Twisted: Brides of the Kindred 23 Read online

  But her privacy was not complete. Unknown to her, Malik had watched her many times as she worked here, memorizing her ever changing passwords and waiting for the right time to act. He was certain that the message alert they had heard was the invitation from the Knower on Uriel Two he had been waiting for. He had intended to accept on his Mistress’s behalf, even if she decided against the venture. That way he would have a sure way to get past the kill-field that surrounded his old home word.

  He had feared he would have to escape from Mistress Hellenix’s domicile and steal a ship to get there—which carried considerable risk since the Yonnites didn’t deal lightly with escaped slaves. But now that Nicole had agreed to help him, it was going to be so much easier…he hoped.

  “Nicole?” he called, once he had typed in the latest password and gotten to the ocular recognition screen. “Could you come here please? I need your ocular scan to get through to the message system.”

  “Sure.” She came over and he couldn’t help thinking all over again how lovely she was. The outfit his old Mistress had picked for the banquet fit her perfectly and showed off her luscious curves to perfection. If only she could get over being embarrassed at showing her lovely body, she would be a formidable presence at the banquet tonight.

  He showed her what to do and Nicole leaned over obligingly and pressed her right eye to the ocu-scan scope which had extended from the monitor on a long, flexible metal arm. After a moment the scope beeped and withdrew and the screen cleared to reveal Mistress Hellenix’s latest messages.

  The first one was exactly what Malik had been hoping for. It was an invitation from the Knower, expressing interest in the item his old Mistress had alluded to earlier—the Shannom-rah.

  “What’s the Shannom-rah?” Nicole asked, and he realized she was reading over his shoulder. Amazing that the E’lo stone she still carried granted her mastery not only of the Yonnite spoken language but the written form as well.

  “It is a greatly compressed drive that was compiled by an ancient race, the Jai’linm,” he explained. “For many thousands of years they studied both their own people and also random strangers they happened to capture.”

  “They went out and captured people to study? Ugh!” Nicole shivered. “What did they do then—probe them?”

  “Probe them?” Malik wasn’t sure what she meant, exactly.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just…” Her cheeks got red. “Back on my planet, Earth—before we made contact with any alien societies, we thought we were the only ones out there. But there were a few people who would claim they had seen aliens or had been abducted by them and taken up to their flying saucers—space ships,” she clarified, clearly seeing his confusion. “Everyone else thought they were crazy but they often claimed they were, uh, probed. Anally, I mean.” Her cheeks were even redder now, though Malik still didn’t understand why.

  “You mean they were given the rod?” he said flatly.

  It was Nicole’s turn to look confused. “Given the rod? What does that mean? Mistress Hellenix told me I should do that to you if you, uh, got out of hand but I have no idea what she was talking about.”

  Malik sighed. This was a part of his self-imposed slavery that he had learned to make peace with, but it still was in no way pleasant.

  “When a Yonnite Mistress gives her male slave the rod, she straps on a phallus and takes him sexually,” he explained.

  “What? You mean she rapes him?” Nicole looked horrified.

  Malik nodded. “It can be rape if the slave is not willing. And of course it doesn’t really matter to his Mistress if he is willing or not—a slave has no say in such things.”

  “And that…happened to you?” Nicole asked hesitantly.

  Malik nodded again. “Yes. But I knew it was a possibility when I allowed myself to be bought by Mistress Hellenix after making a name for myself in the Blood Circuit. So I was, at least, prepared.”

  “Oh, Malik—I’m so sorry!” Tears had sprung into her dark, lovely eyes again. “And I made such an insensitive comment about getting probed! God, that Mistress Hellenix is horrible. How could she hurt you like that?”

  “Actually, she often went out of her way to make it pleasurable for me,” he said dryly. “She used a rod with a prostate stimulator to make sure I couldn’t keep from coming. The idea, I think, was to destroy my self-esteem by forcing my body to betray me. Which it did—over and over.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, remembering the shameful pleasure his old Mistress had drawn from his body—her soft words in his ear, “You love it when I give you the rod, don’t you, Malik? You love to come for me, my slave.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” he had groaned as his seed spurted on her command. She let him come so rarely that often, the only release he had, was when she gave him the rod. And on those occasions, she was always intrigued by the pearly, iridescent sheen of his seed, which she claimed was unique among males, though it was common to all Volt Kindred. How often had she given him the rod in front of her friends just to show it off? Too often to remember, Malik admitted to himself grimly.

  “You must have hated her so much,” Nicole whispered, breaking into his memories.

  “I both hated and loved her,” Malik said thoughtfully. “I desired her body while despising the person she was inside. I learned to take both pleasure and pain from her hand with an equal measure of dispassion. And every time she took me, I reminded himself of my purpose—my mission to save my home world.” He looked up at her. “For that, I would endure any degradation—any pain or pleasure—no matter how shameful.”

  “Oh, Malik…” Nicole swiped at her tears. “I still don’t understand why she would do such awful things to you.”

  “To subjugate my will towards hers—to break me,” Malik said honestly. “But she didn’t know that I was with her of my own volition and willing to endure whatever I had to in order to come to this moment…to get this invitation.” He tapped the screen.

  “Is this your way of getting back to our, um, previous topic of conversation?” Nicole asked softly and sniffed. “You don’t have to talk about what happened if you don’t want to, you know. But I’m here if you do.”

  “Thank you.” Malik smiled at her. It was the second time she had shed tears for his pain and he couldn’t help loving her for it. “But you don’t have to be worried about me, Nicole—I am well.”

  “You’re amazingly brave,” she whispered. “I don’t understand how you could get over something like that without lots of therapy.”

  Malik tried to explain. “What I endured at the hands of my old Mistress was the sacrifice I had to make and I made it willingly. It took me some time to work through the shame of letting myself be taken sexually but I have long since made peace with it.”

  “You’re so strong,” Nicole murmured, looking at him with wide, wet eyes. “Inside and out. It’s amazing to me that you could get used to being treated like that.”

  Malik shrugged. “It was simply the price I had to pay—so I paid it.”

  “But isn’t it hard for you?” she asked timidly. “I mean, being close to me when I look so much like her? Don’t you…hate me? It must mess with your mind.”

  “I admit it was disorienting at first but Nicole, I could never hate you.” Malik turned from the monitor and cupped her cheek. “You’re so different from her. It doesn’t matter that your outer appearance is the same as hers—you have a light inside you—a light that Mistress Hellenix never had. And it shines out—I can see it every time I look at you.”

  “Oh, Malik…” she whispered and then somehow she was in his arms again and he was pulling her into his lap for more deep, searching kisses.

  Gods, she was beautiful—inside and out, Malik thought as he tasted her sweet lips. If he’d had a kind Mistress, like Nicole, he wouldn’t have minded being penetrated and taken. Because with Nicole, it wouldn’t be as he had been with Hellenix, who was intent on degrading his malehood. With Nicole, he would be giving himself, the same way she