“Lucky?” I said, barely aware of my rising voice. “How is this lucky?”
“We could have been taken for experimentation or sold to the sex houses,” he said. “At least this way we have a chance of escape.”
“I… I can’t do this,” I said, backing away from the door. “I want to go home. This can’t be happening.”
“Hey,” Chax said, wrapping his arms around me and kissing me gently. “The only way out of here is if we work together. We have to reach that shuttlecraft they showed us. Then we can go home.”
“But there are people out there looking for us,” I said. “These trackers. Why are they trying to hunt us down?”
“To make the show more interesting,” Chax said. “That’s their purpose. Ours is to find that shuttlecraft and get away from here. We can do it. We’ve got almost twenty-four hours to reach it. And look.”
He picked up a little device. It showed a rough map of the area and a blinking light some distance away.
“We just need to get to this blinking light,” he said. “That’s where the shuttlecraft is. Then we can get out of here. Come on. I need your help.”
He was right. There was no way we were getting out of there if we didn’t work together. The only other option was to refuse to play along with the Changeling’s stupid game. I doubted that would end well.
I nodded.
“Okay,” I said.
He wrapped a comforting arm around me.
“Good girl,” he said. “Let’s put these things on and get out of here.”
He picked up the suit and unzipped the back.
I was about to open my nightgown when I noticed him looking at me.
“What?” he said.
“Turn around,” I said.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
“It’s not the same.”
He tickled my cheek with a gloved finger.
“Let me see you one more time,” he said. “Just in case.”
“In case what?” I said. “In case we don’t make it out of here alive?”
“We will make it out of here,” he said. “It was my ham-fisted excuse for wanting to see you naked. Throw a guy a bone.”
Despite myself, I smiled. I even managed a chuckle.
“Men are all the same,” I said. “No matter what species they are, they can only think of one thing.”
“Not one thing,” he said, dragging his eyes over my body. “Several different things.”
I slapped him on the arm and began to undress. I kept my eyes on him as I did. I let the nightgown slip to the floor. I stood with my hands on my hips.
He growled in the back of his throat.
“Happy now?” I said.
“There’s only one way for me to be happy with you naked like this,” he said, his eyes roving around my outline.
“Shame we don’t have time for that,” I said, reaching for my suit.
He pulled it away.
He gently rubbed my nipple. It sent goosebumps popping up over my body. I shivered and pulled back from him. Then he lowered his lips to my nipples and pinched them with his lips, licking them with his tongue.
My eyes rolled back and I groaned.
“Aren’t you worried about these trackers showing up?” I said.
“They’ll give us a head start,” Chax said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“The Changelings might not have much mercy but they know plenty about prolonging the agony.”
I grew slick at his touch. Considering our lives were on the line, that really was something. Or maybe it only enhanced the excitement.
“Okay, okay,” he said, pulling back and shaking his head. “We’d better, uh, focus.”
He knelt and held the suit out for me to slip my feet into. As he rose up my leg, he couldn’t help but kiss me along the inside of my thigh. He did the same with the other leg.
The guy was insatiable.
And I was already wet for him, so what did that make me?
He drew the rest of the suit up, running his hands over my stomach and breasts. I slid my arms into it and raised my hair back so he could zip me up the back.
“How do I look?” I said.
He stood back and admired me.
“Hot,” he said.
He picked up the shuttlecraft location device item from the table and attached it to my suit.
“Our location devices are identical,” he said. “In case we get separated, keep heading toward it and I’ll meet you there.”
My heart was in my throat.
“Separated?” I said. “Why would we get separated?”
“Hopefully we won’t,” he said. “It’s just in case.”
Nervous, I bit my lip.
“Are you sure we have to do this?” I said. “What if we stay here and defend ourselves? We could dig our way through the wall and stay in that room together. Maybe they won’t expect that.”
Chax ran a thumb over my cheek.
“They’re Changelings,” he said. “They expect everything.”
He took my hand and squeezed it.
“We can do this,” he said. “I know we can. We just need to work together.”
He led us out into the bright outdoors of an alien world and the site of our game of death.
I’d had better mornings.
The countryside rolled over endless hills and small gangs of trees huddles in secret huddles that dotted the open field we walked through.
I wondered if the Changelings could see us here as they had in our room. I was certain they could. The idea I was in an alien reality TV show had, unsurprisingly, never occurred to me before. Thinking back, I couldn’t place the camera locations. They must have been so small they were virtually invisible.
Now I was the star of a hit dystopian show. I always thought taking part in reality television would be fun. To claim my fifteen minutes of fame. But now I was there, I didn’t think it was very fun at all.
Especially not with my life on the line.
Our task was
