“The new bread girl, eh? And what’s that like?” Skrug asked, still leering at her.
“I just stand here on the uh, front porch of the bakery and take people’s food coupons and give them loaves of bread,” Penny explained. “So how many loaves do you need?” she asked, trying to sound professional.
“Just two for now.” The butcher held out two blood stained coupons which had pictures of loaves of bread printed on them. Penny took them carefully from him, not wanting to touch either his bloody fingers, or the bloody parts of the vouchers he was holding.
“Let’s see now, which ones do I want?” Skrug started to paw through the purple loaves with his long, bloody fingers but Penny stopped him.
“No, wait—I’m the only one who’s supposed to touch the bread!” she exclaimed in alarm. “Also, I’m the only one allowed here in the, uh, the front porch area,” she added, thinking fast.
Skrug glared at her.
“Says who?”
“Says Head Baker Goone,” Penny said promptly, hoping she wouldn’t get in trouble for taking her new supervisor’s name in vain. “She says nobody who doesn’t work here can come in. You just give me your tickets, er, coupons, and I give you the loaves. That’s it. So please back up.”
She made a shooing gesture to the huge alien to edge him out of the storefront.
Skrug backed out of the small space, a scowl on his ugly, snaggletoothed face.
“All right, pretty girly, I’ll stay back for now,” he said as Penny handed him the two loves of bread he’d touched and left bloody handprints on. “But I won’t stay back forever. ‘Cause we’ll be seein’ a lot of each other, you and me.”
“What…what do you mean?” Penny felt her stomach drop. “What are you talking about?”
“Why, we’re neighbors, ain’t we?” Skrug leered at her. “Side-by-side like. Me choppin’ meat and you handin’ out bread? We’ll be seein’ each other every day—what with you being the ‘bread girl’ and me being the ‘meat man.’” He grinned and waggled his scaly eyebrows at her. “And let me tell you, girly—I got a lot of meat.”
He shook his hips, making the dangling head of his dark blue dick dance between his knees.
Penny’s heart sank as she realized that what he said was true. Hadn’t he been working at the outside chopping block when she and Claudette first approached the bakery? So it was reasonable to assume that was his regular station. And now, her own work placed her in the storefront right beside his—not two feet away.
She was going to spend all day, every day with the huge blue alien leering at her. Her new job was going to look like a PSA about sexual harassment in the workplace.
Great. Just great.
But things got worse.
“Yup, seein’ each other every day,” Skrug went on, grinning at her. “And just wait until the next Public Breeding, girly. Then we’ll be more than just neighbors—I can promise you that!”
Penny felt like someone had just dropped her entire body into a vat of freezing cold water.
“What did you say?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, you heard me. I’m gonna breed you good, first chance I get, girly. You won’t be walking straight for a solar month once I get through with you.” Skrug licked his lipless mouth with a thick blue tongue and the dangling shaft between his knees twitched in anticipation.
“Do you know who my husband is?” Penny demanded, wishing her voice wouldn’t shake so much. “Do you know what V’rex will do to you if you dare to even touch me?”
Of course, she had no idea if the big Hybrid would care enough to protect her or not, but she had to say something. Make some kind of threat the huge ugly alien would understand.
But Skrug only shook his reptilian head and grinned.
“Ain’t nothing he can do about it, girly. Leastways, not if it’s a Public Breeding. All the girlies in the Marketplace is fair game then—everybody knows that. ‘Sides, he’ll probably be too busy breedin’ some other girly he’s had his eye on to bother with you. He can have you any time, same as I can have Shurla. But once a Public Breeding is announced, well…” He winked one slitted yellow eye at Penny. “Then it’s time for fun.”
And tucking the two blood-stained loaves under one muscular arm, he stumped off down the street whistling between his crooked teeth.
Penny stood and watched him go, feeling like she’d just been punched in the stomach. The message was clear—she was safe until the next Public Breeding was announced and that could happen at any time.
Oh God—what was she going to do?
Forty-Seven
Now, as Penny stood in the shower, reliving her awful day, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Was there any way to ask for a transfer to another job, somewhere else on the Compound? Not from the way Claudette had talked about it, she thought bitterly. She remembered her friend’s words—“If there’s a Public Breeding, you’ll just have to stay there and take it.”
But Penny was damned if she’d just stand around and let herself be raped by the horrible Skrug or any of the other males who happened to be in the Market Place the next time a Public Breeding was announced. She had to find a way out of this—but how?
Only one answer presented itself—escape. She remembered that V’rex had hinted about having a plan to get out of the Compound this morning. Penny hoped that whatever it was, it could be hurried along. She resolved to ask him about it at dinner that night.
Isn’t there something else you ought to be asking him too? whispered a little voice in her head. A pressing problem no one else can help you with?
Penny winced, as she looked down at her swollen breasts. The little white bandages Claudette had given her to wear over her nipples had worked, but not by soaking up any leaking nectar. Instead, they had kept it from
