now. Am I back in the basement? Somehow, that thought is worse than any other. I’m distantly aware that a lot has happened since I was in the basement but right now, in the cold face of total darkness, I can’t believe that I’m anywhere else.
I can’t believe that I got out.
Not likewow! I can’t believe how great it is that I got out of that hell box!More likeThere’s no possible way I got out of that nightmare cell because Mathilda is always and has always been one step ahead. She must have abducted me back from Rhork and the pirates somehow…
Rhork.
I’m with Rhork.
I’m…Rhork…he…he came for me and I gave up…gave up the humans and…no…there were no humans…there were just…carpets…carpets? I shiver at the memory of carpets that I can’t fully place. It’s not cold — or is it? Where am I? In the basement? With Mathilda? With Rhork?
I open my mouth but I’m scared to ask for him. What if he’s not here and Mathilda laughs at me? It’ll crush me.
My arms are shaking. What am I lying on? It’s weird and lumpy and…is it moving? Shit! What is this? Where am I! I whimper and the sound of my own voice makes me jolt. I’m just about to escalate the situation and spiral into full blown panic when a burst of light flares behind me and then dies too quickly for me to turn to face it and see where I am.
My heart is pounding. I’m not alone. There are footsteps and they sound heavy, even though they’re muted by something beneath them. Not beneath me though, because I’m on this lumpy fluffy thing that feels like some sort of creature doing a dance under my shaking hands and knees every time I move.
“Mathilda?” I wheeze, paralyzed by fear and a knowing that she’ll find me wherever I escape to.
The footsteps stall. A low light flares up over my head. Just a spark, like a candle embedded right in the ceiling. It’s orange glow spiderwebs out from a central point and provides just enough light to douse the whole world around me in an intimacy that hits me right in the gut when I glance over my shoulder and see Rhork.
