V’rex looked somewhat repentant.
“Sorry, about that, sweetheart,” he muttered. “But like I said, I had to make it look real and I couldn’t do that without making you come. After all, what kind of male makes love to his female without giving her an orgasm?”
Penny put a hand on her hip.
“Are you kidding me? Lots of men don’t! My last partner never did,” she blurted before she thought about it. “In fact, I don’t think he knew women could orgasm. He…” She trailed off, realizing she was revealing more than she wanted to.
She had avoided even thinking about Garret, let alone talking about him to anyone for ages. After they had broken up, she’d gone on a few disastrous dating-app meet-ups and then decided to hang up her dating hat for good and just throw herself into her work.
And now here she was, in the weirdest “dating” situation she’d ever been in. Well, if you could call a forced marriage by a cult leader to a total stranger who happened to be a space pirate Kindred Hybrid a “dating” situation. But she was pretty damn sure none of the apps she’d been using before she gave it up would have matched her to V’rex.
The big Hybid was way too tall and handsome and muscular to have been matched with a plus-sized girl on the short side with child-bearing hips. He belonged with a supermodel who had a fetish for bad boys—which Penny most definitely was not. They absolutely were not each other’s type at all—but try telling that to Colonel Sanders the cult leader.
She sighed.
But V’rex was still stuck on the information she’d let slip about her ex.
“What a fucking asshole! He never made you come? Not once?” he demanded.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Penny said quickly. “Anyway, I was warned about you,” she added, hoping to change the subject yet again.
“Warned about me?” He raised an eyebrow. “And who exactly warned you about me, sweetheart?”
“Commander Sylvan of the Kindred Mother Ship,” Penny said, frowning at him. “He said you were bad news and that you’d been harassing Kindred Ships. And he also thought you were responsible for the large up-tick in abductions going on in this quadrant lately.”
His face hardened.
“Well, I think we can both tell that’s not true. Not that I’d ever have anything to do with the flesh trade.” He scowled, as though the idea was repugnant to him. “I think it’s clear who’s really responsible for the abductions around here.” He made a sweeping gesture with one hand, indicating the Compound they were both presently stuck in. “The Glorious fucking Leader.”
“Colonel Sanders and his crazy cult of NeverBreeder Oompa-Loompas,” Penny said grimly.
“What the fuck are Oompa-Loompas?” V’rex asked, frowning.
Penny tried to think how to explain.
“It’s from an Earth vid about a man who owns a giant chocolate factory and he employs these workers who are short and have orange skin. They sing and dance all the time and there are five children taking a tour of the factory but they keep getting into trouble. Like, one falls into the chocolate waterfall and gets sucked up a pipe to be turned into fudge. And another turns into a giant blueberry after she chews the wrong gum and has to be juiced. And every time it happens, the Oompa-Loompas sing songs about how naughty the children are and how they’re getting what they deserve. And then they… Uh, never mind,” she finished abruptly, seeing the quizzical look on his sharp features.
V’rex shook his head.
“I usually try not to judge, but your culture sounds fucking strange as shit, little girl.”
“Well, it’s not any weirder than this awful cult stuff!” Penny exclaimed. “At least on my world you’re not kidnapped and forced to get married to a stranger and ‘breed’ for the rest of your life.” She shivered. “And all just to make babies they’re going to take out of your body and mutate into those horrible little NeverBreeders right after the first trimester!”
V’rex made a face.
“I wondered where those fuckers came from. So that’s the GL’s plan? To use breeders to make more of them?”
Penny nodded. “That’s what I was told. They remove the fetus after the first trimester and put it into some kind of chemical bath that turns it into those little orange monsters.” She shivered. “All so the Glorious Leader can build some kind of NeverBreeder army to someday take over the Universe and spread his sick breeding religion!”
“Where did you hear all that?” V’rex demanded. He frowned. “Though I guess it would make sense, considering all the ‘breeding’ that goes on around here—though you don’t see any pregnant females.”
“They are pregnant though—they just aren’t showing yet,” Penny told him earnestly. “There was a woman in the Breeding and Conception center who wasn’t susceptible to the hypno-whispers—she told me.”
“So she was hiding it too, huh?” V’rex raised an eyebrow at her. “But better than you, I’m guessing.”
“I’m usually very good at hiding it,” Penny said defensively. “I was just…surprised to get you as my, uh, Forever Mate at the ceremony. After I’d been warned about you and after—you know—that scene in the Lucky Lounge. That’s all.”
“Sweetheart, don’t take this the wrong way but you are piss-poor at hiding your emotions—they show all over your face,” V’rex said dryly. “Even if I wasn’t half Kru’ell One, I’d know exactly what you were feeling just by looking at you.”
“That’s not true!” Penny exclaimed, stung.
“Hell yes, it is! I could read you like a fucking book from the first minute I saw you back at the Lucky Lounge.” He frowned. “That was right before those little orange bastards grabbed me.”
“Me too!” Penny exclaimed. “I ran in the back to get away from you and they caught me and Shurla—the woman with the three, uh breasts…” She made a motion at her own chest. “In the bathroom.”
V’rex frowned.
“So
