No Way Around It Page 2

  His hard gaze shifted to her face, then swooped down her body, his hazel eyes narrowing dangerously.

  Although Vonna tried to remain calm, a tremor of alarm shuddered beneath her skin.

  Chapter Two

  “Quade --” Yale’s tone vibrated with a sharp warning. Why had his friend brought her to his private sanctuary? She belonged with the others.

  “Is she not tempting?”

  The human female arched away from Quade’s flowing touch down her spine. The movement thrust out her full breasts which rested in a semi-circle of stiff black material. Her lips thinned with annoyance, but she didn’t squeal or cry as he expected. The fine bones in her wrist stood out in relief as she clenched her fists above the shackles. She stared at Yale, her chin raised in defiance.

  At first glance, he admired the courage in her set features. Looking closer, he picked out the shimmer of fear in her dark eyes. Both responses set his pulse racing. Most of the females he purchased at auction quivered with terror at the sight of him. He was bigger than most Alishons and abnormal, his skin markings almost indistinct. More than that, his murderous reputation preceded him. Yale liked passive females, but not meek souls afraid of their own shadows.

  This Earthling wasn’t like the other females at all. Her quiet tension vibrated with rebellion. Quade apparently considered the female a worthwhile playmate for Yale. So he’d brought her here to goad Yale, mock him, draw out the male he used to be -- before his wife died.

  Quade had tried this trick before. It hadn’t worked then, and it wouldn’t work now. Yale had more important things to handle than taming a fiery female.

  “Bumps rise on her skin at the slightest touch,” his friend said, stroking two fingers along the inside of her raised arm.

  She jerked away, her long body undulating in the process. Yale’s breath caught in his throat. The thought of making her rock like that beneath him stirred his blood.

  “Her breasts are especially sensitive,” his friend murmured.

  The chill of the room mixed with her apprehension caused the bumps, Yale knew. Still, he liked the way her dark nipples puckered at the edge of the black covering when Quade skimmed his fingertips over the hills and valleys of her plump breasts.

  Would she react that way to his touch?

  The flash of fire in the human’s eyes made his heart skip a beat. Maybe the cool temperature didn’t attribute to those tight peaks as much as he thought.

  Quade chuckled and stroked her neck. The female’s nose flared as she drew in a deep breath. Oh yes, she enjoyed Quade’s attention. Yet, her focus remained locked on Yale’s face, as if she sensed he was the more dangerous of the two.

  He watched with bated breath as Quade drew a squiggly line down her side to the scrap of material at her hip. “What’s your pleasure, Yale?” With a sudden twist of her hips, he turned the female around and showed him her ass, bisected by a thin black strap between the cheeks and slung low across her back. “Would you like to redden her bottom with a few lashes of your flogger?”

  She lifted her knees and swung her legs backward in an attempt to bash Quade’s shins with the spreader bar. He jumped back in the nick of time.

  All the while, Yale admired the muscles bunching in her athletic thighs and calves. It required strength to raise the bar and swing it while hanging by one’s wrists. He watched her beautiful, round buttocks clench and release, and his throat went dry.

  How he’d like to give her an ardent spanking on that ass. It would take a lot to make her rich bronze skin blush. Maybe a hard smack with the paddle would work better. Intuitively, he knew she’d take pleasure in every strike.

  Yale knew her type well. In between her abrupt withdrawals and retaliations, she wrestled with herself. He could see it in the fierce concentration that drew her brows together. She questioned the erotic pull of being trussed up, fought the attraction of Quade’s sensual touch. Instinct drove her to fight, but deep inside she longed to surrender.

  She wouldn’t give in to Quade though. He was teasing her, nothing more, and the human was smart enough to realize it. At least, Yale hoped she saw through his friend because his gut tightened at the thought of her falling for a philanderer like Quade.

  Yale, on the other hand, regarded bondage as a serious expression of his attraction. It required a special partner. The few times he’d brought a female here, usually at Quade’s prodding, he’d been disappointed. So far, no one had come close to the bond he’d shared with his wife.

  Yet, he found himself spellbound before this female. Speechless. Entranced by her. The second he’d seen the tall human standing calmly before Quade, vulnerable yet fearless, she’d roused his interest. With the right training, she’d make an excellent partner, as soon as she accepted her suppressed desires.

  Well, he’d take care of that quickly enough. With soothing words and a firm hand, he’d settle her inner turmoil and draw her submissive nature to the surface. Wonder would replace confusion. He could smell the proof of her excitement. As he tenderly dragged the flogger’s soft hide over her flesh, she’d quiver. The anticipation of the straps’ bite on her buttocks would get her so worked up, cream would bead on her pussy lips. Only then would he give her a taste of his mastery. One slap and she’d be begging for more. When he had her tottering on the edge of orgasm, he’d slip his stiff cock between her legs and make her scream.

  Quade released her and she swung back around to face Yale. The loathing in the Earthling’s eyes cooled his ardor. She’d obviously heard the rumors about him. What horrors did she imagine he’d press upon her?

  “Can’t you see her adorned with large rings pierced through her nipples, Yale?”

  Bells, he thought, so he could hear her coming. It might be a while before he trusted her not to sneak up behind him and thrust a knife in his back. Transforming her into a submissive lover would take time and patience.

  The thought brought him back to his senses. “She wasn’t brought to the compound for this, Quade.”

  “Why not?” Quade unclipped the female’s dark hair. It fell over her shoulders in long curly waves. “This human will be more useful to you out of the lab than in it.” He lifted a few strands of her hair and dipped them into her cleavage. The female stiffened and pressed her lips together. “See how she reacts? She’s perfect.”

  His sentiments exactly, but he had other priorities. “Our people are dying younger every day. I have no time for play.”

  Quade’s eyes flashed angrily. He stopped caressing her breasts with her hair and glared at Yale. “Stop being a martyr and take her!”

  The female stared at Yale with wide, confused eyes.

  A knot formed in his throat. Quade might be right. Sex with the Earthling would incorporate her disease-resistant DNA into his, boosting his energy so he could spend longer hours on research and experimentation.

  Yet, unlike his contemporaries, he wasn’t convinced that a fusion of Earthling and Alishon genes was the answer to the sickness that plagued his planet. Yale didn’t want a temporary fix for himself. He wanted to find a cure.

  “Release me and I’ll help you.”

  The female’s words stiffened his spine. She’d spoken quietly, urgently, her smooth sultry voice at odds with her tough exterior. The sound soaked into his skin, warming his blood, leaving him yearning for more.

  He gave his head a mental shake. She was trying to bribe him! No one coerced him to do anything he didn’t want to do. Yet, her offer to help piqued his curiosity. “What is your scientific profession?”

  Cool self-assurance shone in the human’s eyes. “I’ll tell you as soon as you free me.”

  “Tell me now or I’ll leave you hanging here until you do.” With a vibrator stuffed up your hot pussy.

  “From what I’ve heard, that would be a waste of precious time,” she shot back. “You need me.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. Quade should never have brought her here. All the new employees, purchased through auction or not, were se
nt directly to the lab. There was no other way to convince them Yale wasn’t the ogre the rest of society made him out to be.

  In this room, with this female, the sexual beast inside him rumbled to life. He had no time for it! “I will decide how to best use your talents, Earthling.” His gaze roamed over her taut body and settled on her lush breasts. Desire raged through his veins. How he wished he had an hour to spare!

  He was about to tell Quade to unshackle her when she looked down at the bulge at his groin.

  Vonna swallowed hard. Would he force himself on her?

  For a moment, she thought she’d seen compassion in his eyes -- for his people, not her. Something was killing the population here, and it wasn’t necessarily the scary creatures on the planet’s surface.

  Yale ran a biomedical lab. According to her first captors, he conducted unapproved experiments. Was he searching for a cure? She’d hoped the promise to help might sway him from any torturous delights he’d find in this room, but it only seemed to anger him.

  His eyes glittering with a hard edge, he closed the distance between them, stopping inches away. The warmth of his body seeped over her bare skin. She flinched a little when he gathered the hair lying over her breast and wrapped it around his fist. She braced for the hard tug on her scalp. Instead, he raised his hand to his nose and sniffed her hair.

  “What is your name?”

  She stared at him stupidly, lost in the brilliance of his green eyes. Within the steely dark edges lurked the gentleness she thought she’d imagined. The contradiction confused her. His gaze called to her, warm and inviting, yet his stare was fringed with red-hot steel.

  “She is called Distinguished Scientist King,” his friend offered.

  She’d been so intent on Yale, she’d forgotten the other male. Apparently, so had Yale because the desire in his eyes suddenly disappeared.

  “Vonna King,” she said quietly, wanting to bring back that soft look.

  “What is your scientific profession?” he asked her once again. This time his voice, mellower than before, caressed the very fiber of her being.

  “Biogeneticist,” she said without forethought.

  He took a quick step backward and uttered a word she didn’t understand. Hopefully, he wasn’t calling her a demon or something.

  He looked sharply at his friend. “Quade, get her out of here!”

  Yale stormed off.

  Behind her, Quade warned her not to struggle. The sound of a stun gun crackled near her back. The muscles in her shoulders tensed as she braced for an electrifying jolt. Instead of shooting her, Quade released the magnetic link around her wrists.

  Just as she was thinking about a hand chop to Quade’s neck to knock him out, Yale strode back in with a lab coat bunched in his hands. He threw it at her before Quade finished undoing the bar between her legs.

  With quick reflexes, she caught the coat in her arms.

  “Put that on and come with me.”

  Chapter Three

  Before Vonna had a chance to fasten the lab coat, Yale grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the secured door. The thin white coat flapped behind her. She didn’t appreciate the forceful treatment but at least they were leaving the chamber of horrors. If she never saw that place again, it would suit her fine.

  A fluttery feeling in her belly told her she hadn’t seen the last of it. What exactly did Yale do to his captives in there? Was it a room for torture or agonizing pleasure?

  “You don’t have to drag me along. I have long legs.”

  The mad scientist slowed as they approached the door, and he gave her legs a once over with an arch of a brow, a slight smile, and no comment. The masculine look of appreciation gave her pause. It had been ages since anyone looked at her that way. Vonna’s colleagues and friends viewed her as a scientist. Gender was irrelevant.

  Of course, she didn’t expose her body to them like this either.

  She didn’t know if she felt flattered or insulted by her captor’s intense interest. Regardless, she pulled the lab coat closed and fastened it.

  Yale keyed in a long sequence of numbers on the door keypad, which she memorized just in case she was trapped in this room again. The door slid open soundlessly, exposing a long hallway lit by blue phosphorous tubes.

  “The lab is this way,” he said, guiding her through the door with his large hand on the small of her back.

  The warmth of his touch eased through the thin material of the lab coat and settled into her skin. He might have intended to steer her with a firm hand, but the contact gentled. Given the situation, it felt more intimate than it should have.

  At the end of the hallway, they passed through another door into a large recreation area packed with rowdy males and females wearing nothing but loincloths. She blinked at the sea of bare breasts. It was rather disconcerting, yet there wasn’t anything overtly sexual going on.

  The aliens played in small groups, concentrating on games of chance, mind-stretching games, and light aerobic sports. She caught sight of an occasional breast fondling, especially when a female leaned over a playing table to take her turn, but it was done in a tender or light-hearted manner that simply made the female grin. Based on the carefree noise, everyone was having a good time.

  The smiles and laughter grew subdued as Yale pushed her through the throng. It wasn’t fear that stilled them, but curiosity. Vonna heard the word “Earthling” bandied about the room as if it were a word of reverence.

  No one said a word to Yale.

  “The exit is to your left,” he said from behind her.

  She stopped at the closed door and waited for him to open it. “Who are all these individuals?”

  “Scientists,” he said, pushing the square that opened the door. “Technicians, researchers, data entry personnel, maintenance engineers.”

  As they stepped into another blue-lit hallway, she realized she could’ve opened the last door. It seemed the only off limits room was the bondage room. From here, several doors and smaller hallways led off the main tube.

  “They’re the day shift, off duty now,” Yale finished explaining. He pointed down another long hallway. “Lodgings are down there. Private or communal, whichever you prefer.”

  She stopped at a window, admiring the soft pink colors of the approaching night. “We’re in a canyon,” she mused, marveling at the play of light on the sheer vertical walls. “Why can I see a city skyline and two quarter-phase moons but from space, we detected no civilization on your planet?”

  “We have a camouflage field above us.” She turned to look at him, surprised he bothered to explain. “Think of it as a two-way mirror. We can see out but no one can see in. It blocks all penetrating energy waves.”

  “So our shuttle pod disappeared when we landed?”

  “You landed outside the city. The pod was clearly visible from space -- until it exploded.”

  Vonna shivered at the memory of the giant creature that wrapped its tentacles around their pod while they were out collecting samples. It had lifted the small craft, along with the navigator inside, and thrown it across the plain. The pod had erupted into a fiery ball.

  Yale moved closer to her side, bringing warmth but no sympathy. “See that orange glow in the western sky?”

  Vonna nodded, knowing what it was before he told her.

  “That is your Earth ship, moving out of orbit.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn his head to look at her. “They are leaving you behind.”

  “The captain is on a tight schedule. We knew he wouldn’t wait for us if we ran into trouble. His job was to get us here, not babysit us.” She turned her head and looked into his incredible eyes. “The exploration company will send another ship to retrieve us.”

  For a long moment, he studied her face. “Where are the others in your party?”

  A knot filled her throat. Hopefully, Jake and Kelly had made out better than she had. “Two dead. Two unknown.”

  “They will not be missing long. Your landing on Alishon
was an immense event.” He took her elbow and led her down the hall once more. “As soon as I hear, I’ll let you know their status.”

  Vonna glanced at him with a furrowed brow. Why would he bother updating her on her team? Did he hope to threaten their lives in order to gain something from her? Although that sounded plausible, he’d made the offer with a touch of compassion in his voice.

  Psychopaths sometimes had a softer side, her common sense warned. Still, she refused to believe the worst until she witnessed his foul deeds in person. Perhaps that was naïve, but she’d known a few colleagues who’d been ruined by false accusations. She preferred to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

  At the end of the corridor they walked through a series of doors, each one more secure than the previous. Finally, they entered a cavernous white room filled with a legion of workers manning lab equipment. In contrast to the rec room, the ambiance here was hushed. Serious.

  “Come meet the night shift,” he said quietly.

  At least this group all wore lab coats. In the back, inside transparent walls, a few were dressed head to toe in clean-room suits.

  It was surreal following Yale around the room, being introduced to intellectuals working on formulas and equipment far superior to anything she’d seen before. The technology was like comparing dials to keypads. The equipment produced familiar results but the process stymied her. On top of that, the personnel treated her as an equal rather than a captive. They obviously had no clue that Yale had bought her at auction -- or they turned a blind eye. She frowned, recalling her first captors’ discussion about the numerous females Yale had bought in the past. Maybe everyone here had been bought like slaves on an open market, making her equal in that one respect.

  “I must leave you for a while,” Yale said to her. “Feel free to wander about the lab.” He sounded rushed. “Ask anyone anything you wish. Everyone is free to speak here.”