Mastering the Mistress Read online

  “That you let a male fuck you?” His face hardened. “So you’re all right with letting a male penetrate you as long as no one knows about it. But the minute you think someone in your precious Yonnie Six high society might find out you’re a nervous wreck.”

  “I…I didn’t mean…” she began but he was already shaking his head and pulling out…pulling away from her.

  “Never mind. I know exactly what you mean, Mistress.” He made the word a curse. “I’m leaving now—going back to where I belong. I don’t recommend you try to stop me or send anyone after me.”

  “But…” Kaylee sat up, feeling cold and empty and unfulfilled. What had just happened? Why was he so angry? So…hurt? Had she hurt him? She didn’t know what he was feeling exactly—his face was a closed book. But still, it seemed that she’d offended him deeply.

  “Good bye.” He had finished pulling up the too-tight leather trousers and was already heading to the door. It was still locked.

  “You can’t get out,” Kaylee said. Her throat felt tight and she didn’t know why. “I tried, remember?”

  “Didn’t try hard enough.” With a swift jab of his huge fist, he smashed the black glass over the door’s control panel. There was a brief shower of sparks and then the red leather panel slid open silently.

  “Wait!” Kaylee couldn’t just watch him go. She slid out of the stirrups and jumped down off the padded black table. “Wait, please. You can’t just…just go like that.”

  “Can’t I?” Solar turned to face her one last time. “Goodbye, Kaylee. Have a nice life.”

  His use of her name—a thing so simple and yet so forbidden for a slave—made a lump rise in her throat. She wanted to call him back—wanted to say it was all a mistake, that she felt…felt…what did she feel for him? Kaylee didn’t even know, only that it was intense and hurtful. Her breath seemed to catch on something jagged every time she inhaled and when she put her hand to her cheeks, she found she was crying.

  Don’t be stupid, whispered a little voice in her head as she watched his broad, bare back disappear through the open doorway. Why are you crying over a male? Over a slave?

  Kaylee didn’t know. She only knew that once started, the tears wouldn't stop.

  Chapter Six

  Stupid, staying so long. Penetrating her—making love to her. Almost fucking bonding with her. Stupid, Solar—very stupid!

  Solar berated himself as he moved quickly and quietly down the corridor. He could hear Kaylee sobbing behind him and the sound seemed to go directly to his gut. He felt tied in knots inside, clenched tight as a fist. Part of him—a large and stupid part—wanted to go back and console her. Wanted to hold her and tell her everything would be all right.

  But how would it be all right? If he stayed, he’d be arrested and taken to wherever it was they took escaped slaves around here. Solar was sure it was nowhere nice. And there was no way he was asking her to go with him. He’d thought for a while that she had changed her ideas, that she no longer viewed him as a lower form of life.

  He’d been wrong.

  The absolute horror on her face when she’d thought she might conceive a child by him—a son no less—let him know he had done the right thing by pulling out. If he’d spilled his seed inside her and bonded her to him, he would have had to contend with that attitude for the rest of his life.

  He made his way down the hall to the mirrored elevator and stopped there, frowning. Better not risk it. There was a stairwell right beside it. He took the stairs, going down quickly and quietly in his bare feet.

  He poked his head around the corner when he got to the bottom floor. Thank all the Gods that ever were there didn’t appear to be any servants or other slaves around. Maybe Kaylee hadn’t had time to get any. She had said he was the first slave she’d ever bought.

  Probably won’t be her last though. It’d take an army of slaves to keep this place up. Not that he cared. Let her stay here in the lap of luxury on this screwed-up planet and buy a whole battalion of slaves. Solar didn’t give a damn as long as he wasn’t one of them.

  Besides the absence of any house staff, he hadn’t seen the sadistic Lyra anywhere either. Which was just as well for her. He had never harmed a female in his life but he was minus the pain collar now and without the threat of its electrifying shocks, he might forget himself if he saw her snub-nosed face again.

  He was edging along the perimeter of a richly furnished living area as he thought this. Suddenly, as if his thoughts had summoned her, he heard Lyra’s high-pitched, nasal voice coming from the next room.

  “No, I told you—it’s perfect. I got the most dangerous slave I could find,” she was saying. “Well, no—there was one who looked scarier. A big Havoc male with blue-black hair and these weird almost white eyes. He was huge—even bigger than the one we got and believe me, this one’s not small.”

  Solar’s ears pricked up and he moved closer to the doorway Lyra’s voice was drifting through. Thrace—she has to be talking about Thrace! He wondered what had happened to hia captain. Did Lyra know his whereabouts?

  “I wanted him but some other girl got him—some dowdy pilot-looking little thing from Zetta Prime, I think,” she was saying. “She could have been quite striking—she had this creamy brown skin tone, I’ve never seen anything like it before—and long black hair. But she was wearing this awful black jumpsuit thing. I tell you, Chia, it just ruined the look.”

  Solar didn’t give a damn what the girl who had bought Thrace had been wearing but he was glad to hear the other details. A female from Zetta Prime with light brown skin and long black hair. That might help narrow down his search for the captain—although he was pretty sure Zetta Prime was another planet where males were treated little better than animals.

  He was about to move on and complete his escape—he was certain he could hotwire the little ship they’d brought him here in and be off planet before anyone was the wiser—when he heard Lyra speaking again.

  “Anyway, I’m about to go check on her in a moment. No, don’t worry—I’ve got a stun-ray hand-cannon, he won’t get far. They’re locked in the dungeon together and I’m certain he’s finished her by now—it shouldn’t have taken long the moment I turned his pain collar off.”

  Solar grimaced and put a hand to his throat. So the pain collar switching off hadn’t been an accident or a short in its complicated circuitry, as he’d half suspected. Lyra had turned it off on purpose hoping he would…would what? Kill Kaylee the moment they were alone together?

  He looked cautiously around the corner and saw Lyra pacing a large and well appointed food prep area. She had a tall, frosted glass with some kind of alcohol in one hand and she was talking into a tiny device plugged into her ear.

  “He’s a complete savage like all males and I made sure to antagonize him beforehand. I’ll probably find her raped and torn to little pieces,” Lyra went on in a tone so cold it chilled his blood.

  That bitch, he thought, feeling sick to his stomach. How could she think I’d do such a thing? Oh, right—because all males are savages. But he would never hurt Kaylee. Just because that evil witch Lyra thought he was an animalistic brute didn’t mean he’d act like one.

  Lyra had paused for a moment to listen to the person on the other end. She had her back to him and was tapping with her long, claw-like nails on the food prep counter. Now she let loose with a loud, nasal laugh which dragged him out of his angry thoughts.

  “No, that’s the best part! I snuck the last will and testament docs into the slave papers when we were buying the Havoc male. She signed them all without question and they’re already hidden in her file case. Of course, no one will be more surprised than me when they’re found.” She turned to the side and Solar saw her practicing a shocked look as she studied her snub-nosed face in the mirrored surface of the cooking panel. “Me? She left it all to me? Well, I guess I was her only friend…”

  Fucking disgusting, Solar thought angrily. She must have planned this from the start.

&