I swallowed a lump in my throat, and she continued to inspect my beard, gently brushing the skin on my face and neck with the tips of her fingernails.
“You’ve been busy, haven’t you?” she asked.
“There were two women, yes.”
“Well, I’ll still call you Paladin. After all, I was your first is a long while.” Reaver moved to my hair, then the back of my neck.
I looked up toward the gate the guard had been peeking through earlier, but he wasn’t there. Reaver turned my head down toward her wide eyes.
“Nevermind the guard,” she whispered. “They wouldn’t intervene even if they thought you were murdering me. Also, they’re on rotation. They just dropped us off, so it’ll be time for them to eat about now.” She turned her eyes back to my chin. “I like the new look. It makes you look rugged. Not so tight-suit, boring, clinical, and corporate.”
“I looked corporate?” I asked
Reaver laughed and put a finger over my mouth again.
Her hands continued to explore my body. She started with my neck, then moved down to my shoulders, and, finally, to my chest. She reached both of her hands under my shirt and pressed into me as she caressed my stomach, chest, and back. I had to hold my breath to keep from gasping.
“I think your muscles are bigger,” she said. “Not that you were ever a slouch.”
I offered a half-hearted laugh. “The Lakunae told me to collect their artifacts,” I said, trying to keep things professional. “They said—”
Reaver cut me off with a sudden kiss that stopped my sentence short. I lost myself in her mouth for a moment, until she pulled away and leaned in close to my ear.
“I’ve missed you,” Reaver whispered. “They’re going to have us fighting something big and ugly in a while. These may be our last moments alive.”
A question formed in my mind. Something to do with asking how bad our opponent could be, but when I touched her firm breasts, felt her hand slip into my pants and her fingers gently grasp my manhood, I forgot what it was. But if she was right, it was exactly the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
Reaver raked the nails of her other hand over my chest, bringing soft waves of pleasure in their wake. She moved slow, but I could sense her urgency. I reached to her pants but found them impossible to get my hands under.
“Here,” she said. “Weird alien strap design. Let me.”
She worked my cock while she unstrapped her pants. A few seconds later, her pants fell to the floor, and I stepped out of mine.
Reaver was breathing hard, almost gasping as she wrapped her arms around my neck and used her legs to climb me. I grabbed her ass with both hands.
This was her idea, her time, and her mission. All I had to do was hold on as she rode me against the wall and filled the cell with deep, needy gasps.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Brutal,” I said as the latest fight ended. “Do they always end up with their intestines scattered all over the arena?”
Reaver laughed. “Those weren’t its intestines. Those were its lungs. But yeah, that’s how it usually ends.”
The hologram projector showed the arena match from within our pen. We’d watched a few fights after we’d woken in the morning.
“The best fights, at least those the spectators cheer the loudest for, are the ones most evenly matched,” Reaver explained. “You’ll see a lot where you have two aliens of the same species fight against each other. Sometimes, though, they’re from the same brood or family and won’t fight. The slavers do their best not to allow it to happen, but one never knows where one gets their latest gladiator from.”
“What happens then?” I asked.
“If they won’t fight, the organizers or the king might make them team up and fight something big enough to kill both of them. It still makes for a good show, but the real reason they do it is to warn other gladiators against going easy on their opponents. The people paid for blood or, in some cases, bug goo.”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the bug goo. I had to take a bath to get it all off.”
Her laughed tapered off as the victors were led out of the arena. The hologram projector shifted to the face of the announcer, Siddith. Reaver had explained that his species was able to reproduce just about any sound conceivable and was therefore the natural selection for announcers, especially at the arena. They didn’t use their mouth, though, except as a megaphone, to project the sounds they made in a particular direction.
Reaver had also explained that the sounds were created by the big bony structure under the four-eyed alien’s forehead. They had hundreds of bones and thousands of muscles they could use to cause the vibrations they turned into speech. When a popular gladiator won, their “voice” could sound excited and triumphant, drawing the crowd into hand-holding, dancing, orgasmic celebrations. When the popular gladiator died, the mournful, angry sounds this species produced would send them into a tizzy of weeping and anger.
“Are you worried?” I asked.
Reaver shrugged. “I’m always worried. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of alien species on this planet. I’ve fought a dozen or so. Each one is different, and each one brings their own strengths. The worst part is not knowing what kind of aliens I’m expected to fight. I go into every battle blind.”
I understood her concern but not her behavior. I’d trained her to expect the unexpected. Every battle, even those against other humans, was one big unknown. Her training—our training—had taught us that. Even when we had a rock-solid plan, one
