I pin her down with my body, wrapping an arm around her waist. She's slippery and smells like my bath oils, and it makes it hard to hold onto her. "Female," I snarl. "Quit fighting—"
"You'd fucking like that, wouldn't you?" Her hand goes up to my face and she tries to claw at me.
I pin her wrist easily, and she goes still, her breasts heaving as she pants under me. Her legs are parted under mine, my body heavy over hers, and I grow acutely aware of just how soft she is, how good she smells. No, I tell myself. Bad idea. I shake the thought free. "Computer," I call out, turning my head. "Alert security—"
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her hand move—the free one. Something flashes, and in the next moment, there's a hard thud against my shoulder. Hot pain flares.
She…stabbed me.
The keffing human stabbed me. Stunned, I sit up and she scrambles out from under me. I reach back and feel a small knife—laughably small—sticking out of the meat of my shoulder. She must have grabbed it when I thought she was putting her hand on the edge of the tub. Foolish me was so entranced by her nakedness that I didn't pay attention to what she had in her hand.
"Maybe that'll teach you a lesson about touching humans," she spits at me.
She thinks this tiny knife is going to teach me a lesson? That it's going to stop me?
I just laugh. She has no idea what she is up against. With a dark smirk, I reach up and pull her tiny blade out of my shoulder, ignoring the blood that pours out, and toss it aside. "Try that again, little one."
8
RUTH
I'm going to kill this jerk. Not just because he left my friends behind—the only people I have left—but because he's a condescending asshole. Little one? Fucking prick.
I'm going to destroy him…just as soon as I get my knife back. My gaze goes to it. He tossed it on the ground behind him as he got back to his feet. I'll have to slip past him and retrieve it. No problem at all. I eye his big body, his dark clothing wet across the chest where he held me down on the floor. There's a wild look on his face and his hair looks like a hacked mess. I'm not scared of him, though. I can take him down. I just have to believe in myself and not give up.
So I snarl, feint to one side, and when he leans in to grab me, I move in the opposite direction. I duck under his arm, scrambling for my knife. My goal is to kill him—nothing else. I'll worry about the consequences later.
A hard band wraps around my waist and I'm lifted off the ground before I can even get close. With a feral snarl, I flail, kicking and scratching as he slings me over his shoulder like some sort of goddamn caveman.
"No you don't, hellion." He sounds amused more than angry, and that just pisses me off even more. I howl in furious rage as he carries me across the room and dumps me onto his bed. I sit upright, only to have his big body pin mine again. "Computer," he calls out. "Tell security to come in and bring stun cuffs with them."
"You're not cuffing me!" I twist under him, squirming.
"You're my prisoner," he says, voice tight as he tries to capture my hammering fists.
"Fuck you!"
He makes an angry sound. "I can assure you, the last thing I want is to stick my cock in you right now."
"GOOD." I slip a hand free and grab at his messy, hideous hair and yank hard. I love the bellow of pain he makes, even if he does snag my wrist again and pins it down. I'm under him, squirming and kicking, as the door to his rooms opens and several of the red-skinned a'ani enter the room. I go still at the sight of that, because they're all going to see me naked, and that worries me. I don't trust aliens. But when I see Dopekh, I feel a little better. He won't let anything happen to me. We're friendly.
Even so, I writhe with fury, trying to get away as he gestures one of the men forward. I hate that this black-wearing space goth can pin both my wrists in one hand, and I try to headbutt him but he won't get close enough. One of the men steps to the edge of the bed, trying not to look down at where I'm pinned under Straik, and hands him something silvery and metallic.
With practiced ease, Straik snaps a cuff around my wrist. When I jerk against it, he immediately snaps the other end of the cuff to the intricate metal headboard of his enormous bed.