Page 9 of Taken to Kor
“Well, I think you’re positively adorable. Big bad pirate wandering space totally lost trying to find a little ole’ defective human. Just darling, really.”
Silence. I think I hear him grumbling words to someone else, but they’re all indistinct until he says, “Tell me where you are and I will punish you less.”
I laugh at that. It isn’t genuine so much as it is loud. I flip my hair up and down, the tips of my long locs spanking me in between the shoulder blades as I stand back up. I totter as I do, catching myself on one of the chairs. “You know, you’re not very good at this. Don’t you know bribery comes before threats?”
“Is that what Mathilda taught you?”
“Centare,” I shudder. “Mathilda went straight for punishment. But that’s not a step available to you right now, because you aren’t here.”
He doesn’t answer again, not right away. It makes me angry to hear his voice but only because I hate how I wait…just wait…Need. He knew…the whole time he knew how much I needed. He had the whole universe at his fingertips. I had him and nothing else.
“Got nothing to say to that, cutie pie?” The pod lurches before he can answer and I fall to my knees, banging them hard on the floor.
“Sit down before you kill yourself on accident,” Rhork hisses.
“Can you see me!” I shout, voice still just as loud as it was before. I clear my throat and try again. “CAN YOU SEE ME!” Nope. Not any better.
“If I could see you, don’t you think I’d be asking you for something else?” I don’t know what he means but the tenor of his voice coupled with the sudden lurch of the pod makes me stumble again. “Deena! Sit down.”
“You ain’t the boss of me,” I shout even as I amble awkwardly with my twisted leg over to the chair with the control pad. Grabbing hold of the arm rests, I yank myself up into the seat and pull up the star map plotting our trajectory —my trajectory, remember? Rhork isn’t here. That’s right. Heisn’there. Maybe he never even was. Maybe, this whole time, he’s just been a figment of my imagination because I well and truly am a psycho. I frown at that. And then my cross-eyed confusion manages to uncross itself enough to make sense of the blinking dots and bright squiggly lines. My jaw drops.I’m almost there. At the heart of this asteroid field, I’ll be there. The first to reach the other humans hiding in their satellite in a hundred rotations. Maybe more.
“Buckle yourself in.”
“Centare,” I pout, but Rhork still exhales deeply the moment I’ve got the belt fastened, making me want to shout CAN YOU SEE ME all over again.
“Fine,” he sputters, sounding momentarilydeeplyexhausted. I should know, I’ve had almost an entire rotation to study his voice’s many shades and tones. It almost makes me feel sorry for him. Then I remember Svera, how she looked when I saw her on a slab waiting for Rhork to come and…forceher.I didn’t think he was capable of that.Even though I knew that really all beings in this universe are truly terrible, I somehow thought he wasn’t.
Ha. Who am I kidding? He wasallI had. Hehadto be the best, the most beautiful.
I won’t waste any regrets on him though.No, he’s just as wretched as everybody else and anything good I ever saw in him is just a product of my loneliness.
“Fine, what?”
“Fine. I will bribe you.”
“Sweet. Whatcha got, Rhorky bear?”
He growls, hating the condescending nicknames I’ve given him over the solars. This one he hates more than most. “If you tell me your coordinates, stay there and wait for me to come pick you up, I will not make you perform shekurr for my brothers.”
“Oh wow. This is quite a bribe. Just picturing it now…sigh…nothaving to shove thirty monster cocks inside me all at once. How lovely.”
“Don’t make me do this the hard way, Deena,” he says and his voice does get deeper, and yes, it does make my toes curl against the cold floor. I’m not wearing shoes.Why would grandmother dearest give me shoes? That would make it easier to run.
“Back to threats are we? So fast? Let me see… the things I’d rather do than do shekurr with you and your brothers.” I lift one hand and start to make a list. “I’d rather impale myself on an asteroid, throw myself out of an airlock, drink a hundred more of those nasty black tube drinks. You know what? Instead of thirty cocks all at once, I’d rather grow a cock out of each of my eyes.”
Silence. “That is a wholly disturbing image.”
I smile and kick my feet in the chair, having a jolly good time. “Ontte, well so is the image of me with you and all your brothers.”
“How about just me?”
My smile falls. My feet still, toes barely touching the floor and only if I edge as far forward in my seat as I can without falling off of it. “What?”
“Does this image also disturb you?” He breathes and his voice is doing that damning, twisted thing it does for me. It dances in the dark, like some kind of sultry strip tease. I’m not…used to boys talking to me like that.
But he’s a monster. I’m defective. And I haven’t had access to boys in rotations. I’m just messed up. I know that…I know it. But in the moment, it’s hard to remember it.
“Of course,” I finally choke, but my voice cracks and I know that he hears it when he chuffs out light laughter. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” My fingers tense around the arms of my chair. I feel my face getting all hot and am glad he can’t see me.Not just because of my blush, but because I’m me.“You’re not going to catch me and even if you do, I’m not going down without a fight.” Or flight. Right now, flight seems like the better option of the two.
