Merchandise (3 page)

“You nearly killed both of us,
idiot.”
Dyos
managed to stand and seat himself on the
primary pilot’s seat.

“You knew I couldn’t read
Hadarian
,”
Brale
said shortly,
standing by
Dyos’s
side. “I also have no idea why
your people bothered writing the entire operating system in your own language.
Has your race never heard of the international space standard?”

Dyos
ignored him and continued inputting commands on the console.
Brale
crossed his thick arms and waited for
Dyos
to finish. When he was done,
Dyos
finally looked at him. The annoyance there disappeared when
Brale
put his hands to good use. He worked out the knots across
Dyos’s
broad shoulders until the
Hadarian
let out a sigh.

“Next time, you check the
merchandise and I pilot the stolen ship.”

“I wholeheartedly agree.”
Brale
leaned down and took
Dyos’s
lips.

He nibbled and sucked on
Dyos’s
bottom lip as
Dyos
tugged
him down the seat. There was a creaking sound, but they chose to ignore it.
Brale
pushed his tongue between
Dyos’s
lips and began to tongue-fuck his mate. The chair may be built sturdily for one
large
Hadarian
warrior, but it didn’t factor for a
second and no-less large
Cobrini
male. For the second
time that day,
Brale
and
Dyos
hit the floor.

“Let us continue this in the
bedroom,”
Brale
suggested, rubbing at the bump on his
head.

“There are no bedrooms in a
Hadarian
cruiser, just communal sleeping pods,”
Dyos
said unhelpfully.

Brale
made a disgusted sound in his throat. “I can vividly recall the first time we
went to one of the pleasure houses in the
Hillion
Galaxy. You practically pounced on the feather bed, proclaiming it was all
yours and I had to sleep on the coach.”

“I do not pounce,”
Dyos
said tightly. “Besides, I need your expert opinion on
the merchandise first.”

“Oh fine, but after that, we find a
place to fuck. I’m sure there’s one place on this ship that isn’t uncomfortable
or rigid.”

“Is fucking all you think about?
Wait, why do I bother asking?”
Dyos
didn’t complain
though when
Brale
kissed him playfully on the cheek.

Chapter Two

Using a pair of primitive but handy
Hadarian
implements,
Dyos
delicately cracked opened the dented iron box. Underneath the cheap metal
casing was an expensive platinum cylinder equipped with life-sustaining
facilities.

Inside the grade-A dome covering
the pod’s top, was a naked and sleeping
Terran
female
floating inside a jelly-like
solution.
Tubes were
connected to various parts of her body, no doubt to help her breathe and
provide nutrients.

Dyos
cursed under his breath. “Did you know we were being paid to transport a live
specimen,
Brale
?”

Dyos
and
Brale
lived by no particular code. They had to be ruthless
to survive in the galaxy’s underworld of bounty hunters, pirates, and general
scum. They did however, have their own set of rules they abided by, and
transporting live cargo hadn’t been one of them.

The slave trade might be one of the
galaxy’s profitable
businesses,
especially with the
sudden influx of
Terran
women available from the
dying Earth, but
Dyos
wanted no slice of that
particular pie. Slavery was always bound to get messy in his experience. It was
much safer and easier to transfer illegal goods.

“No. The client didn’t go into any
particular details.”

Dyos
punched
Brale’s
shoulder hard, making
Brale
hiss at him. “I thought it prudent not to ask, given
the numbers the client waved at me were mind-numbing for an easy transport
mission.”

“You didn’t bother going through
the contract? I thought you said you handled negotiations smoothly.”
Dyos
placed an emphasis on “smoothly”. Gods of the Galaxy,
he was fond of his mate, even occasionally loved him, but sometimes
Brale
got on his nerves.

“Nothing in the contract said
anything about a
Hadarian
cruiser ship. Farr and his
men were definitely suspicious toting such modern weaponry around. Do you think
they were after this—her?”
Brale
corrected himself,
gesturing to the pod.

Dyos
ran
his fingers across the plaque on the pod, frowning at the embedded numbers
there and the little logo. “These numbers look familiar. We’ve seen this
thirteen digit combination before and this corporate logo.”

Brale
neared him and examined the plate, his brows furrowed. “It’s a
Terran
logo. Genesis Incorporated.”

“The breeding
lab?
We’re doomed.”
Dyos
felt like he’d taken
a punch in the gut.

If the woman in the pod was simply
an exotic whore or plaything, it would’ve been fine, but the woman in the pod
was a Breeder. Genetically-created Breeders were rare in a galaxy full of races
having problems with fertility, and only the truly wealthy and connected could
afford them. They were considered rare gifts, even to influential dignitaries,
princes, and emperors.

“We’re as good as dead. They’re
going to smell our blood in the water and zone in on us like sharks.”

“I see you’re using sea metaphors
now,
Dyos
. Obviously, our recent sea-faring
adventures in the ocean world of
Meindos
have left
quite an impression on you.”

Dyos
was
tempted to hit
Brale
again, but
Brale
sobered at his expression. “I understand how serious this. We’ve already set
the coordinates to the client’s ship. We’ll drop the merchandise off, get what
we’re owed, and be free of this business.”

Dyos
snorted. “You think it’s going to be that easy? I’m not even sure ripping out
that
Hadarian
transmitter is enough to keep us off
anyone’s radar. Let’s check the pod for any tracking devices just in case.”

Dyos
wasn’t exactly sure what he should be looking for. When his fingers brushed
against the plate again, he paused. “
Brale
, hand me
some tools.”

Using a screwdriver, he unscrewed
the nails on the plate, unearthing a panel. It just had one button. “Okay.
Let’s rationally figure out—”

Brale
slammed his fist into the button, and the pod began hissing with smoke.

“Fuck,
Brale
.
Why do you always have to press any shiny buttons you come across?”

“Because a little recklessness is
what makes life interesting?”

Dyos
pulled himself and his partner back in case the gas was poisonous. After making
sure it wasn’t dangerous, they neared the pod again.
Dyos
paled. The liquid goo covering the woman vanished, sucked by a vacuum
underneath. Then the glass cover slid open.

Brale
and
Dyos
could do nothing but stare for the first seconds
as tubes detached themselves, disappearing underneath the box. They jumped back
when the woman woke. Her limbs twitched at first, and then she let out one gasp
before jolting upwards.

When she was lying still in the
pod,
Dyos
could still imagine she was a corpse, an
object they didn’t know what to do about. Now she was awake and moving, he could
no longer think of her an object. He’d never been interested in the females on the
whole, but the more he stared at her, the more his cock grew heavy in his
flight suit.

Devoid of the amber fluid, her skin
was a rich and light honey color, and her hair was wet, dark and long, falling
down her waist.
Dyos
also found that there was
something exotic and alluring about her face.

Her cheekbones were sharp, slightly
dotted with color, and her eyes were wide and vivid green. Although she wasn’t
tall, her limbs were slender and well
formed,
her breasts
neither too small nor too big.

When she lifted her gaze at them,
Dyos
spotted the shiny metal collar on her neck. It bore
the same numbers on the pod.

“Are you two my new masters?” she
asked in husky voice, as if unused to speaking.

“Yes. We certainly are,” was the
first thing
Brale
said. It seemed
Brale
had conveniently forgotten his earlier oath they’d set a course for the client
and drop off the merchandise.

The woman seemed to take his words
as truth, because she climbed out of the pod.
Dyos
was about to pull
Brale
to a corner and have some
serious words with him, but he stopped cold. There was an odd grace to each of
her movements, even when she knelt in front of them.

She kept her eyes lowered as she
spoke. “What do my new masters desire of me?”

“I have always wanted to have one
of these in my possession,”
Brale
told
Dyos
, who only mutely punched him in the shoulder. He was
quite certain
Brale
didn’t know what exactly she was,
and he wasn’t too sure either.

“Please excuse us for a moment,”
Dyos
told the woman. He quickly steered
Brale
out of the cargo hold and back to the corridor leading to the ship’s
residential quarters.

“Why do you utter the first words
that come out of your mouth without bothering to check with your thick head?”
Dyos
demanded, crossing his arms.

“As I recall, you like my mouth
just fine,
Dyos
,”
Brale
said lazily. “Besides, have we not been having recent discussions in adding a
third
bondmate
to the mix to spice things up? I know
you desire this female as much as I.”

The marked change in his speech and
body language began to make
Dyos
wary. He’d been with
Brale
long enough to recognize when the darker aspect
of his
Cobrini
nature began to peek out. Gone was the
mate who always made jokes and never seemed to take anything seriously.

While it was true they were
considering taking a third after this job,
Dyos
didn’t think taking a Breeder as a third was the wisest thing in the galaxy.

Brale’s
slitted
black eyes sat dark and heavy with desire in their
sockets.
Dyos
let out a breath when
Brale’s
hand wandered possessively down the zipper of his
flight suit and paused on over the visible bulge on his jeans.

“It has been a while since I’ve
tasted you.”

Dyos
attempted to bat his hand away, but
Brale’s
grip was
inhumanly strong. He swallowed.
Dyos’s
eyes followed
the line of corded muscles bunching under the sleeve of
Brale’s
skin-tight flight suit. Under normal circumstances, he’d let
Brale
do what he wanted.

Gods of the Galaxy, he could feel the
heat kindling inside him. Seeing
Brale’s
dominant
side coming out, his balls were beginning to draw tightly against him

“We have to deal with the
unexpected merchandise.”
Dyos
knew he’d said the
wrong words, because
Brale’s
eyes glittered, his
pupils dilating with pleasure until they nearly swallowed all of his irises.

“Our female will please us,
Dyos
. In turn, we shall reciprocate and bring her to
pleasure again and again.”
Brale’s
tone was clearly a
command, not a suggestion. It was useless trying to convince
Brale
otherwise,
Dyos
knew, when
his
Cobrini
self took control.

The image of the female between
them rose unbidden in
Dyos’s
head.
Dyos
imagined her administering little feline-like licks
across his shaft while
Brale
magnificently pounded
her from behind.

“A Breeder is trained to serve,
Brale
. We will never know for certain if she will be a
willing participant in our mating, or she is simply following her function.”

A seductive deep laugh boomed out
of
Brale
.
Brale
leaned in
close, until their faces were touching.
Dyos
let out
a sound when
Brale
lifted his wrist and ran his
tongue across his pulse. The simple gesture was enough to unhinge and set him
off.

“You wanted to fight me at first,
too,
Dyos
, but you willingly yielded without a second
thought.”

Dyos
bit
his lip, groaning when
Brale’s
firm hands wandered
back up his chest. “Our first mating was different.”

“How was it different? It is
simple,
Dyos
. We make this female ours by showing her
we are worthy companions in bed,”
Brale
said,
sounding unconcerned.

Ours?
This conversation wasn’t going well. Both of their races were
possessive in nature, and if
Brale
began to see the
woman as theirs, he was not easily going to let her go.
Dyos
could hardly think when he felt the edge of
Brale’s
slightly sharpened incisors tracing the edge of his neck. Just remembering what
Brale
could do with his mouth, teeth, and tongue
wasn’t helping him remember reason.

Don’t
get distracted. Get your point across.

“She doesn’t belong to us,
Brale
. She belongs to our client. The client who is going
to make sure we no longer have to kill ourselves trying to make a living.
Besides with Farr on our trail, the wisest decision to make is get rid of her.”

“Forgot
everything that I’ve said before.
I don’t see why we still have to
fulfill our obligations to a client, a scum, who failed to inform us about the
Hadarian
squadron. Can you really stomach surrendering such
a pure and sweet creature to a man like that?”

The Gods of the Galaxy be damned.
Dyos
knew it was mistake opening the pod, and he knew his
words no longer had any effect on his mate. Perhaps after
Brale
had sated his lust, things would go back to normal.
Dyos
was counting on the fact that apart from their mates, the
Cobrini
usually saw other lovers as nothing better than a quick dalliance or a quick
means to an end.

Then again, hadn’t
Brale
proven time and time again he didn’t fit the typical
Cobrini
stereotype?

Dyos
also
had to admit
Brale’s
words badly shook him. He could
still remember the way the Breeder had gracefully fallen to her knees.
Dyos
knew those impossibly wide green eyes would haunt him
forever if they delivered her to the hands of their suspicious client.
Delivering her to a man like that went beyond his old
Hadarian
principles.

Despite her function, there was
decidedly something innocent and pure about her, but then again, Breeders were
created to entice and seduce. They weren’t whores.
Far from
it.
They were living and much sought after treasures.
Terran
Breeders lived in walled compounds all their lives,
kept away from the anarchy and chaos Terra had become after the
Fall
. They trained and prepared for the day they were
purchased by wealthy and high-ranking alien males in search of females who
could bear their offspring.

Would it really be so terrible
taking the female as their third
bondmate
?