BOOTY HUNTER Page 2

  So I must be strong for her. I must be smart. I must… oh, for sun’s sake. Why did I resist and be incorrigible? Why did I have to open my mouth and spit on Serpint?

  Why did I let this happen to us?

  We are both now doomed.

  Serpint stops and stares at me for a moment. My spit didn’t actually touch him. Just fell on the floor a good foot’s length away from his well-worn leather boots. The cleaning bots whir into motion immediately, erasing the evidence.

  He looks at me with his dark violet eyes and almost cracks a smile.

  Almost. He doesn’t quite make it.

  He just looks over at the harem master, who makes a face of disgust—one I’m already far too familiar with for being here less than half a spin—and starts walking this way. His fingers already transforming into the whip that has struck my skin several times already.

  “I told you to be still and quiet while we figure out if you’re up to our standards, Lyra.”

  I hate the way he says my name, his voice emotionless and hard.

  There is no good reply to his statement so I say nothing, my eyes stuck on the whip growing out of his fingers. It’s longer now. And thinner. Which means it will sting worse than the last time.

  “Hold up,” Serpint says, putting an arm out in front of the master as he approaches me. “This is no Cygnian princess.”

  “She is.” The master sighs. The first hint of emotion he’s shown since I’ve been here and it’s… resignation. “We did the test.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Serpint protests. Then he looks at me, his violet eyes glowing with mischief, and says, “I think you should do it again. Just to make sure.”

  “No,” I say, growling at the master. “No. You did the test. In front of everyone.” I’m gonna lose it. My voice is trembling as I writhe against my bindings. “You don’t need to do it again! You already know I’m a princess.”

  But the cyborg master doesn’t agree. And yes, he does have emotions. Because the corners of his mouth lift up in a sly grin. “I think you’re right, Serpint. We should do it again. Just to make sure. We wouldn’t want trash getting past our screening process. That’s not fair to the other girls.” His whip fingers retract until they are just normal fingers again. But now they start vibrating.

  “No!” I shout. “Get the fuck away from me!”

  “I’m sorry, princess,” Serpint says, grinning now, just like the master. “If you are a princess. But I just don’t think it’s true.” Then his grin falls. His mouth hardens into a straight line as he narrows his eyes at me. “So prove it. Or we’ll toss you down into the lower levels and give you over to a less desirable harem.”

  Lyra, why can’t you ever just be good?

  Why must you always be such a bad girl?

  This is what happens when you don’t shut your mouth and do your job. You get captured by pirates, hauled off to Harem, and bound to a wall. While your sister is still on Bull Station waiting for you to save her.

  Good job.

  You deserve this humiliation.

  I do. I deserve it.

  Bots hover around me, recording the test the same way they did last time. If I thought I had a prayer, I’d tell them to just watch the footage.

  But this isn’t about proof. They already know what I am.

  This is about Serpint’s revenge.

  The cyborg master steps close, a little bit to the side to give Serpint, and all the other people in the harem room, a good view. His fingers vibrate like a sex toy.

  Because they are a sex toy.

  He slips them between my legs.

  I fight it. I do. I fight it hard.

  I will myself not to feel. I force myself to think about Nyleena. The horror she’s been through. So much, much worse than this.

  But I am wet the moment he touches me, the vibrations from his fingers finding my secret spot like he’s got a tracking device on my clit.

  I hold my breath. I clench my teeth. I stiffen my whole body.

  But that just makes it worse. Makes the vibrator between my legs press against my pussy even harder.

  Serpint can tell I’m resisting because he steps closer too. Angling his body against the opposite hip from the cyborg master. Making sure the whole room can get a good, long look at me as he reaches up, squeezes my breast, and begins to kiss my neck, just under my ear.

  “Give in,” he says, nipping my earlobe. “You know you want to.”

  I lose it.

  There is no way to stop this. No way I cannot climax.

  I come even faster than the last time and a part of me is horrified when I realize… it’s him. Serpint. He is the one who made my release bubble up to the surface and…

  Glow.

  My whole body glows gold.

  Because that’s how you know you’ve got yourself a bonafide Cygnian princess.

  We glow when we come.

  CHAPTER THREE - SERPINT

  Fun fact about Cygnian princesses.

  They are extra-special horny little minxes and they light up like a sun going supernova when they come.

  That’s the whole reason Crux keeps a whole flock of sexy swans up here in his private penthouse.

  I’ve seen it before. Maybe hundreds of times. It’s hard not to get a glimpse when every time I’m home on the station I have to be up here doing business with Crux.

  But this one’s glow is… I mean, I’m not trying to be disparaging, but it’s… dull.

  Barely worth watching.

  When I glance over my shoulder everyone in the room has lost interest.

  A half-breed, maybe? Is that a thing?

  I direct my gaze to the cyborg master, who has withdrawn his vibrating fingers from between her legs, and find him cocking one eyebrow at her. Probably thinking the same thing. Probably calculating how much Crux paid for her, adding in the fact that she’s unruly and belligerent, and deciding they should probably just send her down to the lower levels and cut their losses.

  I let her finish moaning and writhing in her bindings. The best Cygnian princesses can go on for several minutes. Hell, I’ve seen one who took a full hour to finally calm down. But this one only lasts about thirty seconds.

  Still, she’s exhausted. It must take a lot of energy to produce color like that, so I give her an extra moment.

  She takes it. Drops her chin to her ample breasts and lets out a long exhale.

  Then she lifts her eyes to meet mine from behind a curtain of unusually dark hair. Most of these princesses have bright-colored hair. Bellatrix blue, Demon Star orange, nebula green, and even some Arcturus red.

  The dark color is a disguise, I realize. And now that I look close I can see that her dye job is fading at random places all over her head.

  What is up with this girl?

  She seems recovered now. So I say, “That all you got?”

  “Fuck you,” she breathes, still panting. “Just… go away.”

  I allow myself a chuckle, but then I remember why I’m home in this condition and it fades like the daylight from three setting suns back on the home planet.

  Draden is dead. Ceres, blown up. Booty damaged.

  I turn away and call out to ALCOR, “Send me a bottle of good whiskey and a girl. I’ll be down in my quarters.”

  “Very well, Serpint,” ALCOR says with a sigh. It bothers me when he adds humanoid emotions to his typically flat speech patterns and normally I’d tell him to knock it off, he’s fooling no one with that bullshit. But today I can’t be bothered.

  I’m too fucking sad.

  To my dismay the stupid bot Crux ordered to stay with me actually stays with me. Hovering at shoulder height and just a little too close, so I have an urge to swat him away.

  But I don’t. ALCOR is protective of his stupid bots. Treats them like family—which I can respect. I’d be pissed as hell if ALCOR went off on one of my brothers. Shoot his server beds up with laser fire if he ever pulled that shit.

  So fuck it. I let the thing hove
r.

  We descend in a private elevator that opens up right to my quarters. The bot and I move forward at the same time, bumping against each other, and the urge to flatten the annoying piece of junk against the wall almost overtakes me.

  But ALCOR must sense this. Because his disembodied voice from nowhere and everywhere says, “Your shower is ready, Serpint. High-heat and lightly scented. Just the way you like it. I’ve even laced the steam with a mild analgesic. For your… injuries.”

  I appreciate the gesture. I can’t remember the last time ALCOR has bothered to make me comfortable. We tolerate each other, but that’s about it.

  This makes me sadder for some reason.

  “Thanks,” I mumble under my breath.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And stop being so nice to me,” I growl. “It’s making it worse.”

  “Very well.”

  I brush him off and walk down the hallway to my bedroom. The lights come on as I approach—a sure sign that ALCOR isn’t taking my orders today, because I usually have to give voice commands for lights—and the bot hovers just behind me. I step into the room and press the button on the door to shut and lock it before the pesky thing can follow.

  Feeling a little triumphant that I managed to acquire some privacy, I turn to take in my room.

  It’s big by station standards. Hell, most of the rooms in this place are no bigger than the bed. And more than half of them are just pods.

  But mine is extraordinarily large. There’s a bed fit for a king. Quite literally. Draped in silver-blue nyla-silk straight from a planet I can’t remember at the moment, and more pillows than I can count. I could fuck seven girls at once in this bed. I might even have done that. Once. Back in the old days when I spent more time here.

  There’s a data station on the far end with a direct link to Booty and the docking bay, but the flashing red letters spell out OFFLINE on the screen. Telling me that she’s not fixed yet.

  I try not to think about that and let my gaze wander to the metal binding wall where I like to secure girls with magnetic bracelets. I have another one just like it out in the living room. Just thinking about the energy it takes to sexually punish a girl right now…

  No. That’s not the kind of sex I’m looking for today. Just a simple girl who likes to fuck is about all I can handle at the moment.

  So I look at the bathroom instead. Which is another perk. Bigger than I need, filled with more gadgets than I’ll ever use, it’s what I miss most when I’m on ship because we have no water rationing here. This neighborhood has more floating chunks of ice than we could use in a million years.

  Tiled in black obsidian from floor to ceiling and a shower that practically makes love to me, it’s the epitome of luxury.

  All of us brothers have quarters like this because even though Crux runs the station, he doesn’t own the station. We all have equal shares in Harem. It was part of the deal with ALCOR from the beginning.

  My home.

  It hasn’t changed since I left it several months ago. No reason it should, it’s just…

  I sigh and sit on the bed, my ribs screaming as I bend over to unfasten the tabs on my boots.

  It’s just… constantly being alone on the ship, hunting down runaway princesses, making trouble and getting into fights… it’s starting to get old.

  Plus, I think, kicking off the first boot, I wasn’t really alone before and now I am.

  I kick off the second boot and fall back onto the bed. Stare up at the ceiling.

  The lights dim into something atmospheric, and I curse ALCOR under my breath. But I don’t tell him to get the fuck out. Because then I really would be alone and I don’t know if I could handle that right now. So I say, “Thanks, man. But I’m fine. Really.”

  ALCOR says nothing in reply. Perhaps respecting my wishes, perhaps he’s at a loss for words. Draden was his favorite from the start. His wise-cracking and good-natured personality made him easy to like. Plus, he was so young. I was young too, just a handful of months older than Draden, but a handful of months has more meaning to Akeelians.

  I chuckle a little, thinking about how childish Draden and I were when we got here. Playing war with anything that even remotely look like a weapon. Running all over the station with no one to reign us in but our little army of servo bot minions. Oblivious to why we were here or how we’d never go home again. But we didn’t care. This station was a little kid’s playground back then. All this space and only the seven of us to use it.

  It was great, I realize. He was great.

  And now he’s gone.

  Forever.

  If ALCOR has emotions—and that’s certainly debatable—then he’s as sad as I am right now.

  Wincing from the broken ribs as I force myself to sit up, then stand, and wince again, I realize I will have to get fixed up in a medical pod eventually. The ribs I can take. They will heal on their own no matter what. But the hairline fracture in my leg will just get worse the longer I leave it.

  Still, it can wait another day at least.

  I just need a shower right now.

  I strip off my pants, kicking them into a corner that will be piled with dirty clothes before I leave again on the next job, and wander into the bathroom naked.

  It’s filled with steam. A slight medicinal scent in the air. I breathe it in deep, thankful that ALCOR is an asshole who doesn’t listen because this is some fast-acting good shit and the pain in my ribs begins to ease with just a few breaths.

  I limp into the shower stall and ease myself down onto the bench. There’s a setting on the control panel that will eject little disposable scrubbing bots and normally, if I was myself, I wouldn’t use that in a million years… but I’m not myself today.

  So I reach over and press the stupid button.

  A flurry of fluffy washing bots emerge from a side panel and the minute they hit the water they erupt with suds that smell like air, and wind, and other things you find on habitable planets but never on space stations.

  They descend on me, whirring and pressing against my skin in a massaging way that feels much better than I remember.

  I scoot forward a little, then lean back. Slightly reclined as I open my legs and… yeah. Like I said, this shower can practically make love to me.

  Maybe I don’t need a girl. I should tell ALCOR to nix that request. Why bother when I can just jerk off alone?

  Alone.

  I close my eyes and sigh. Reaching down to fist the shaft of my growing cock.

  There is no particular girl in mind because there is no particular girl.

  Never has been.

  I really am alone.

  “Serpint.” ALCOR’s voice comes from the ether. “Your girl and drink are here.”

  “Great,” I say, still jerking off. “Just leave her in the living room. I’ll be out when I’m done.”

  I’m not in the mood to explain that I’ve changed my mind. Both about the booze and the girl. I think all I want to do is go down to the medical bay and sit with Booty while they fix her. Be there when they bring her back online. Tell her we’re OK. Everything’s gonna be OK, even though it’s not.

  She’s all I have left and unlike ALCOR or the cyborg master, she does have feelings. Real, humanoid emotions. Booty is a true super-sentient AI. She has hopes and dreams and she’s experiencing the same loss as I am.

  The four of us have been a team for almost a decade and now we are down to two.

  I come uneventfully, squirting semen onto the obsidian floor, and then decide not to continue. I force myself to stand and let the scrubbers wash my back. They gently massage their way up and down my spine, descend down to my thighs and scrub my cock as it continues to swell and harden.

  I have to pull my shit together for Booty’s sake. She will pick up on my feelings and amplify them. I could send her into a depression and that’s the last thing either of us needs right now.

  Man up, Serpint. You’re the fucking captain. There’s no room for emotions
today.

  Right.

  I tap the END icon on the control panel and all the little scrubber bots disappear into a recycle bin so they can be broken down and printed into new scrubber bots. Or whatever the fuck they’ll get made into next.

  The steam and water cuts off too, then hot air floods the shower room. I stand there, arms open, legs spread, still very hard—and I will be for a while because that’s the natural consequences of only coming once—and try to enjoy the next thirty seconds of relaxing calm.

  But like all good things, it ends. The hot air cuts off and the shower door slides open, ALCOR’s not-so-subtle signal that I have to deal with reality.

  I step out, warm, dry, and a little more relaxed than I was a few minutes ago. Then hate myself for that.

  “Serpint,” ALCOR says. “May I offer some advice?”

  “No,” I growl, stepping out of the bathroom. “And I really fucking mean that,” I add. Because he’s not an obedient personality. At all. “Get the fuck out of my quarters.”

  “Very well.”

  I don’t know if I just imagine that I can feel his absence when he disappears, but I think I can. Because the whole place becomes just a little more empty.

  Good job, Serpint. Got just what you wanted.

  I open the door to find the stupid bot waiting for me, chirping a greeting I don’t understand. Why couldn’t Crux assign me a bot that spoke a real language?

  Ignoring it, I walk down the hallway, hand automatically reaching down for the hardness between my legs out of habit, thinking I’ll get myself a drink to enjoy as I get dressed and come face to face with…

  The half-breed princess.

  Bound to my punishment wall with magnetic bracelets. A giant pink bow wrapped around her waist and an electronic note hovering across her ample tits that reads: She’s all yours. Enjoy. In bright green letters.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  CHAPTER FOUR - LYRA

  Fun fact about Akeelian males.

  They have two extra-long, extra-hard, extra-thick cocks.