“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault. We’re forbidden to lay with historians. They must remain pure and focus on their work. Nothing is more important than what they do.”
I thought of human monks from centuries earlier. They used to follow similar rules in the pursuit of writing and copying books to be distributed across the world.
“What’s the punishment for breaking that rule?” I said.
“Castration.”
I reached down and grabbed him by the balls. They were big and fit like plums in the palm of my hand. It only served to stiffen him further.
“A good thing I’m not a Vulcarian historian,” I said.
He grunted.
“A very good thing,” he said. “Or else half the Vulcarian population would be castrated and we’d die out from our inability to breed.”
Now was my turn to laugh. I threw my head back and laughed bawdily.
“If other Vulcarians are anything like you last night, I would die before I got around to even a fraction of that number,” I said.
He placed a large black-nailed hand on my cheek.
“I would never share you,” he said, peering into my eyes.
My insides turned weak and I was beholden by those incredible eyes, sucking me in like tractor beams.
He pressed his lips against mine and I stabbed my tongue between his lips and felt his tongue on mine.
He exhaled slowly as he drew me to him, his forbidden historian fruit. He pressed his great girth against me, encouraging me to feel every inch of him.
I wondered how I’d managed to take him inside me the night before.
An alarm wailed. I paid no attention to it. It could have been from my own body warning me not to take him so deeply as last night or else risk losing myself to him.
When Egara pulled back and peered over his shoulder at the door to his cell, he paused a moment, one hand gripping my breast firmly, the other already stroking my sex.
The alarm came from outside his cell and continued to blare loudly.
Shouts rose up from throats that had to be other prisoners.
Egara frowned. He turned to me and took in all my glory, naked, in his bed, ready for him to take advantage of however he saw fit. He looked to be in some quandary about what he ought to do next.
He grunted in agitation and stepped from the bed, naked as the day he was born—assuming Vulcarians were born in the traditional human sense—and scooped up his pants and slipped them on.
I pulled the blanket to my breast and held it there, peering at the door as he approached it.
There wasn’t anything odd about his species was there? Was it normal for them to share their mating partners with other members of his species?
I’d heard plenty of stories about other cultures where this was the case and it made me relieved there were few others like them in this part of the prison.
“What is it?” I said.
“I’m not sure,” Egara said.
He approached the corner post of the bed, gripped it in his hands, held it steady, and wrenched it free.
He did it with the confidence of someone who knew it would give. It clued me in to the fact he’d had to do this more than once. He gripped it tightly in one of his giant hands and stood with his back to the wall beside the cell door.
The shouts outside grew louder, rising into a crescendo as heavy footsteps sprinted down the hallways and something clashed, banging and loud.
“Get down,” he said, waving a hand at me.
I did as he asked and threw the blanket over my head.
Why did I have to get down? I wondered. Why did he even have to check outside?
The door slid open and the noises rushed into the tiny cell.
The siren was unbearably loud. The klaxon wailed high and low, rising and falling like an incoming tide. Between those cacophonous wailing groans and the screaming and yelling and baying for blood of the other prisoners, I was terrified.
The sounds cut out as the cell door slid shut again.
“What’s going on?” I said, poking my head over the blankets.
I was shocked to find I was alone.
I peered at the wardrobe in the corner. There was no way Egara could hide in there. He wouldn’t fit for a start. Neither could he fit his enormous bulk under the bed or crouch at the foot of the bed without me seeing him there.
He must have gone.
And left me alone.
There were other prisoners out there.
Loud and boisterous and, most of all, dangerous.
And he left me alone.
What if they were to come in? What if he’d gone out there on purpose to sell me to those creeps?
I tried to calm down and tell myself he wouldn’t do something like that.
Why would he?
But he was a pirate, wasn’t he? There was no telling what those kinds of people were capable of.
I lowered the blanket from my head and expelled the heat that’d gathered beneath the covers. I peered at the door.
It was still shut. I couldn’t lie here naked and wet and ready for action in case a random prisoner came in.
I slid to the side of the bed and, keeping an eye on the door, scooped up my flimsy piece of clothing that felt little better than tissue paper. I pulled it on.
Still, I felt exposed.
I moved for Egara’s wardrobe and sorted through the clothes until I came to the simple shirts. I grabbed one and pulled it over my head. It fell to my knees. Okay, so I wasn’t about to win any style awards but if I dressed up with enough clothes, I could pass for a regular prisoner in case someone came in.
I would wait for the guards to turn up and let them escort me back to the Prize Pool. I would be
