Twisted: Brides of the Kindred 23 Read online

  She would have fallen on the hard marble floor and probably cracked her skull open if Malik hadn’t had the reflexes of a cat. Letting the lid to the bug box slam shut, he jumped around and caught her in his arms just before she landed.

  “Oh!” Nikki gasped as he lifted her easily, holding her as though she weighed next to nothing (which she knew was not the case.)

  “Mistress,” he said frowning. “Did you trip on your drying fur?”

  “Um, yes. Yes, I did,” Nikki gasped, still trying to regain her composure. “The, uh, drying towel…I mean fur.” She motioned down to the black furry towel and realized that in her fall it really had come loose. It was gaping open to show her bare breasts framed in the soft, black fur.

  Oh, God! Quickly, she tugged the towel closed. She could feel her cheeks heating with a blush she could do nothing about.

  “Thank you for catching me,” she said, trying not to look him in the eyes. “You have very fast reflexes. But you’d probably better put me down before you throw out your back.”

  He frowned. “Are you implying that you are too heavy for me to lift, Mistress? That’s ridiculous and you know it. You are the perfect size and I am well accustomed to lifting three or four times your weight in my daily training regime.”

  “That’s really impressive but just, um, put me down please.” Nikki wished her voice wouldn’t come out sounding so breathy. Being so close to him she could feel the heat of his big body radiating against her own. Also, he smelled really good—a dark, masculine spice with a wild, almost electrical note to it that seemed to fill her senses and make her dizzy.

  “Very well—shall I deposit you in the box?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “I can easily lift the lid with one hand and place you inside on the bed of tska beetles with the other. But you’ll have to discard your drying fur first.”

  “Put me inside that box? With all those…those…things?” Nikki could scarcely keep the panic and revulsion out of her voice.

  “Of course.” Malik looked surprised all over again. “They nibble away the dead skin from all over your body and groom your hair at the same time. You always say an hour in the tska box is the most important part of your beauty regime.”

  A whole hour crammed inside the shiny white coffin while thousands of roach-like insects nibbled her? The very idea was enough to make Nikki’s skin feel like it was trying to crawl off her body.

  “Well today I’m skipping it,” she said firmly, trying to repress a shudder. “My head really aches and now that I’m clean and dry, I just want to lay down on my bed and take a nap.”

  “Very well.” He nodded gravely. “And shall I lie beside you and serve as your pillow, my Mistress?”

  “What? No!” Nikki exclaimed and then added more gently, “I mean, that won’t be necessary Malik—thank you anyway, though.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Then perhaps you prefer me to pleasure you with my tongue as you relax on the sleeping platform? You always say that having an orgasm or two releases your tensions and allows you to sleep more peacefully.”

  By this time Nikki felt like her face was so hot with blushing that her hair might catch on fire. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sex positive—she was. It was just that Gary was the only man she’d ever been with and he wasn’t very…creative in the bedroom. The few times he had gone down on her in their sixteen-year marriage, he had quickly given up, saying that it took her too long to come.

  So while Nikki greatly enjoyed getting oral pleasure, she didn’t have a whole lot of experience with it. Also, she didn’t even know Malik! And she was technically still married to another man.

  A man who has been cheating on you and wants to divorce you, whispered a little voice in her head. You already signed the paperwork—Gary is probably filing it right now. You’re practically already divorced. So if you did decide to take Mr. Muscles up on his offer to go downtown, nobody could blame you.

  But there was no way she was doing that. As attractive as Malik was, he was also a stranger—a deadly stranger. She couldn’t let herself forget that if he decided she wasn’t his real mistress there could be severe consequences.

  “Mistress?” Malik rumbled and she realized she had been taking too long to answer.

  “Um, no—no thank you, Malik,” she said, trying to smile. “That’s very kind of you but I just want to be alone for now.”

  “As you wish,” he murmured. “Then I will take you to the sleeping chamber.”

  Before Nikki could protest that she could walk just fine, he carried her out of the fancy spa room and down a long corridor lined with gold and black filigreed wallpaper. There were golden statues every few feet on black marble pedestals—muscular men frozen in erotic poses that showed off their naked bodies and looked really uncomfortable, she thought. Whoever this Mistress Hellenix was, she was clearly a connoisseur of the male form.

  Then Nikki saw one of the statues move.

  It was just a twitch, as though the statue was tired of holding his arms above his head, but she gave a little gasp when she saw it. When she did, the statue’s eyes, which had been closed, flickered open and looked in her direction.

  Malik saw it too because he stopped and glared at the statue.

  “Slave Ganter—you are in violation of your orders not to move.”

  “Forgive me!” The golden statue—which was apparently a male slave painted all over with gold body paint—dropped to his knees and groveled at Malik’s feet. “I’m so sorry, Mistress!” he moaned, daring to turn his eyes up to Nikki. “I swear it wasn’t on purpose. It’s just that I have been holding my pose for hours and my arms got so tired.”

  “For hours?” Nikki could hardly believe it. Were all these statues actually live slaves who had been stripped and spray-painted gold and forced to hold still for hours on end? Looking up and down the hall, she was pretty sure they were.

  “Do you wish to have him whipped, Mistress?” Malik asked blandly. “Or do you prefer to use his pain collar to punish him?”

  “Pain collar?” Nikki managed to get out. Then she realized that—like Malik—the golden slave was wearing a thick black collar. In fact, all the statue slaves had them.

  “Yes, Mistress—his pain collar. You can use it to shock him into submission.” Malik frowned at her. “Are you feeling well? You are not acting like yourself at all today.”

  “I…I really do have a headache,” Nikki said, groping for an explanation as to why she wasn’t “acting like herself.” “And I don’t feel like punishing slaves today,” she went on, trying to get out of whipping or shocking anyone. “Just take me to the, uh, sleeping chamber, Malik. I’ll deal with this other slave later.”

  There—that had sounded imperious enough to be the real Mistress Hellenix—she hoped.

  Malik frowned and a look of disbelief spread over the statue slave’s face, but no one said anything. The big bodyslave gave a short nod to the golden statue slave and the other man quickly resumed his pose on the black marble pedestal. Then Malik carried her down the hall and through a set of double doors. The doors were carved with elaborate designs and three times the height of a normal door and they led into an equally imposing bedroom.

  The room was dominated by a bed about twice as big as a king-sized bed back home, Nikki thought. It had a heavy, black wooden bed frame with four tall posts and an upper frame as well for bed curtains. But there were no curtains in evidence and no sheets or blankets that she could see, either. Instead, a vast, crimson-red mattress that looked like a spilled puddle of blood sat in the black frame. It had long, round red pillows with black tassels to match at both the head and the foot of the bed.

  The rest of the bedroom was done in red and black too, Nikki saw, with soft black fur carpets and red flocked walls bearing intricate designs in gold. Also, there was a great deal of what looked like bondage equipment—a rack by the door held a variety of paddles, whips, canes, and other instruments she had no name for. There was a black bench padded with red leather wh