Imprisoned Read online

“Hey!” Ari started to go after him, but a man stepped in front of her and she ran directly into his protruding gut. “Oof!” She was knocked off her feet by the sudden impact and fell on her back, losing her breath.

  “What’s this? Trying to get away already before you’re even processed?” a mocking male voice asked. “I thought you were that guard’s pet but it seems like he’s gone and left you all alone, sweet thing.”

  Shading her eyes against the harsh overhead glows, Ari looked up…and up and up. The speaker was one of the prisoners she’d seen wandering around without restraints but he wasn’t alone and he wasn’t holding a tablet himself. He was flanked by two other males, both almost as big and beefy as he was, and one of them was holding the tablet.

  “Who…who are you?” Ari had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she didn’t want to know the answer. The male towering over her was at least a foot and a half taller than her and probably triple her body weight. He was wearing a prison jumpsuit but it wasn’t orange and blue striped like the ones the men flanking him wore—distinctive green stripes ran parallel to the blue instead.

  He had stripped down the top part of the jumpsuit, letting the arms dangle free behind him to reveal broad, beefy shoulders where all the hair that had apparently migrated from his bald head now grew. Coarse black tufts stuck out of his ears and nostrils too. A heavy gold ring with a red stone decorated the middle finger of his right hand.

  But it wasn’t his jewelry or his body hair, repulsive though it was, that worried Ari. She was much more concerned about the sneer on his face. There was cruelty in his small, mud-colored eyes and in the set of his rubbery lips. He had slabs for cheeks and his monstrous, hairy gut overhung the unfastened jumpsuit obscenely as he looked down at her appraisingly.

  “Who are you?” Ari asked again, trying to make her voice low and at least semi-masculine, since he seemed to be content to just stare.

  “Get that, Tapper—he don’t even know who you are! Dumb shit,” sneered the man on his left.

  “Course he don’t know Tapper. He’s new, ‘ent he?” the one on the right, holding the tablet said, elbowing the other one.

  “Help him up, boys.” Tapper nodded at Ari, who was still sprawled on the floor in front of him, feeling as vulnerable as a bug pinned to a card.

  At once, the two henchmen (because could they really be anything else?) each took one of her arms and hauled her upright so that she was facing Tapper.

  She still had to look up to see him, not that it was a very pleasant view.

  “Th-thank you, er…Mr. Tapper,” she said, hoping that maybe if she was polite and unassuming they would leave her alone. But her response only seemed to make Tapper more interested in her.

  “Hmm, polite one, ‘ent he boys?” He looked at Ari speculatively. “Face as pretty as a girl’s—soft skin, too. He’s kinder skinny a’course but I think I like him.” He nodded decisively. “Yap, I like him. Put ‘im on the list.”

  “What list?” Ari blurted as the male with the tablet looked at her, one dirty finger poised over the glowing surface.

  “List of fresh meat Tapper wants to taste. Now what’s your name, pretty boy?” he asked casually, as though he was a waiter putting her name on a waiting list at a busy restaurant.

  “What?” Ari took a step back. “I…I’m not telling you my name for that.”

  “He won’t tell his name.” The man with the tablet looked upset. The whites of his eyes and his protruding teeth were both yellow, Ari noticed distractedly.

  “Never mind.” Tapper shrugged his hairy shoulders. “Just put him down as ‘pretty boy.’ It’s his ass I’m interested in—not his name.”

  “Tapper wants his ass, not his name! His ass not his name!” the other man chortled with glee. His long, crooked nose looked like it had been broken and badly set several times and his teeth were nothing but blackened stumps.

  Ari stared at them in disbelief. Was this man actually saying what she thought he was saying? Was Tapper casually telling her he was planning to rape her as soon as she was processed into the prison?

  “You heard him, pretty boy,” chortled the one on the left. “Tapper’s gonna taste you. And when he’s finished, maybe Gorn ‘n me will have a taste too.”

  “Shut up, Fenrus—you’re scaring the lad,” growled the one with the tablet. “Don’t worry, laddie,” he said to her. “Tapper don’t share with the likes of us. You give ‘im a taste and he’ll most likely let you go.”

  “Unless you get to be one of his favorites,” the one called Fenrus said. His lumpish face was filled with stupid, brutal glee. “Then maybe you’ll get to share his cell. He’s got a real nice cell, does Tapper.”

  “He’s got a carpet,” Gorn added thoughtfully. “Nice and thick—nice as the one my old mistress had in her sitting room back on Yonnie Six.”

  “A…a carpet?” This detail seemed apropos of nothing. Ari licked her dry lips, wondering what the two henchmen were talking about.

  “You’ll get to see it soon enough,” Fenrus predicted. “You’ll be getting’ rug burns from it when Tapper kneels you down on it and takes your pretty little ass.”

  “That’s enough, boys. You know I don’t share my cell.”

  Tapper had been standing there with his slab-like arms crossed over his hairy, bare chest. Honestly, he had so much body hair he looked more like an animal than a man, Ari thought, feeling sick.

  “Although I might make an exception for a pretty little boy whore like you.” He licked his thick lips and grinned knowingly at Ari.

  “I’m not a whore!” She could scarcely force the words out. “I’ve never…I don’t do things like that!”

  “Oh, a virgin, eh?” Unfortunately, this seemed to make Tapper more interested in her than ever. “I ‘ent had a true virgin in ages. Nothing I like better than ramming my shaft in a virgin hole.” His small eyes grew greedy and his voice was eager, like a man talking about eating his favorite dish. “So nice and tight…not all stretched out like the rest of the narrow-assed patsies around here.”

  “He won’t be tight for long after you get after him, Tapper,” Fenrus chortled. “You’ll ream him proper!”

  “The Horvaths’ll stretch him out for you a bit too,” Gorn added. “I hear Mukluk’s on search duty today. You know what them claws of his does to the newbies’ arses. Worse luck for them.”

  “He’ll be tight enough to suit me—a virgin’s a virgin.” Tapper nodded decisively and pointed at Ari with one pudgy finger. “I’ll find you, boy—you’re on my list.”

  “You can’t do that,” Ari protested, finding her voice at last. “You can’t just…do whatever you want to people.” Part of her brain knew it was stupid and dangerous to argue with the thuggish felon but she couldn’t help herself—she’d been raised in a society where people respected each other—where males and females were equal. She couldn’t just stand there and listen to Tapper talking about raping her as causally as he’d speak of sampling a new dish he wanted to try.

  “Tapper can do what he likes, pretty boy,” Fenrus told her. “See these here green stripes on his suit?” He pointed to the stripes running through the big inmate’s jumpsuit. “That says ‘trustee’ that does. Means he can do what he likes.”

  “Not with me he can’t!” Ari lifted her chin. She might be small but she was not helpless, she told herself. If Tapper tried something with her, she would use his massive weight against him to throw him to the dirty metal floor.

  Or I’ll try anyway, she thought feeling a twinge of doubt as she looked at the huge man. She had thrown Jak many times when they were sparring, and even bigger opponents during competition, but that was while observing the strict Ton-kwa code of conduct. She very much doubted if Tapper would agree to abide by any such rules if they got into a fight.

  She expected her defiance to make the huge inmate mad but Tapper only looked at her and clucked his tongue.

  “You just made it to the top of the list, my pretty little virgin,” he