“Enough,” Cruum interrupted, the old translator they’d implanted in her ear turning the strange, garbled noises he made into words her brain understood. She didn’t question how it worked; she was simply grateful it did. If she was going to survive this hellhole, she needed all the help she could get.
Nova lifted her head enough to look to the side where her “master” watched with boredom. She wanted to rip out the beady eyes from his red, bulbous head and stomp on them. Actually, she wanted to do much worse, but that was the current scenario that flashed through her pain-filled head. He’d enslaved her, chained her, beat her, and took pleasure in it. At the very least, she wanted to kill him with her bare hands Kill Bill style.
“Any further strikes and she will need more medical attention than we can provide for her here.” Cruum studied her back for a moment. “Make her wait for the healing cream though…Maybe the extended pain of this punishment will remind her to behave.”
“Yes, master,” Talis said with a bow, winding the whip up and attaching it to his belt.
Nova shivered at the sound it made sliding through his hand, barely able to keep from telling both of them to fuck off.
You want to live, Nova.
The mantra she’d been repeating in her head was becoming more and more faint the longer she was trapped on this godforsaken planet.
“Do you know if she spoke to anyone?” Cruum asked, moving forward to run a finger over one of the bloody gashes on her back.
Nova hissed, flattening herself against the pole, but was trapped. There was no way for her to escape his touch. She only had a second to process the chuckle coming from his strange, rubbery blue lips before he dug his nail into one of the wounds she’d received as punishment for trying to escape in the market.
“Did you, slave?” he repeated, his fingers feeling as if they were tipped with literal fire where he probed.
“No!” she screamed the lie, holding onto her secret despite how much it hurt to defy him. There was no way she was going to let it slip that she’d run into a Phaeton. She just had to focus on outlasting the aliens behind her. Talis had asked her the same question earlier, punctuating each time he’d been made to wait with a slap to her face. Despite her certainty that they were a bloody mess, she’d managed to keep her lips sealed. She wasn’t a fool. The memory of the Phaeton kept running through her head, alongside her fantasies of revenge, but she knew enough to know that Cruum would definitely kill her if he suspected someone knew she was here, which meant her lips had to stay zipped—no matter what. She wasn’t going to give in after all she’d been through. She was stronger than that.
“I don’t know if I believe you.”
Those were the last words Nova remembered hearing before her vision faded away, offering her blessed relief from the slaver and guard torturing her.
***
Nova ran her fingers through her lover’s dark curls, pulling him down for another kiss.
“Where did you go, wife?” The words skimmed across her collarbone on a whisper as he moved lower, pulling the sheet they were lying under with him.
She smiled at the tickle of his beard as he worked his way toward her breasts. “What do you mean?” she asked, even as a part of her consciousness realized she must be dreaming. It was the only way to explain why the Phaeton she’d first seen earlier in the market was now in bed with her calling her wife. She was dreaming or had died and had gone to heaven.
Her husband moved farther down. His lips dropped kisses wherever they landed. “I asked where you went, honey.” His lips closed over the tip of one nipple and he sucked, making her forget everything except for the feel of his hot mouth on her body.
Nova arched into the contact, pushing her breast into his face as if to demand more. She loved the way his beard scratched her skin a little, making it tingle. Gripping the back of his head, she held him in place as he paid homage to her curves. It had been such a long time since she’d felt anything this good that she was intent on enjoying every single second of it while it lasted—even if it wasn’t real.