In truth, Emma had probably saved Nye’s life by claiming him as her own and that obligated him even beyond what he owed her already for taking Nye in and taking care of him.
At least for that moment.
“We were overrun by the metal monsters of the Sheloni,” he muttered finally.
The comment penetrated Emma’s ‘glow’ like a douse of icy water, but she discovered she was still having trouble gathering her ‘marbles’.
If she understood, though, those things had actually been … like robots? Maybe autonomous? Maybe drones?
She blinked at him, struggling to sort the puzzle for answers when she had too little information to put the pieces together.
They’d taken Nye and they were obviously enemies of the … aliens she’d left Earth with. She wondered what the aliens looked like but, abruptly, a memory surfaced and she shuddered.
“Those … bug-looking things?”
He looked surprised, but she wasn’t certain why. He answered that question, at least, with his next comment. “Sooo … you remember?”
She frowned, struggling to recall the ‘nightmare’. “Pieces,” she said finally.
He nodded.
Another vague memory surfaced. “I heard … a voice.”
He seemed to wrestle with something. “I was there.”
She felt her face turning red. It was two parts embarrassment that he’d seen her spread out and naked and one part anger—although she wasn’t certain if it was directed at him or the Sheloni.
She frowned. “I got the impression it was asking something.”
Kadin’s discomfort rose, but he saw no benefit in lying. “They wanted to know what you were to us.”
“Oh. Why?”
“To determine how … useful you might be.”
“Oh,” she responded again, as if enlightened, but she didn’t have any idea what it meant.
“I told them you were our sex slave.”
Emma gaped at him with a mixture of horror and disbelief and dawning outrage, struggling not to think about what had just passed between them under that magnifying glass. “Your … all of your, sex slave?” she gasped, wondering if she was going to be treated to more delightful sessions of wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
Except he hadn’t even said thanks.
She’d been tempted to do a ‘thank you, sir’, though, and that made her feel worse.
His lips tightened. “They are slavers. You are useful to them. Or they discard you—by flushing you from the airlock.” He shoved away from the wall abruptly. “If I had claimed you as my woman—or either of the others had—they would have tortured you to force us to bend to their will,” he growled. “It was imperative for your continued good health that I make sure they did not believe there was any emotional attachment they could use to control me—or the others.”
If she’d been outraged before, she was shocked almost to fainting from that intelligence.
As shockingly horrific as it was, she was too stunned to consider whether it was true or not, but even when it occurred to her to wonder she couldn’t think of a reason to doubt.
They’d sent those robot things that had threatened to take her and the baby apart. Anybody/thing that could threaten a baby was as cold blooded as they came.
She felt like throwing up. “What about the baby?” she asked faintly.
He had been pacing the small space, but he turned to look at her at that. “We have hope that he is alright. They have no reason to harm him when they believe he is the offspring of a sex slave. You claimed him and we claimed you as our slave.”
It actually made sense, and gave rise to a spark of hope, but she could see problems with it.
“And … they decided to let you keep me?”
He looked uncomfortable for the first time. “I am ordered to breed another like Nye on you. They have presumed that I sired him and I did not tell them different.”
Emma felt her jaw sag in shock. She blinked at him, struggling to absorb words that suddenly sounded like gibberish.
“If I can breed another on you, they will consider keeping you so that you can breed more slaves. If not, then they will sell you at the slave market.”
Ok, so that explained why they were both stark naked and the bumping uglies session she had just experienced Emma thought with a spark of anger and a prickle of something she thought might be uneasiness.
The lump that rose in her throat was something she resolutely refused to consider at all.
Although it did flicker through her mind to wonder how something that had felt that Earth shatteringly wonderful had just been plain, old fashioned, completely anonymous fucking and why she should feel hurt when that should have been expected.
He must have read some of the thoughts running through her mind in her expression. He made a sound of impatience. “I am a slave. You are a breeder. I know how difficult that is to grasp, but the sooner you accept that this is your new reality, the better your chances of surviving them. I want you to survive, Emma.” He hesitated for several long heartbeats. “Nyeneedsyou to survive.”
Kadin was relieved Emma had not noticed the effect the discussion was having upon him—particularly since she seemed appalled at the suggestion rather than delighted.
Naturally, he was appalled at the situation that had compelled the intimacy himself and struggling with impotent rage, as well, that they had been forced at all, but he was drawn to Emma, had been from the beginning. And that being the case, he had not been able to dismiss a certain amount of enthusiasm for the task forced upon him.
Not that he had been thinking in those terms at the time he had told the Sheloni that she was their sex slave, although he had to admit to himself that it could not be dismissed that his attraction to her had had some bearing on the idea that had presented itself so promptly. Primarily, however, was the consideration of what might make her
