Sextus Read online

  Now his disgusting member is bigger, harder, and an even scarier shade of scarlet. I can see why some people pray for death.

  He takes a step toward me, increases the pace of his masturbation, and jets his viscous mucous-colored goo onto my cheek.

  I’d been so consumed by my terror, I’d almost forgotten the torturous fiery agony eating away at my cheek. But no matter how disgusting the substance looks, it provided instant, complete relief from the pain.

  So, their spit is acid and their ejaculate is base? I don’t understand, and I’m not sure I want to know. I’m just thankful for the blessed relief even though it came out of the end of that nauseating cockroach dick.

  Rantin’s panel closes over his now-flaccid penis, and he steps aside in time for me to see Khour throw his head back in uproarious laughter.

  “Oh, little female, the look of terror on your face was priceless. Better than the Broog—well, not—but excellent nonetheless. I’ll watch that recording over and over. You should have seen your surprise when he came on your face. Here, watch. Comms!” he orders, “Comms, replay that scene on the screen. And female, if you close your eyes I’ll have Rantin hold your eyes open and make you watch it again.”

  I try to breathe, relax my shoulders, and focus on the miracle that I’m feeling no pain in my right cheek. It will take supreme self-control not to close my eyes. Pretend it’s a movie, Lexa. Pretend it’s just the magic of Hollywood. Just watch. Don’t close your eyes.

  I breathe again, focus on complex multiplication problems, and watch the short human female in the t-shirt with a bright-red slash running down her cheek. Her eyes are wide in horror and her mouth is a rictus of fear. Her head jerks back in surprise when the goo splatters her face. There, that was interesting.

  When the little show is over, I slide my gaze back to Khour’s on the screen. Something just shifted inside me. I don’t know whether it was the fact that I avoided being raped by a seven-foot-tall cockroach, or that my face isn’t on fire, or that I’m in the company of a bunch of fucking sociopaths who can garner a good laugh from another sentient being’s misery. But fuck them all. I’ll figure out a way to survive this ordeal.

  “How far are you from my estate on Ortheon II?” Khour asks.

  “Twenty-six hoaras, sir.”

  “Keep her alive and fed. Little human, you’ll tell me where the Broog is when you arrive here or you will die.”

  His image flickers off.

  Sextus

  I tried to keep Lexa from giving me her money; I didn’t think I’d have any need for it. But the gold came in handy, allowing me to upgrade from the Arum to the Morsus, a vessel with a state-of-the-art matter transporter.

  I always knew I’d die in my quest to kill Khour, and that never bothered me. After all, I had nothing to live for. But what if I kill Khour and live? I could circle back to Salute and stay with Lexa a while. I’m not a forever type of male, but I could see myself spending time with her for a season or two.

  It’s still a long shot that I could kill Khour and make an escape, but the transporter makes it a possibility.

  Marcus, the Tranquility’s pilot, heard intel on comms. He followed it to its source and discovered Khour’s on Ortheon II. I set my coordinates and blast into hyperspace.

  As the Morsus hurtles through the galaxy, I have nothing to do but think about my little Earther. No, I correct myself, the little Earther. She’s so much better off without me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lexa

  It’s been a very long day since we started our journey to Ortheon II. Khour made it pretty clear he doesn’t want me touched, so the roaches have given me a wide berth.

  They fed me a couple of nutrition bars and let me use the restroom. I know I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but it’s obvious that room hasn’t been cleaned in a decade or two.

  I can easily say the smell in there was worse than the filth. I used the “hover method” to relieve myself, but breathing? That was harder.

  I shouldn’t complain. At least I’m alive. There was a shiny piece of metal where a mirror would normally be over the sink. I gathered enough nerve to look at my reflection. Unless Rantin’s spunk has additional magical healing properties, I think I’m going to have a huge scar. But I guess that’s preferable to being dead.

  I’ve given a lot of thought to what to tell Khour. I can’t tell him I don’t know where the painting is. That ship has sailed, I told him I knew its location. Besides, he’d kill me right away if I told him that. Well, maybe not right away.

  At the club on Lusion I caught him checking out my boobs on more than one occasion. I think he’ll find a way to entertain himself before he dispatches me—and I don’t think I’ll like it nearly as much as he will.

  Really, it boils down to two choices. I can tell them the painting’s on the Tranquility, which will endanger everyone on board, or I can say it’s on the Arum with Sextus.

  They don’t know much about the Tranquility, although I’m sure their intel told them that’s the ship we used to escape the gambling planet. But they know the money and painting belonged to Sex and me. Khour will go after Sextus, which might actually be doing him a favor. Didn’t Sex say he wasn’t sure how to find Khour? Now Khour can find him.

  So where do I fit in? No matter how many scenarios I run in my imagination, I always either die sooner or die later. And I don’t think anyone dies easily in the presence of that psychopathic asshole.

  “Touchdown in 3...2...1,” Captain Rantin announces.

  Minutes later, I’m hustled off the ship into an enclosed vehicle hangar. We emerge into daylight and walk to the front of the massive mansion hewn partially into the side of a mountain covered with thousands of trees dripping with millions of fragrant, lavender flowers.

  Khour meets us near the front steps. He looks me up and down, then asks, “Were you touched or harmed in any way since I last saw you?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s second in command of this ship?” Khour asks crisply, all business.

  “I am, sir. Frexnas.” He bows in deference.

  Khour turns and points his three-foot, two-tailed andar whip at Rantin. “You allowed one of the most valuable paintings in the universe to possibly burn in a house fire. You indelibly marked a female that I own without my permission. I sentence you to death. Frexnas, put Rantin to death.”

  Khour is imbuing this little ceremony with serious pomp and circumstance, but I see the micro-movements of his mouth and chin. He’s trying not to smile, but this is juicing him up. This male is pure evil. The roaches look scary and have no compassion, but it’s this male, fully humanoid except for his lavender skin and purple hair, who is the true monster.

  Frexnas doesn’t hesitate. He hocks up a loogie and spews it into his commanding officer’s face. Without missing a beat, even as the male is sizzling in acid, Frexnas spits again, this time at the male’s thorax. It takes one more stream of acid before Rantin quits writhing on the buff-colored pavement stones beneath him.

  “Frexnas, you are now the commander of your cadre. Don’t fail me.” Khour doesn’t give him another thought as he grabs my arm and pulls me toward his house.

  Holy shit. I couldn’t be in more danger if I was in a den of vipers. They’re all dangerous psychopaths. My chances of getting out of this predicament alive just plummeted to zero percent.

  I try to focus on the smell of the riotous flowers covering almost every inch of the mountain in front of us and ignore the male who’s pulling me up the steps of the imposing mansion. It’s made of huge slabs of ivory-colored rock that look as if they were hewn from the mountain itself.

  The mansion is the perfect stronghold for the head of the galaxy’s most powerful cartel. It butts up against the mountain and is heavily fortified as well as having two guard towers—one to the right and one to the left. You can see visitors approach for miles. Clearly, no one’s going to sneak up on this compound.

  If it didn’t belong to the
monster who’s pulling me forward, I’d think the structure was impressive. But I can only pay attention to my panic about what will happen after I cross his threshold.

  He pulls me through the double doors, then lifts his hand off of me as if I have leprosy. “Vella,” he calls to the diminutive lavender-skinned female standing nearby. “Take her to the green suite, see that she’s washed and given new clothing. Burn these rags.” He flicks his hand dismissively in my direction and stalks out of the grand foyer.

  Vella approaches and motions me to follow her. Interesting, she’s nude, yet I’m to be given clothing. You’d think with everything that’s happened to me over the last incredible month that I’d stop feeling like Alice in Wonderland. I just need to roll with the punches.

  I’m taken to a spacious suite, aptly named, because everything from walls to ceiling to draperies to bedding is done in shades of green. Vella shows me the huge adjoining bathroom that has a step-down pool about three-feet deep and twelve feet square.

  She helps me out of my clothes while surreptitiously keeping her nose as far from my person as possible. I guess that little space vessel crammed with five roaches and I must have smelled so bad it leached into my clothing, and maybe my skin. After helping me down the steps into the water, she scurries out of the room with my clothes held far from her perfect body.

  Is she running to an incinerator? Holy crap, might I escape? I hurry out of the pool, not caring that I’m dripping water everywhere, and run to the bedroom door. Of course, it’s locked. I press all my weight against it, but it doesn’t budge. After a few more attempts at this my shoulder and hip feel bruised, but I’ve made no headway.

  I dash back to the bathroom and ransack every drawer, hoping to find a razor, scissors, or sharp implement of any kind—the cupboards are bare. Then I rush to pull back the heavy draperies at the windows. Ha ha, the joke’s on me—there are no windows. This room probably butts up against the rock of the mountain itself. The drapes just cover cleverly designed recessed lighting that gives the illusion of daylight.

  I scour every drawer in the chest and bedside tables but this place has been denuded of anything I could use to attack or escape. I doubt this is Khour’s first time at the rodeo. I’m certain I’m not the first unwilling detainee he’s imprisoned in this room.

  Khour’s voice booms over several hidden loudspeakers. “You missed a spot. Why don’t you look in the lampshades, or under the rug, human?” He laughs derisively for a moment, then it’s silent.

  Creepy. Evidently he has cameras hidden all over the suite. He’s probably still watching. I pace back to the pool, glide regally down the steps, and sit on the little ledge that rings the interior of the rectangle.

  Power and control games. No way to beat them. But I won’t let him know he’s getting to me.

  I hear the door whoosh open and glue my eyes on the doorway to the bedroom. I don’t know if it’s Vella, Khour, or perhaps one of his cockroach henchmen. I breathe a sigh of relief when Vella’s slim form slips into the bathroom.

  It’s no use trying to solicit help from her. Even if she wanted to assist me, she has to know we’re being surveilled. I have a feeling that whatever fight she may have had was beaten out of her long ago. No need to get her in trouble by asking her for aid.

  I’m pruning up in here; I guess I can’t stay in the water forever. Vella helps me up the pool steps, dries me off, although I try to do it myself, and then seats me in front of a fancy dressing table with a three-way mirror.

  Half an hour later I’ve got makeup on, my hair’s pulled back in an elegant braid, and I’m dressed in a crimson and orange kimono. I’ve had time to absorb the extent of the damage from the little chemical peel Rantin provided. It’s a deep gash about three inches long and half an inch deep. The “antidote” he provided must have healed it enough that there’s been no bleeding and no pain.

  Oh well, nothing I can do about it. I don’t know if I’ll live to see tomorrow, no reason to worry about a little scar. My more serious concern right now is that I doubt Daneur Khour dresses up all his enemies before he interrogates them. I can only assume he has other festivities planned for his guest of honor. Gross.

  He bows low to me in greeting as I enter his grand foyer. He’s wearing a crimson jacket with trim black slacks. On a different day, in a different universe, I’d consider him handsome. High cheekbones, full red lips, straight nose—even with the lavender skin he presents a pretty picture. Add to that the fact that he’s dressed nicely, smells divine, and is acting like my prom date—he’s almost swoon-worthy.

  Then I recall that little hint of a smile he displayed when Frexnas was giving Rantin an acid bath, and every aspect of his monstrous character shines through.

  I’m completely at his mercy. I know there’s no escape.

  Mr. Nice Guy bends his elbow, indicating I should grab it and accompany him to dinner as if we’re having the time of our lives. Not much else I can do, so I comply.

  He escorts me into a dining room roughly the size of a McDonalds. A single table set with ornate dishes and crystal is the only furniture in the immense room. He seats me, then claps his hands.

  One-by-one, servants approach with serving platters of food. He heaps my plate with what he tells me are the best morsels. Finally, he motions the servers away, and it’s just Daneur Khour, me, and two-hundred pounds of food which I’m not touching.

  “Afraid it’s poisoned? What would be the point? If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” He points a finger at me like it’s a gun, pulls an imaginary trigger, and says, “Bang.”

  “Funny.” I roll my eyes at him even though I know he could kill me for real for merely challenging his authority.

  “What’s your name, Pet?” He uses the name Sextus called me at the klempto table. As much as I hated that name at the time, I hate Khour more for appropriating it. It became endearing when Sex used it.

  “Lexa.”

  “How’d you wind up with the Cerulian?”

  Cerulian? Oh yeah, Sextus’s planet. “Slave.”

  “You didn’t act like a slave. You seemed to enjoy his company.”

  “I watched you with your slave at the klempto table. She seemed to enjoy your company, too. It’s amazing the lengths to which a slave will go when their lives are at stake.”

  He frowns at my thinly veiled jab, then asks, “He freed you?”

  “You may recall I made him a boat-load of money. He allowed me to buy my freedom, yes.”

  “You do understand you are my property now.”

  I nod calmly. I don’t need to reward him with any histrionics.

  “What if I offered you your freedom in exchange for the Broog?”

  “I’d take it,” I answer immediately and look him square in the eye.

  “Do tell.” He pegs me with a harsh gaze, waiting for the info.

  “I’ll need a written contract.”

  He laughs from deep in his belly. “Lexa, you do know who I am. You know a contract with me would be worthless. No judge in the galaxy would rule against me if you found a way to take it to court. And you know, of course, that I’d never let you off my property to take it before a judge.”

  “So...I’m just supposed to trust you to make good on your word?”

  He eats his meal in earnest, chuckling between bites. “Lexa, you’re going to tell me where the painting is. I can assure you I will get the information. You will either tell me now, or you will tell me after pain. You will tell me after a little pain, or you will tell me after a great deal of pain. You will tell me before I painfully rape you, or after I painfully rape you. You have many choices. Those are the choices. The choice you don’t have? Not to tell me at all.”

  He’s right. This isn’t new information. I’ve known this from the moment I heard the word “Broog” when the roaches were ransacking my house.

  “The Cerulean has it.” I pierce him with a firm gaze. I want him to believe me. The last thing I want is to be punished for lying when I
’ve done nothing but tell the truth.

  “I could swear you liked that big, blue dracker. I’m surprised you’d give him up so easily.”

  “The big, blue dracker owned me, Mr. Khour. I think it’s a myth perpetuated by males that females fall in love with their abusers. That doesn’t happen, except in abusers’ imaginations.”

  “I’d tell you you’re clever, Lexa, except it’s not clever to anger a male like me.”

  “And what kind of male are you, Mr. Khour?”

  Holy shit! It suddenly strikes me that I’m not completely powerless here. I have one weapon and one weapon only—but I do have a weapon.

  I’m a con. I’ve been a con my whole life. And I’m smart. And I can read people. And Daneur Khour just gave himself away. He clings to the illusion that women want him—not his power, not because he’s the head of the MarZan cartel, not because he’s loaded with dough, but on his own merits. And by the way he looked me up and down when he was inspecting my breasts on the ship, I think he wants me.