Taking Tilly (16 page)

She knew when he spoke that it was the
commander.

“
Sire! I beg pardon for
disturbing you, but I believe you may be crushing the
female.”

The man on top of her jerked and
rolled off, examining her in confusion for several moments before
he got up and collected his clothing.

“
Lady—my deepest
apologies,”
the prince said, bowing
courteously.

Tilly bit her lip, struggling with her
amusement over the fact that the poor man was clearly completely
befuddled—either from being woken so abruptly from a deep sleep or
simply from exhaustion from trying to fuck her to death.

To her relief, instead of taking
offense at her amusement, he grinned, leaned down and kissed her
squarely on the mouth—deeply, warmly, stirring currents of desire
that should’ve been cold and dead.

And then he broke the kiss abruptly,
gave her a strange look, and left.

The commander also gave her a strange
look—anger and something else flickering quickly across his
face—and then he, too, withdrew, closing the door firmly behind
him.

Chapter Eighteen

Tilly was weary enough that she wasn’t
able to worry too much about the cryptic look the commander had
given her.

She hardly dared even think it, but
she couldn’t help but think the young leader was very handsome and
it wasn’t entirely because of his physical features. There was
something almost … magnetic about him.

It was strange to think she thought he
was so cute when she didn’t have a clue of what he’d said, but she
still thought he was charming and he had certainly satisfied her
sexually very thoroughly, and so she drifted off with a smile on
her face.

She wasn’t smiling when she
woke—aroused by a noise she didn’t recognize. She came awake with a
jolt and looked around the tiny room without recognition for
several moments.

It was getting dark, she realized,
bounding out of the bed almost on the thought and racing to the
window.

The sky above the setting sun was a
brilliant painting of glorious colors.

It wasn’t an Earth sunset, but it was
a sunset and she stood staring at it in awe and happiness until it
faded into darkness, ignoring the pain and yearning it also evoked,
the homesickness.

And for just a few moments she was
back on Earth.

She thought that was why she glanced
around with a smile on her face when she heard the door open, the
comment she’d been about to make dying when she discovered that it
was the commander and the second.

Both men stopped in their tracks as if
they’d hit a brick wall, but the second frowned and strode to the
window to stare outside.

He looked baffled when he turned to
the commander again and shrugged.

Tilly glanced from one man to the
other and moved away from the window guiltily.

“
What look there?” the
commander demanded.

Tilly gaped at him, blinking while her
brain tried to translate that to English. “Sunset. I was watching
the sun go down,” she responded when she saw his expression tighten
with anger.

She hadn’t realized he couldn’t really
speak English!

Somehow, even though they had never
spoken more than a few words—mostly one—she’d thought they spoke
and understood English very well.

Apparently, they understood better
than they spoke it, though.

Maybe.

Still unnerved by their behavior, she
climbed onto the bunk and bent her knees, settling her soles on the
bed and spreading her legs wide.

She didn’t realize she had done it
without the command of the nano-suit until she felt the suit tug at
the lips of her sex and spread it. Ordinarily, it did that as it
spread her thighs.

The commander stared down at her sex
for a long moment and then unfastened his trousers and climbed on
the bed between her thighs, plowing into her. For a handful of
moments, it felt like she was being battered by a blunt club, but
he curled his arms around her and pinned her in place, pushing
until her flesh yielded to the greater force.

It punched the air from her lungs as
he drove home and then began a pounding, almost desperate-seeming
rhythm that forced her to clamp her teeth together to keep from
biting her tongue.

Her body was slow to actually respond.
They’d scared her and they hadn’t ordered the suit to prepare her
for them.

She had just enough time to get
completely warmed up when he came.

He seemed to realize that and it
didn’t make him happy.

He stared down at her for a long
moment and then shifted down. The nano-suit parted to give him
access to her breasts and he assaulted one and then the other until
she was gasping for breath. When he shifted upward to impale her on
his cock again, she was hot and ready and he had little trouble
conquering her depths—or making her come until she was
screaming.

She expected his second to take his
place as soon as he finished. Instead, she was sent to
bathe.

That revved her even more because she
was certain once she’d cleaned the commander’s seed from her
vaginal area the second would sex her with his mouth.

And he nearly drove her out of her
mind when he did that.

To her surprise, both of them were
waiting at the door—a little impatiently—when she came out. The
commander summoned her and the three of them followed the corridor
to the front lounge and then out of the building and down the
street.

There were artificial lights—not many
but enough to cast a warm glow on the street where they walked. She
was surprised when they returned to the building she’d been taken
to earlier, which she’d decided must be like a court, but it
transpired that the building was a community meeting and gathering
place. The benches that had been used earlier for the meeting had
been rearranged around crude tables.

Everyone looked up and stared when
they entered.

Tilly felt her face turning red as it
occurred to her that they’d come to fetch her to eat and she’d
distracted the commander by assuming the position.

She realized that, without the
nano-suit, there would have been serious communication problems.
Well, there was no real communication, but the suits made that
unnecessary since they commanded the suits.

Maybe enslaving them and forcing them
to their will wasn’t the only reason for the suits?

She was still a little stunned at her
discovery.

Somehow she’d thought they just didn’t
talk much—to them—that it was their way of letting the women know
that they weren’t allowed to talk—not around or to their
captors.

She hadn’t actually tried to
communicate with them. She’d been under the impression it wasn’t
allowed and was afraid she’d say something that would earn a
punishment.

The men were huge. It didn’t take much
for them to intimidate. A stern look from the commander was enough
to make her knees turn to water.

She saw when she managed to overcome
her embarrassment that the women were all seated at a long table
together. A spot had been left for her and she walked quickly to
the table to take her place.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if
the other women had made some snide remark, or at least given her a
nasty look, but she discovered they looked far too exhausted to
have any interest in much—even their food.

It smelled good and there was nothing
wrong with Tilly’s appetite. She picked up the utensil that had
been provided and carefully sampled small bites of food until she
knew what she liked and what she didn’t.

She supposed they hadn’t been too
late. The food was still hot and the diners still seemed to be
working on their food.

Everyone’s spirits seemed to rise as
they ate, they became more energetic and talkative—and that
included the aliens.

“
Have you seen any women?
I mean, at all?”

“
No. But I spent the day
on my knees and back,” the woman beside her said dryly. “I haven’t
seen much besides floor and ceiling.

Tilly didn’t know if the woman had
said it that way to be funny or not, but it struck her as funny and
she chuckled.

One wouldn’t think, in a hall that big
and filled to bursting, that anyone would be able to hear her laugh
over the racket let alone react to it the way they did.

Silence enveloped the entire hall so
suddenly you could’ve heard a pin drop.

Tilly felt her face take on the
properties of a neon sign. The blood began to pulse hotly in her
cheeks.

Laughter wasn’t allowed?

She glanced around uneasily for the
commander to see how much trouble she was in and caught the gaze of
the leader. He smiled at her abruptly and most of her uneasiness
vanished.

“
There is a sound I would
enjoy growing accustomed to again—the laughter of a
woman.”

Tilly didn’t have a clue of what he
said but, thankfully, everyone resumed their
conversations.

“
Boy you really know how
to get attention,” the woman who’d made the witty comment
remarked.

Tilly felt her face redden again.
“Sorry. I just thought it was funny. I didn’t know we weren’t
allowed to laugh.”

The woman shrugged. “I’m not sure we
aren’t. I think, maybe, it was just unexpected. It didn’t seem to
me that anyone looked disapproving—just surprised.”

“
Yeah, well they should
be,” one of the women a little further down the table muttered
under her breath. “Being fucked half to death is no laughing
matter! I think I must have serviced two dozen men. I’m totally
bow-legged now.”

One of the other women snorted. “I
thought my pussy was going to fall out on the walk
over.”

Roughly half the women at
the table snorted with laughter. The rest were divided between
outrage and disgust. “
Please!
I’m trying to eat unidentifiable stuff
here!”

Tilly didn’t know whether to be amused
or uneasy. She’d fallen asleep after the leader had fucked her
senseless and no one else had come and demanded service.

Even the commander hadn’t. She’d just
assumed he was there for sex.

Why, she wondered? And how long before
the others discovered she was the only one that wasn’t doing her
share?

“
You aren’t going to puke,
are you? Because I have to warn you I have a weak stomach and I’ll
puke if you do. And it could easily start a chain reaction in close
quarters like this.”

Even the image was enough to
horrify!

“
No! I’m fine,” Tilly said
quickly.

The woman who’d first spoken to her
looked her over curiously. “Why do you think the prince stroked
your belly like that when he looked you over?”

Tilly felt her jaw go slack. She
hadn’t actually thought there was any significance to it at all.
He’d stroked her all over. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice that he
did, to be honest. I was so embarrassed and scared ….”

“
Looks to me like your
belly’s taken on a definite bulge,” Emily said snidely and then
chuckled maliciously. “Maybe he thinks you’re pregnant?”

Tilly felt her eyes widen as she
stared at her sister, but her mind wasn’t on her or in fact her
surroundings. She was trying to remember when she’d last changed
her birth control patch. It was a useless exercise. She couldn’t
remember. She’d been too upset about Emily being missing before
she’d been taken and she’d had no way to track the time afterward.
She knew it had been a very long time, though.

And abruptly everything seemed to fall
into place.

They hadn’t actually come
to rescue her from the horrible creature that was torturing her.
They’d discovered she was pregnant and they’d come to rescue the
child—
their
child.

That
was why their leader had cupped her belly in a way she
realized was … almost loving.

They had no women and she was carrying
a child that was at least half alien.

“
Wait! Did you say prince?
That young one over there that seems to be the head of the
council?” Tilly whispered urgently. The one that had been in her
bed?

Not that there was
anything strange about it. He was a man even if he
was
a prince. He would
want to fuck and if they didn’t have women of their own and he
wasn’t in to men ….

The woman snorted. “Yeah,
the one all of the others bow to. You can tell from the way
they
act
that
he’s royal to them. But one of the men who came to me said he
wasn’t a king. He’s a prince. Don’t know why there would be a
difference. I thought princes always became kings when the old
ruler died. And I guess the old ruler died because their enemies
blew up their planet. The only reason there are any left at
all—they call themselves Merkdar—is because these are the soldiers
that were in the starship fleet—well the survivors. And they were
on their way home from battling their enemies when their enemies
destroyed their world with a well aimed planetoid.