Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 64359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
The last three guys I annoyed are the least of my worries. There’re worse things out there hunting me. I need someone who can protect me. I need someone who can hide me and keep me safe. Raz is perfect. Sometimes you find what you’re looking for after you sell yourself multiple times. There’s probably a moral in that story. I could write a book about that later. Make even more money.
For the first time in a very, very long time, things are actually working out for me. I feel like I’ve fallen on my feet. I’ve found the love of my life, maybe. I don’t really believe in loves of my life. If anything, life has taught me that love is easy come, easy go, and normally a lie. But hell if there isn’t part of me that insists on believing it anyway.
“Settle in,” Raz says, holding me close in his lap. “It’ll be a few hours before we can sort this out, but you may as well rest.”
I curl up in Raz’s arms and doze off as we’re on our way to the closest Owned Mates office. It means going back into civilized space, but he’ll keep me well hidden, I’m sure of it. There’s more than a little thrill in knowing I am passing beneath the noses of all the many law enforcement agencies who would have a bone to pick with me.
The Owned Mates head office is located on a small commercial asteroid that hurtles around a planet that hurtles around a sun somewhere or other. Companies set their offices up on asteroids for tax purposes, and this barren rock is absolutely bristling with buildings and storefronts for companies who operate throughout the galaxy and probably even further afield. Space used to be the final frontier. Now, with teleportation and other space folding technologies I won’t even pretend to understand, it’s more like a bit of an inconvenience.
A main strip of buildings runs along either side of a road which runs the entire circumference of the asteroid. Some of the buildings are dark and quiet, but a lot of them are lit up like nightclubs. Music pulses into the cool, empty night. This is not a place where a lot of people come, but it is a place where companies like to imagine people might come. Bass-heavy music thuds in a compelling way that almost makes me feel like I might be having a good time. Almost.
It’s hard to tell what the local time is. It feels like perpetual dusk. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. We won’t be here long. I’ve just got to sort out this little administrative matter and I can get back to Raz’s ship.
Finding the office I’m looking for isn’t hard because there’s a glowing naked human woman displayed above it rotating slowly. Underneath it is a big plate glass window adorned with images of hot human women in various states of undress.
The glowing red, similarly rotating letters above the door read: OWNED MATES. There’s a little tagline below it too: A mate to own for life.
They don’t say specifically whose life the mate is owned for, but that’s probably a deliberate oversight. I can imagine many human mates don’t last long with their alien owners. The anatomical challenges alone could cause lethal results.
I know how lucky I am to have been purchased by someone who enjoys my brand of disobedience and chaos. If any of the others who bought me were to take possession of me, I am sure their displeasure would be known, and their punishments intense. Fortunately for me, Raz seems to find everything I do very funny.
There’s a digital catalog outside too, labelled: Human Accessories.
I flip through the pages, which are nothing but light and air, and see all sorts of things advertised for the aliens who buy humans to use with and on their owned mates.
“Paddles. Cuffs. Cages. Restraints,” I read the categories aloud. ‘Human mates’ seems like a positive spin on what’s clearly something else entirely. Human fuck-slaves, more like it. I guess that would be more letters to put on a sign.
Raz is somewhere behind me, watching me. He’s the sort to do reconnaissance of an entire area. It’s smart, and it makes me feel like I have eyes in the back of my head.
“You don’t have endless amounts of time,” he reminds me. “They will be coming.”
That’s enough to get me through the front door and into a lobby sort of situation where a very bored human woman is sitting chained behind a very beige desk. There’s a gold collar around her neck, and two cuffs around her wrists. All three of these accoutrements have chains attached to them which appear to be fastened around her keyboard. That’s some very old tech, but hey, so’s the wheel and we don’t complain about that.