Lazar’s own pants are distended with his huge erection, and I have no doubt that he speaks the truth.
I still can’t believe what I’m hearing, though.
Lazar is an Aurelian warrior – a towering, keen-eyed man who’s survived a hundred years of mandatory service in the Aurelian Military; fighting the darkest scourges the universe can throw against him.
He’s a man who’s had hundreds of years of experience with women – who’s probably broken so many hearts. He’s lost count…
…and yet, I can hear vulnerability in his voice.
And, when I hear his words, I realize with a shock I don’t want to go back.
I don’t want to go back to that illusion of safety, behind the stone walls of my father’s manor. I don’t want to go back to the confines of that estate, surrounded by nothing but faceless Sentinels.
My kidnapping? It should have been the most horrific event of my young life – and it’s certainly been a wild, terrifying experience…
…but I’d never expected to find it this exciting.
I’m a prisoner. I nearly bled out last night, after cutting my leg trying to escape this captivity…
…but now my leg is healed. Instead, it’s my bottom that’s painful – sore from Otho’s strict hand cracking down across it – and it’s a pain I crave.
Somehow, as the prisoner of these three Aurelians, I feel free.
Otho turns to look at me, seeing how Lazar is protectively towering over me.
He grunts, taking a step forward.
“I won’t lose control,” he promises.
Lazar snorts derisively.
“I felt your aura, Otho – you barely held on yourself.”
Otho bristles when he hears that, but he doesn’t seek to argue the point.
Lazar nods.
“Even you will snap, Otho. You’re the most disciplined warrior I’ve ever met, but even you will lose every shred of honor you have left if we keep Natali here.”
Lazar’s shoulders stiffen.
“We’ve already done terrible things to get where we are right now – but we haven’t crossed that line yet, and the Empire will soon have need of us again. We can’t break the last rules – we can’t throw away all we’ve done, even for…
He turns and looked at me.
“…even for her.”
I get the courage to speak.
“You’re too hard on yourselves.”
I receive three incredulous looks – and I can hardly blame them. These three Aurelians just punished me – Otho spanking me with merciless focus and determination. And yet, after I’d received my punishment, they’re the ones I’m consoling?
But console them I do.
“This is all…” My voice cracks as I speak – painfully aware of the three pairs of slate-grey eyes staring at me. “This sounds strange, but before you guys took me…”
Took.
Such an innocent term.
Kidnapping. Stolen. Abducted. All more accurate.
“…before you took me,” I continue, “I’d never done anything. My whole life has been nothing – nothing except reading books and imagining what life could be like outside the walls I was raised behind.”
The three Aurelians stare at me. I can see they were completely blindsided by my reaction.
I continue:
“I’ve been cooped up since my earliest memories – since even before my father found those Orb-deposits. It’s always been so dangerous on this planet, and my father always feared that…”
Lazar interrupts me with laughter – a dry, sardonic mirth.
“…he always feared a business competitor would kidnap you, right?”
I look down. Then, I surprise myself by laughing, too.
Gods! Here I am, in an abandoned warehouse – held captive by huge, sex-crazed aliens – and yet I can see the irony in my situation.
It’s so strange to speak to the Aurelians like this. It’s not how they’d expected it. I’m not how they’d expected me. Even after that brutal spanking, there’s something wrong with the dynamic between me and these three Aurelians – just like there’s so much wrong with their kidnapping in general.
Right now, even as my ass burns with the delicious imprint of Otho’s palm, we’re not speaking as captors and captive. We’re talking just like… I don’t know.
I’ve never talked to anyone like this. I don’t know what to think or do.
None of the lessons my father spent money on for me – in diplomacy, business, and economics – could have prepared me for speaking with three towering aliens.
Aliens who I happen to find incredibly handsome – despite having just snatched me from my bedroom.
I take a ragged breath. Now I’m the one who can taste the scent of the Aurelians in the air – the fresh sweat on Brennan’s glistening torso, and the masculine musk of Otho and Lazar.
“Yes,” I nod. “My father kept me locked up for my whole life, fearing somebody might kidnap me...”
I shrug.
“…not without good reason, either.”
Even Brennan’s lip curls at the sound of that.
Standing before the three of them, I suddenly feel very shy. I smooth my skirt down across my legs, wondering just what the hell I’m doing.
My brain is filled with a hundred questions, but I default to what those finishing school lessons and governesses taught me.
“Why did you pick such a ridiculous outfit for me?” I gesture to the makeshift dress I’d assembled. “Is this what the women in your harems are made to wear?”
Otho jumps up onto the metal workbench – the same one across which he’d spanked me. The metal bench creaks under his weight.
The towering warrior rubs his jaw – the bruised section, where Brennan nearly kicked his head off just minutes earlier. Now, it’s as if they’d never fought.
“Perhaps,” Otho eventually shrugs, “but we wouldn’t know. We don’t have a harem.”
No harem? What kind of Aurelians are these?
Lazar steps closer to me.
“We might not have a harem, but I’ve seen what women in harems wear – and selected something similar.” His eyebrow lifts. “Is this choice of outfit not what your species prefers?”
I roll my eyes. “My species isn’t all the same, you know.”
Lazar says nothing. He stares at me, and I realize suddenly that these three Aurelians seem to know as little about human society as I do about theirs;
