No Escape - Book 4: Trek Mi Q'an Read online

  The male’s eyes closed on a shaky expelling of breath. Kara could tell from his innocent, unschooled reaction to her touching that he was still a virgin—a fact that would please the future mother of his children immensely.

  “Please,” the male whimpered, realizing he could do naught to stop her from stroking his manpart for the stunner had zapped his energy, “I—ohh,” he breathed out. His teeth gritted. “Please do not make me do bad things, mistress.”

  He sounded as if he were about to cry. Kara sighed. Sure enough, she espied tears welling up in his lavender eyes. His bottom lip began to tremble. “I’m not that kind of boy,” he sobbed.

  Kara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Leastways, she had learned o’er the Yessat years that all Galian males were given to extreme emotion. So instead she smiled down at him, but did not cease the stroking of his cock. “What is your name?” she asked gently.

  His bottom lip continued to quiver as his eyelashes batted away his tears. “Vrek,” he said shakily.

  “’Tis a nice name, Vrek.” She smiled as her voice gentled yet further. “I think it best do you allow yourself to be a naughty boy, Vrek. ‘Tis for a certainty your mistress will expect much more from you on the next moon-rising when she takes you to the vesha hides.”

  She immediately realized ‘twas the wrong thing to say. The six-and-a-half-footer’s eyes widened on a gasp, then ten seconds later he broke down into a fit of uncontrollable crying.

  Kara winced. By the sands, what had she been thinking, scaring him as she had in regards to his wedding night? She sighed. Her only excuse was that her mind was distracted as of late. Distracted with thoughts of a warrior she had no business musing o’er. She had given him up all of those Yessat years past, and now ‘twas for a certainty he would never again welcome her home with open arms.

  As her adoptive sister Kari would say, hindsight is 20-20. The past could not be changed.

  But she didn’t care, she firmly reminded herself. She would one day be named a High Mystik of Valor City and would rule o’er a sector all her own. ‘Twas what she wanted. ‘Twas what she had aspired to when first she’d arrived on Galis with Jana. So why then must she keep reminding herself of her own happiness?

  Because, she thought forlornly, naught had turned out the way she had envisioned it would when she’d been a young and immature twenty-two Yessat years and determined to carve out her own destiny. She hadn’t truly considered the fact that she’d never again be able to go home to Tryston. Aye, she had known it in her head, but not in her hearts. She missed her family. And she hated the fact that they all thought her long dead. Her beloved sire, her equally beloved mani…

  An image of her favored sibling Jor popped into her mind, causing her to smile sadly. Jor would be twenty-one Yessat years now—nigh close to the age when Cam Ka’l Ra had first made his claim o’er Kara’s future known.

  Cam, she thought with a nostalgic smile. When she had been a girl-child still clinging to her mani’s skirt, she had loved him with all of her hearts. His tall, muscled form and golden good looks had made him seem larger than life to her. The way he’d always had a care for her, the way his glowing matpow-colored eyes had always promised to cherish her—mayhap ‘twas possible he had coveted her as more than a marriage prize. Mayhap he had actually loved—

  Cease your mental babbling, Kara! she chastised herself. You are free. Independent and free. ‘Twas what you wanted, remember?

  Kara’s nostrils flared as she began masturbating Vrek in fast, firm strokes. Bah! ‘Twas ridiculous, this bagging business. The males of Galis were far too weak and unschooled to have a care for.

  The male began to moan loudly at the frenzied milking of his cock, replacing the weeping he had been doing but Nuba-moments prior. “Mistress,” he said hoarsely as his chest heaved up and down and sweat broke out on his forehead, “please do n—ooooh.”

  Vrek closed his eyes as his entire body shuddered, then convulsed on a groan of completion. Warm liquid shot up from his cock, spewing from the hole at the thick tip and saturating his belly.

  Kara grinned at the look of bliss on his face. ‘Twas much the way she had felt the first time her favored Kefa had brought her to peak. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked in an exaggeratedly patient tone. ‘Twas said with more patience than she felt for a certainty. “’Twill feel even better when your mistress impales her channel upon your cock and rides you into spurting within her.”

  Vrek’s eyes rounded. “’Twill feel better?” he whispered.

  “Aye.” Kara smiled, making the pep talk up as she went along. In truth, she had no notion what being mounted felt like for she was still a virgin herself. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to couple with the male servants as other Galian wenches were wont to do. “’Twill feel like bliss.”

  Her adoptive sister Kari had told her that the inability to couple with the servants was an affliction brought on by having dabbled with a warrior. Leastways, ‘twas the very affliction Kari had suffered from ever since she’d been mounted by a warrior nine Yessat years past. Kari had coupled with no one since she’d fled from the warrior—the same as Kara had been unable to couple at all.

  Vrek’s breathing calmed as he considered that. “For a certainty?” he squeaked.

  Kara nodded her head. “Aye.”

  Just then Dorra burst through the maroon jungle trees, the severe look of the huntress making her features appear grim. ‘Twas a sight that sent Vrek’s eyes back into tearing fits. Kara grunted, her lips puckering into a frown as she rose to greet her sister. “I had him calmed, dunce. Look what you’ve gone and done.”

  Dorra grunted back, her severe look softening when she laid eyes upon her hunting booty. Naked but for her thigh-high maroon boots and the warpaint she was sporting, her breasts bobbed up and down as she strode briskly toward the six-and-a-half-footer and prepared to tag him. Her nipples hardened into tight points as she came down beside him and ran a hand along the sleek contours of his body. For a male who was not a warrior, Kara had to admit he was impressive of face and form. She knew for a certainty why Dorra coveted him so.

  “Calm thyself,” Dorra murmured as she gently swiped away his tears with a thumb. “’Tis naught to fear of me, handsome one.”

  She placed the laser scan across the length of his cock and detonated it. The highly advanced chemical branding device made a whirring sound, then a moment later Vrek was officially tagged. ‘Twas done. The six-and-a-half-footer could never couple with any wench but Dorra or his cock would explode.

  When Vrek whimpered, Dorra soothed the stinging sensation the laser scan had left behind by running her tongue across the length of the brand. “’Twill be all healed in time for me to claim you next moon-rising,” she murmured between licks. “From the morrow onward, thy body will know naught but sweet bliss from mine.”

  As she watched the Galian claiming scene unfold, Kara idly considered the fact that a warrior would never submit to being tagged. A warrior would have done his own brand of tagging via a bridal necklace. When the noise of hysterically sobbing Galian males reached her ears through the dense Trefa jungle, she wondered if that would have been such a bad thing.

  Kara grimaced at the inferior sound. Trystonni females might grow frightened when they are claimed by warriors, but the wenches are never so weak-willed as to succumb to tearing fits. She sighed, realizing as she did that she had better grow accustomed to Galian males and their inferior temperaments the soonest.

  She had no choice. ‘Twas either that or never be mated.

  Kara gritted her teeth. ‘Twas ironic for a certainty.

  Chapter 2

  Holo-Port 3

  Trader City, Planet Arak

  Trek Mi Q’an Galaxy

  Dari Q’ana Tal released a pent-up breath of air when she felt the gastrolight cruiser lurch upwards and broach the Arakian atmosphere. From her hiding place within Pod Nine, she quickly calmed herself, carefully ensuring that she made not e
ven the smallest of sounds. She would do naught to give herself away. Even her eyes were kept closed that her glowing blue orbs might not give so much as a hint that a stowaway was aboard ship.

  Dari clutched tightly the hand of the boy-child she had rescued, letting him know without words that all would be well. She could feel Bazi shaking beside her, not a surprising reaction for a child who had seen but nine Yessat years.

  In truth, she was a bit wary of their predicament. She knew that if their hiding place was discovered they would be sent back to Arak in all haste.

  Dari shivered. Neither she nor Bazi could ever go back, for the Evil One now knew that she was aware of its existence. It would have killed her and Bazi had she not fled the palace in all haste. Mayhap it would even have killed Gio when he discovered how and why she had died…

  Gio, she thought on a pang of emotion. She had tried to remain steadfast, had attempted to thwart him at every turn o’er the past nine Yessat years, yet he had managed to do the unthinkable: he had gotten under her skin and into her hearts.

  Yet she could not return to him. There were reasons. Reasons he would never forgive her for.

  Leastways, that was a separate story.

  Chapter 3

  Kopa’Ty Palace

  Planet Zideon, Trek Mi Q’an Galaxy

  Panting for air, King Cam K’al Ra emerged naked from the lulling silver waters of Loch Lia-Rah, his darkly bronzed skin glistening of dew droplets, his golden hair dark with wetness. This moon-rising, as he’d done every moon-rising for more Yessat years than he could remember, Cam had circumnavigated the loch four times, which kept his heavily muscled body fitter than that of most warriors. He had an endurance few could match let alone surpass.

  When he had been naught but the lowly son of a credits-poor trelli miner, he had swum the polluted, dirty loch of his sector every moon-rising. The waters had been so dirty ‘twas nigh unto impossible to see where one was swimming, yet he had done it without complaint. He had been raised amongst the ruins left behind by greedy sector lords—insurrectionists who thought naught of burning an entire village to the ground did it help them make their point and scare the people they ruled o’er into submission. Cam supposed that because he hadn’t known any other way of life, he had accepted his surroundings unthinkingly, never realizing there was a better way.

  One morn Cam had gone off to labor within the trelli mines—slave labor he now realized himself to have been—and when he returned home for the eve, ‘twas only to find that his own village had been burned to the ground. Everyone that he loved—his mani, his ailing papa, even his wee siblings—all of them had died in the gastro-gel fire set ablaze by the sector’s own High Lord.

  Cam had gone insane—as insane as the starved gulch beasts that sometimes leave their pits in Koror to hunt humanoid flesh whenever their food supply grows too low. Like a hungered gulch beast, Cam had spent the next few Yessat months hunting down the humanoid flesh of the rebel leader who had murdered his family. He had tracked him, stalked him, waited for the right moment to make his move, and then he had killed him.

  He had experienced no guilt for the High Lord had deserved his fate for a certainty. Cam had played the part of the executioner and had thought no more on it, deciding that since he had avenged his family ‘twas time to move on and find work in another trelli mine.

  He hadn’t realized at the time that the High Lord was wanted by the Emperor for treason. Or that a warlord named Kil Q’an Tal had witnessed the mortal sentence he had handed down to the rebel.

  Two months later, Cam had been working the mines in a sector twenty days walk from his birth village when three finely dressed warriors had entered the squabble of a place where he had found employment and had demanded to speak to him directly. The warriors had been donned in blue leathers—the emblem of High Lords—so Cam had absently wondered if they had been sent to kill him for murdering one of their own. Leastways, he would have welcomed death at the time, for ‘twas all he really had to look forward to in those days. With his family dead, there had been naught in life to recommend living—and worse yet he had barely been earning enough credits at the mines to rent a cheap chamber to sleep in.

  But nay, the warriors had not come to murder him. They had come instead to inform him that he had been hand-picked as one of the few select to study the warring arts under the Emperor’s tutelage.

  Cam could still recall the way his good friend Jek had grinned at him when Cam had hoarsely told him there must have been a mistake. Of course, Jek hadn’t been his friend at the time—‘twas the first time they’d ever laid eyes on the other. Cam had argued that he was but the son of a trelli miner—that he knew naught of the warring arts, but Jek had insisted that no mistake had been made, that the Emperor’s brother and heir apparent had witnessed Cam’s hunting prowess with his own eyes and wanted him trained to be on the right side of the battling.

  The first time Cam had laid eyes on the Palace of the Dunes he had nigh unto swallowed his own tongue. The wealth of the stronghold had been beyond his ken. Finely dressed and highly skilled warriors were everywhere. Beautiful, topless serving wenches abounded, their lush breasts bobbing up and down as they saw to their duties. Gorgeous, enchanted Kefa slaves created in every hue imaginable stood passively about, doing naught else but await the attention of the master.

  All of those women—enchanted and real—had belonged to one man, to the Emperor. Their channels existed to milk him, their mouths to suckle him—and Cam had admired the arrogance of the warrior able to bring so many under his dominion.

  The first time he had swum the loch contained within the grounds of the Palace of the Dunes, Cam had felt a boyish giddiness move through him. He, Cam K’al Ra, son of a trelli miner, was living in Sand City training under the most powerful male humanoid in existence and was permitted to make use of the most elaborate and clean loch his eyes had ever beheld. That water had been as sweetly silver as the waters of the loch he now swam in—his very own.

  But where the mirror-clear waters of the loch within the lands of the Palace of the Dunes had inspired him, Loch Lia-Rah’s waters haunted him. Every moon-rising back in Sand City, Cam had stared at the reflection cast back at him from the waters before he’d jumped in and did his nightly exercise. The reflection had been one filled with promise, with hope for a new life and a better future. For the first time in ever, he had felt as though he were at last on the right track, that there was naught to look forward to but bliss.

  But now, in the present he called his own, Cam had not a care for his reflection, for it held none of the promise that his man-child reflection had. He deliberately never gazed upon himself before jumping into Loch Lia-Rah, for he knew there was naught there to see but grim lines and harsh features.

  In Sand City, there had been hope. On Planet Zideon, there was naught. When Kara had died, his hearts had died with her.

  Cam pulled on his leathers and strode back toward the palace, and to his harem.

  * * * * *

  “What?” Cam’s head came up as if in slow motion. He summoned a bottle of vintage matpow from the raised table and settled into his vesha-bench. “I think it best do you start from the beginning before you tell me the whole of it.”

  Sitting across from Cam at the raised table, Gio’s jaw clenched. “Dari ran from me a fortnight past,” he said harshly. He refused to let anyone see how broken he felt without her nearness, how anguished he felt by her betrayal, and concentrated instead on his ire. He had thought she had come to have a care for him. Now he realized he had been played for the fool. “I thought her sleeping when in reality she’d fled, so she had a good ten Nuba-hours head start on me.”

  A distant, yet still painful memory flickered through Cam’s mind. ‘Twas much the same method Kara and Jana had used prior to their ill-fated sojourn away from Tryston. Kara too had feigned sleep, giving her a head start that, sadly, was never recovered. “She’s gone off to Galis for a certainty? How can you know this?” he murmured.<
br />
  Gio’s harsh features grew grimmer. “When I followed after her, my path crossed with that of an escaped bound servant—a male bound servant from Galis.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he’d lived long enough to bear witness to such things as male sex slaves. “Leastways, the escaped servant sought me out at Galis’ main holo-port and offered me information of Dari in exchange for his safe passage off the matriarchal planet.”

  “You agreed, I take it.”

  “Aye. Aye, of course.” Gio’s jaw clenched impossibly tighter. “The escaped servant swore a vow that he witnessed Dari within the presence of a male humanoid,” he gritted out. “A male humanoid named Vrek who stands approximately a Yeti-foot shorter than most warriors.”

  Cam grunted in sympathy. He realized ‘twas the last thing in the galaxies Gio would have wished to heard tell of. Dari with another male—possibly being mounted by him—‘twas definitely not the sort of situation a warrior could stomach. If Dari coupled with that male, ‘twould drive Gio to death or devolution. Leastways, every time he claimed her body for his use, the scent of the lesser male’s would always be there, slowly driving him mad. Once a warrior had a lock on his wench’s scent, there could be no other male for her.

  Cam waved a hand toward Gio as his thoughts turned in a new direction. “Why did you seek me out afore venturing onward to find Dari?”

  “I didn’t,” Gio admitted. “I immediately set off to track her to the sector the runaway servant claimed to have seen her in.” He ran a hand wearily through his black hair and sighed. “Yet she was gone before I got here. And Galian wenches, tightlipped and secretive as they are, would not tell me in which direction she had headed.”

  “And their men are too bedamned weak and timid to do aught but their wenches’ bidding.” Cam’s gaze narrowed speculatively. “But I still do not understand why you’ve come to Zideon, my friend.”