My skin burned hotter and I had never known a girl like her.
I became more certain than ever that she was the one.
My fated mate.
To think I had met her here of all places.
She never should have been within a thousand light-years of this place.
She should be living in a mansion on Arcturon Prime, not abducted and dumped in this prison to service aliens.
I thought about how I would feel to let her go once we got off this moon after I returned her to her home.
I thought about how I would never see her again.
It made me sad, so I shoved it from my mind and kept myself in this single exquisite moment.
I needed to take a leak, so I shuffled out from under her and crossed the clearing to a sand dune on the other side.
I leaned back and enjoyed the rush of liquid evacuating my body.
The soft splatter of urine made a tiny stream that washed away part of the sand as it rolled down the incline and further into the sand dune valley.
Then the sound turned hard and thudded like rain on a roof.
I looked down and spotted a circle of plastic mostly submerged beneath the sand.
I shook myself off and tucked myself away.
I bent down and gripped a fringe of wood and yanked it from the sand dune.
It was a square box with a familiar symbol on the front.
I opened it and discovered a bunch of items a doctor would use in emergency situations.
A cold feeling washed over me as I slammed the box shut and turned it over.
I ran my hands over the outer casing until I came to the identification marks along the bottom.
I couldn’t believe it.
It was the first aid kit from the shuttlecraft.
It was here! The shuttlecraft had been here!
I turned and quickly scanned the area.
I didn’t know what I was looking for but I knew I would recognize it the moment I saw it.
There.
Was the edge of that corner a little sharper and more angular than the other dunes?
As if something had passed over it and left a groove in the sand?
Yes.
That was where the shuttlecraft went.
No, that was where the shuttlecraft had been taken.
My crew hadn’t let me down after all.
Someone had stolen it.
Agatha
Egara woke me that morning and he could barely contain himself.
Within ten minutes, we had buried the packaging from the food we ate the previous night.
Egara unlocked another two petals of hidden stash buried inside the Desert Flower statue and we hit the road.
Egara had a new lease of life and it spilled over into me.
He found tracks that might lead to the shuttlecraft his crew had left for him.
“The tracks are fresh,” he said, “which means someone must have taken the shuttlecraft recently. At least, more recently than the last big storm that passed through.”
“Five days ago,” I said confidently.
I remembered the storm well.
It came right before I met Egara, when I’d been claimed by a species known as the Hiigarans.
They were rough and brutal creatures, notorious among the Prizes for treating their mates as violently as they did their opponents in the pit.
Where Egara was known for being kind and giving, the Hiigarans’ focused was on take, take, take.
It was one of the worst nights of my life and took some time for me to recover—both physically and psychologically.
That was how I recalled the storm so clearly and wished I couldn’t.
“Tracks for what?” I said.
“Merchants.”
“There are merchants in this place?” I said, surprised. “It’s a desert.”
“It’s not as dead as the rumors might lead you to believe. On my homeworld, even the deserts are rich with life if you know where to look. Beneath these rising and falling sand dunes are huge schools of fish that swim as easily as those in the ocean. Each morning when the cool mists pass overhead, they come up to drink the condensation. It’s not much but enough for them to survive another day.”
“Do you think the rumors about being unable to survive out here were created by the supervisors?” I said.
“There’s no question. Control how the prisoners think and you control how they act. Fewer escape attempts, fewer riots. If they don’t believe they can survive out here, why try?”
But the desert wasn’t without its dangers.
The air was difficult for me to breathe and could very well be toxic to others.
But wasn’t that true of every atmosphere of every moon and planet in the galaxy?
It was perfectly suited to one species or another and deadly for others.
I smiled over at Egara.
Our lovemaking wasn’t as vigorous as our first night together. It was warmer, closer.
I found in him a need to release pent up emotions that reflected my own desire.
He lay back and let me do what I wanted—what I needed to do—and in the process, I gained the ability to breathe easier on this world.
I was wrong about him not being handsome.
He was gorgeous.
His features weren’t “traditional” but how could they be when he sported those incredible horns on top of his head?
And last night, during our second round, he did something I’d never experienced before…
He took me in his mouth and licked me, rubbing my clit with his thumb and strumming me like a well-worn guitar.
As my hips began to buck and loosen up, he lifted my legs and didn’t rest them on his shoulders as I’d expected but on his horns!
His horns!
My knees fit perfectly in their natural curve as if they had been designed for that very purpose.
God bless you, evolution!
He slurped at me and I felt my juices flow far sooner than usual.
Using his horns like that turned me on more than I could explain. Or understand.
It freed up both his hands and allowed him to probe at me to his heart’s content.
It was sheer bliss.
We peeled around another sand dune when I heard a low thrumming noise.
I looked back at Egara, who had stopped several yards back, his tuft of
