Page 22 of The Captain's Pet
Firth gave the younger officer a pitying look. “High Command isn’t going to like the idea of this ship cutting its mission short for a questionable change in captaincy. And these cells aren’t designed to keep this many for a long period of time. Garen has no intention of taking us back for a formal hearing.”
It took a while for Narith to work out what options that left Garen with. His eyes went wide. “Surely he won’t just kill us. He can’t do that.”
“He’s not supposed to do that,” Firth amended. “The coward doesn’t have the balls to kill us outright, not yet. But once he’s feeling more secure as the new captain, he’ll find a way to get rid of us.”
Narith turned those guileless eyes on Kell. “What are we going to do, sir?”
The question made Kell’s stomach turn because he didn’t have any solace to give. “I don’t know, but we’ll think of something.” He clapped the junior officer on the shoulder and hoped he looked more optimistic than he felt.
Chapter seven
Byunspokenagreement,theboys talked very little with each other. No one mentioned Wid’s beating or remarked on the frequent head counts done by taciturn security throughout the day. Everyone drifted along, much as they’d done the first few days of captivity. Everyone also understood without it being directly stated that no more explorations of the ships electrical conduits would be conducted until things had blown over. If they ever did, that is.
The soothing waters had made short work of Wid’s sore ass, but the humiliation of the beating lingered, as did his anger. He supposed he was lucky that Kell had restricted the punishment to something so mundane. He was surprised too about how the alien had opened up to him afterward. He’d known Kell missed his family. He just hadn’t known how much or that he considered Wid’s presence more of a burden than a pleasure.Of course that could have been merely temper seeping out. Kell certainly had managed to overcome his irritation to use Wid’s body often enough.
Not last night, though. Wid had expected to be fucked long and hard once they’d returned to the captain’s quarters. It was a logical cap to a crappy day and one that would have served to cow Wid even more than what amounted to a really bad spanking. He’d dreaded it, didn’t think he could stand to have those hands on him after everything else. But Kell had surprised him also by leaving him alone. If nothing else, the alien wasn’t turned on by brutality. Small comfort.
While he couldn’t bring himself to tell the others, he was sure Kell had worked out how Wid had escaped the room. The lie about slipping past one of the officers was a lame one, born from desperation. It wouldn’t have explained why Wid had been found lying on the floor, either. Kell wasn’t stupid. If he hadn’t figured it out yet, he would soon, then all hopes of escape would be dashed, and it was all Wid’s fault. The pain of the failure stung worse than any beating and no amount of lounging in the pool would ease it.
The day seemed unusually long to him, so when the doors opened, he almost felt relief. Instead of Kell, however, Garen strode in. Behind him were other aliens only vaguely familiar to Wid. There was a general murmur of confusion among the boys and Stuart actually cried out in alarm. He needn’t have worried. Garen headed straight for Wid.
“Where is Captain Kell?” he demanded as the officer pulled a leash out of his belt. What a moronic question. Obviously the captain had decided to rid himself of his pesky pet.
In way of an answer, the alien backhanded Wid hard enough to send him sprawling on the floor. Wid’s eyes blurred from the impact and he tasted blood. Before he could pull himself up, the alien hauled him to his feet and attached the leash. All aroundthem, the boys were being grabbed and subdued. Wid saw Joel and Jordan fighting with their new captor, only to be roughed up in return. Still dazed from the blow, Wid could only stumble in the wake of Garen, who yanked him hard enough to choke him.
This was bad—very, very, bad. He hadn’t forgotten the condition Stuart had been in after nights spent with this Travian. Kell, that cowardly fucker, had decided to punish Wid through a proxy. He coughed as the metal around his neck tightened, even though he wasn’t struggling against the pull of the leash. Garen simply yanked it because he could. Despite the pain and disorientation of the assault, Wid realized that they were entering Kell’s quarters. What the fuck? Was the captain planning on a three-way?
Something was off. The quarters were different. He didn’t have much time to dwell on what, but he thought the room’s contents had changed. He was sure of it when they entered the sleeping chamber. The bedding was a different color and texture. He had only a second to think it before Garen unhooked the leash. The alien stared down at him afterward, his expression clearly one of self-satisfaction. Wid made eye contact briefly, unsure of whether he dared show defiance. It didn’t matter. The officer hit him again, then again, and not just in the face. Wid had the breath knocked out of him with a blow to the stomach and cried out on a kidney punch. The toe of the alien’s large boot mashed his balls.
Stuart’s words came to Wid as he lay retching on the floor.He kept hitting me even when I stopped fighting him. This was foreplay for the alien, no matter how passive Wid became. He tensed for another blow when those large alien hands reached for him. Fingers dug into his shoulders, grinding his bones into the joints, as he was lifted up and tossed face down on the bed. Oh God, of course this was next. With his eyes screwed tight, heclutched at the bedding, waiting for the pain that was coming. Dreading it.
And in those few seconds before Garen invaded his body, Wid felt another kind of fear. Not just for himself, but for Kell. Garen had assumed the captaincy and that had to mean mutiny. Kell would never cede command willingly. It also had to mean Kell was dead. Wasn’t that how mutiny worked? A junior officer killed the captain and took control of the ship? He screamed inside his head at the thought. No, he didn’t want that, had never really wanted that. Kell had been a good man, doing his duty to the best of his ability, missing his family like Wid missed his. At some point, Kell had become more than Wid’s captor. He had truly become Wid’s lover too, and the idea that he was dead hurt far more than anything Garen could ever do to him.
Wid skidded on the slick floor when Garen shoved him into the boys’ room the next morning. His body racked with pain, he didn’t even bother to try to stand. Instead he crawled over to the pool and slunk into the soothing water. Vaguely aware of the others being there already, he was too wrapped up in his own misery to pay them much mind. They in turn said nothing to him, whether because they were in bad shape too or could see from his condition that he needed space, he didn’t know and didn’t care.
Submersing himself, he waited for the ‘magic’ water to do its thing, coming up for air only when his lungs burned worse than his ass. His aches eased quickly and it wasn’t long before he had healed enough to surface for good and paddle over to sit on one of the underwater benches. Only then did he feel up to taking a look around. Joel, Stuart and the others were in worse shape than they had been since the very first days of the captivity, butnone appeared as bad off as he. No one did more than sit and stare off into space or with closed eyes.
“How is everyone doing?” Wid asked. Even though he hadn’t been elected their leader or anything, he still felt responsible for all of them. He was also the one who’d been caught and if this was the result of that? Well, the guilt gnawed at him.
“I think we’re all better off than you are,” Joel replied. “Although it’s all relative.” He wiped at a black eye he sported. “These new guys were spoiling for a fight, regardless of what we did.”
Stuart, who sat next to Joel, choked back a sob. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop crying,” he whispered, when Joel wrapped an arm around his shoulders and hugged him tight. “I thought things would be at least okay, even if we couldn’t find a way off the ship.” His breath hitched. “I liked Narith. He was nice to me and now he’s in the brig, maybe because of us.”
Wid sat up straighter. “He is? Are you sure?”
Stuart sniffled. “I cried when the new guy fucked me and he told me to get used to his cock because Narith was never getting out of the cage he’d been locked in. I figured that meant he’d been thrown in the brig.”
Sudden hope blossomed inside Wid. If Garen held Narith in the brig, maybe he hadn’t killed Kell after all. Just because that’s the way mutiny worked in old Earth vids didn’t mean the Travians operated in the same manner. If he’d learned nothing else in all of this, he knew the Travians saw things differently from humans. If Kell still lived, they stood a chance of turning this mutiny around.
“If Kell and the other officers are all in the brig, we need to get them out.”
“Seriously?” Joel challenged. “What difference does it make who’s raping us?”
Wid held up his hand where three of his fingers were still healing from being broken in order to give his new master extra pleasure. As crooked as they still were, he didn’t have to explain what happened. The others boys’ gazes took them in.
“It matters.” He didn’t bother explaining his newly accepted affection for the alien. Other than Stuart, perhaps, the other boys wouldn’t understand his feelings—might even despise him for them. Or maybe many of them had also gained affection for their captors and would understand completely. He couldn’t take the chance, however. As crazy as it seemed, they did look to him for leadership, and right now he needed their full cooperation.
He looked up at the wall where he’d found the original opening to the conduits. Maybe Kell might not have had time to figure out how he’d ended up outside the room or maybe he hadn’t had time to share the knowledge with anyone else. There had been regular checkups on them throughout the day, and chances were good they’d continue. As a plan formed in his mind, he knew they’d have to time it well to avoid being caught.
