by Claire Kent
She was in better shape than she’d ever been in her life—thanks to two months of rigorous exercise with Cain. But she also hadn’t taken a shower in two months. And she couldn’t believe anyone but Cain would actually find her attractive.
“I’ll take over the checkup, if you want,” the guard volunteered.
Davis looked briefly annoyed, but then his professional demeanor reappeared as he snapped out an order to the others about preparing for mealtime.
So it was Davis who walked Riana through a different mechanized door, and it was Davis who took the gag off her.
After clearing her throat, Riana asked weakly, “What are you going to do to me?”
“Checkup. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Again, Riana realized his words were a gesture of kindness—although they didn’t feel particularly kind to her at the moment. She knew what was coming, and she would have been afraid—if she’d believed she would actually be going through with the checkup.
“Isn’t there a…a doctor?”
“We have no doctor here. The machines do most of the work, anyway. You need to take off your clothes and lie down here.” Davis gestured at the long table in the center of the room. “Put your arms and legs on the cuffs, and I’ll snap them in place from outside.”
Even though she’d known it was coming, the words still made her belly churn with nerves. “Do I have to take my clothes off?” she asked, since she knew she’d need to stall until Cain and Hall got into place. “Those other guards were—”
“No one will see you but me,” Davis assured her. “Unless you don’t get on the table to be restrained. Then I’ll have to bring others in, and we’ll do it by force.”
“I’ll do what I’m supposed to.” She spoke quickly and widened her eyes, not having to feign anxiety. “I don’t want any trouble.”
This seemed to please Davis too. The corner of his lips turned up slightly. “I didn’t think so. I’ll be outside, but I’ll have to observe you through the window to make sure you don’t try anything.”
“I understand.”
When Davis had left the room, the door sliding shut behind him, Riana took off her clothes, draping them on an empty table. She felt trembly and uncomfortable completely naked—especially knowing Davis was watching her—but she got on the table, laid on her back, and put her heels and hands in the designated spots.
There was a loud click as the shackles snapped over her wrists and ankles. She was naked on the table now, spread eagle with her legs parted.
The only time she could remember feeling more vulnerable was when she’d first been dumped into the Hold.
Davis wasn’t going to hurt her, though. He might not be a truly good man, but he was a rule follower, and he wasn’t out to hurt or debase her.
She would have come to this conclusion on her own, but she was comforted by the fact that Cain had assessed the man in the same way.
Cain wouldn’t have let her do this if he hadn’t been confident she was safe with Davis.
“Are you cold?” Davis asked, when he came back into the room.
She was. Her skin had broken out in goose bumps, and her nipples had tightened into erect peaks. “A little.” Her voice came out shaky, so she didn’t have to try to pretend. “The table is really cold.”
Davis hadn’t looked at her directly yet—as if he were making a point not to—and now he turned to adjust one of the controls on the panel that covered half of one wall. “I’ll see if we can get it a little warmer in here.”
Riana whispered, “Thank you.”
He met her eyes then, still managing to avoid staring down at her spread, naked body. “I’ll give you a visual checkup first—to look for obvious signs of ill-health. Then you’ll go through a series of computerized tests. It’s uncomfortable, but you should do fine.”
“Okay.” She really, really hoped Cain was getting things in motion soon.
She assumed he would be okay until he’d triggered the machine. Then all hell would break loose, and they’d all be in a lot of danger.
For the first time, Davis let his eyes stray down to her body. They lingered on her firm, rounded breasts, although he clearly tried not to leer. “Has anything been troubling you?”
Other than the fact that she’d been thrown in a prison to be used as the convicts wanted—she assumed he meant.
“My skin is itchy a lot, because I can’t clean myself properly,” she told him, although she assumed this would be true of everyone. “And I have a couple of cuts I’m afraid are infected.”
Davis had looked over her body carefully, doing his best to sustain a professional disinterest. But she’d noticed his breathing pick up and his face flush slightly, and she was pretty sure they were signs of excitement. “Where are the cuts?”
“One is here.” She gestured with her chin to her right armpit. “It hasn’t been there long, but it’s really been bothering me.”
The cut was actually on the side of her breast. And it had been made that morning when Cain had carefully given her a superficial gash with his hidden blade.
She thought she heard Davis suck in a breath, but he didn’t say anything as he turned to get some sort of disinfectant salve from a medical kit. Very gently, he wiped down the cut and then spread the salve over the wound.
When he accidentally grazed her hard nipple with the side of his hand, Riana sucked in a sharp breath and arched her back slightly.
The second time he brushed her nipple, she wasn’t sure it was an accident.
“Does he…” Davis began, clearing his throat after his voice cracked. His face was even more flushed now, and there was a barely suppressed smolder in his eyes. “Does he hurt you?”
She didn’t bother asking who he was talking about. “Do you mean does he beat me or anything? No. He doesn’t.”
Davis’s eyes shifted briefly back up to her eyes. “He doesn’t?”
She managed to shape a little smile, hoping it looked like mutual understanding based on the skepticism in his voice. “He really doesn’t. He thinks of me as his. He likes to…to make sure everyone knows I’m his. But he doesn’t want me damaged.”
He’d bandaged the cut and smoothed it one last time, letting his hand linger on her breast just a second too long. “Where was the other cut?”
Riana swallowed hard and worried her lower lip with her teeth.
Davis’s brows drew together. “Where is it?” His voice was gentler than before.
“Down there,” Riana whispered, nodding down between her legs. “He…he cut me.”
Davis’s hand jerked visibly. “What?”
“He cut me,” she explained. “When he was…was shaving me.”
His stared down at her smooth shaven groin. “He shaves you?” He sounded absolutely horrified.
“He likes me to…to look a certain way.”
The cut next to her pussy had been Riana’s idea. Cain had wanted to just use the one gash near her breast, but Riana had been worried that wouldn’t be enough to distract Davis long enough for the time they needed.
She didn’t have as much confidence in her charms as Cain had.
Cain had not been at all happy about the idea of cutting her in that spot, and he’d been even less happy about the idea of Davis looking, touching her down there.
But Riana had insisted—wanting to use every advantage they possibly could—and in the end, strategy and necessity had outweighed Cain’s instinctive protectiveness.
Secretly, Riana had been a tiny bit pleased by this evidence of his possessiveness of her, but she tried not to dwell on such an unworthy reaction to such unnatural circumstances.
With an almost delicate touch, Davis wiped the cut, which was genuinely uncomfortable, in the crease between her inner thigh and her pussy.
She gasped at the first contact and arched her spine to push up her breasts again, hoping to distract him and thus stall even more.
“Does it hurt? I’m sorry.” Davis’s hand was shaking
a little now.
If something didn’t happen soon, then Riana was going to have to descend to more dramatic tactics. The next step would be to put her in that tube, and then Cain would have a much harder time getting to her.
She was just thinking through what kind of dramatic tactics she would use when there was a sudden, loud crack of noise. The bang was so loud and so sudden—accompanied by an ominous shaking—that Riana cried out in real astonishment.
“What the…” Davis’s head jerked up and he looked around in vague confusion. He must not be quite at his full thinking capacity after what Hall had done to him, since his reactions were very slow.
“What was that?” she gasped.
“I don’t…” Another shaking—it felt kind of like an earthquake—and alarms started to blare from every side. “Damn it.”
He turned toward the door. “I’ll be back.”
She knew he’d be back, but she wasn’t planning to be here when he returned.
* * *
Cain’s device had caused some sort of explosion. It wasn’t a bomb exactly—at least not as she’d ever understood explosive devices—but it blasted one of the walls of the prison hold. Not enough to cause structural damage, to flood the Hold with poisoned water or cause massive devastation. The foundations and reinforcement of the building structure were far too solid for that. Nothing Cain could create with spare parts could possibly do more than scratch the surface of the wall.
The damage was only superficial—a loud noise, a lot of rumbling, some dislocated concrete and metal. Since he’d planted it in the public bathroom, it should also mess up the plumbing.
At most, it would be a temporary inconvenience—as the prison staff scrambled to repair the damage. The device was never intended to forcefully blast a way out of the Hold.
It just provided a distraction.
The explosion was certain to cause chaos in the prison, however—and that chaos could very easily turn into a riot as the prison staff attempted to maintain order as well as assess and repair the damage.
The chaos would also give Cain and Hall a chance to get out.
At least, that was the plan.
She wasn’t sure how they would do so. The men hadn’t even been sure. They’d just have to take advantage of the chaos and somehow manage to slip out, using the bracelet they’d taken from Davis that was supposed to unlock the doors.
No one was as strong as Cain, and Hall had his special gift. Surely, between the two of them and the bracelet, they could do it.
If not, it had all been for nothing, and she’d be taken through the long, arduous medical tests and returned to the prison this evening—where she and Cain would spend the rest of their days penned up like animals.
She waited, still trapped by the manacles on the table. Cain should be here soon. Any time. He’d said to wait for him, that he would come for her. She knew he’d meant it.
If he didn’t come, it would mean he’d failed. Or he was dead.
She was just mentally flailing at that thought when the doors slid open, and Cain ran into the room, sweating, his shirt torn, a gash under one eye, and holding a gun he must have taken off a guard.
He’d clearly had to fight to get to her.
She gave a little sob of relief as he released the manacles and helped her off the table. She kind of collapsed against him, and he gave her a quick, hard hug, interrupted when Hall ducked his head in the room. “No time for that. We need to move now.”
Hall had evidently been fighting too. Blood was smeared in his hair, and he was holding his arm strangely.
Riana grabbed her clothes and was trying to pull them on quickly as Cain tugged her toward the door. “So the bracelet thing worked?” she asked.
“So far.”
The three of them started toward the control center. A guard appeared in the doorway—evidently left on duty when the rest went to see about the crisis—so Cain calmly shot him in the shoulder, sending him flopping to the floor.
Riana hugged herself—feeling self-conscious and jittery—as Cain walked over to the control panel. There was a bank of display screens, on which appeared surveillance images of the prison. It appeared to be chaos, with rioting prisoners and scrambling guards, just as they’d hoped.
“I’m opening the transport docking doors,” Cain said curtly, pulling down a lever and flicking a switch. “It looks like there’s a three minute delay—another safety precaution, I assume—so we’ll need to stay here so no one comes in and cancels the opening.”
Riana’s mind was such a blur of anxiety, adrenalin, and excitement that she could barely process that this was actually happening. “I can’t believe this is working.”
“We’re not out of here yet,” Hall said. His eyes ran up and down her body. “You might want to finish putting your clothes on.” He gave her a little quirk of a smile. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Cain made a guttural sound, and Riana pulled her top on, since she’d only gotten her trousers on before.
Cain watched her, but only in an impersonal way. After the quick hug he’d given her earlier, he didn’t even seem glad to see her. He was vigilantly focused on their plan and wasn’t wasting any time with warm looks or appreciation.
“So everything went as we planned?” he asked gruffly, when she’d come over to stand beside him.
“Yeah.” She kept her voice low, so Hall, across the room, couldn’t hear her. He’d known the plan too, but it still felt too personal to talk about with him. “Perfect. For a while, I was afraid he was going to drop his pants or something, but the explosion came in time.”
“How far did he get?” If possible, Cain’s voice was even gruffer than before.
“All he got to do was feel my breasts and brush up against my girly parts.” She let out a textured sigh and felt an uncomfortable twisting in her belly. “He was getting excited. I actually feel kind of bad for him.”
Cain stiffened beside her. “Do you?”
Noticing his tense face, Riana frowned. “You’re not going to get weird on me, are you? This was part of the plan.”
His mouth pressed into a tight line, and he didn’t respond.
Riana stewed, wondering what was going on in his head and pretty sure she’d be annoyed by it, until Cain said, “There. The doors are opening. Let’s get out of here.”
As they ran for the docking bay, two more guards appeared in the hall, yelling, “Hey!” as they realized there were escaped prisoners.
Cain knocked out one before the man could even raise the gun, and Hall grabbed the gun from the other one and slammed it into his head.
Then more appeared—so many that Riana’s mind blurred over in fear. There were a few shots from both sides that must have missed, but they were in such tight quarters in the hall that they had to resort to hand-to-hand combat. As Cain and Hall grappled with several guards, Riana managed to get a gun from one who’d been knocked out, and she used it to level a hard blow against the back of the head of the man who was going after Cain.
The impact of the blow jarred her whole body, but at least the man went down.
She was still trying to process the scene when Cain grabbed her arm again, dragging her down the hall to the docking station doors.
There, Cain raised the mechanism from the bracelet to unlock the door, which opened directly into the transport. Opening the docking doors flooded the bay with poisonous water, so transports had to attach directly to the station.
After that it was almost easy. The docking doors were starting to close again—as a guard must have seen they were opened and hurried to shut them—but they closed too slowly to matter. They took their places at the controls of the transport, and Hall started the engine, unhooked from the station, and pulled the transport out into the ocean before the doors could close all the way.
The transport was not one of the Coalition’s sleek newer vessels. It was clunky and battered, and it lurched and groaned as Hall steered it. But it moved. And it started r
ising toward the surface of the ocean with only a few more creaks and sputters.
It was going to get them out of this hellhole. Off the planet completely.
As far as Riana was concerned, it was a wonderful, beautiful craft.
She was silent as they emerged from the ocean and Hall adjusted the controls to launch the transport off the surface of the water and into the thin atmosphere of Genus 6.
When they’d broken through the gravitational force, Riana let out a long exhalation. She felt weird. And shaky. And kind of sick.
Cain glanced over at her. “You okay?”
She blinked, having a hard time processing anything. Cain was bleeding from his shoulder too, she managed to realize. “Huh?”
“You look white,” Hall said, looking over at her from his steering. One of his eyes was swollen shut. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She put a hand on her stomach. “Did we really get away?”
Cain’s eyes softened a little as they rested on her face. “We’re getting there.”
“It all happened so fast,” she mumbled. “And with this clunky transport, I guess I’m feeling kind of dizzy.”
“That’s natural.”
She tried to frown at him, but she was trembling too much. “You don’t look—” She broke off, groaning as she felt a sudden wave of nausea. Then, with a flash of panic, she realized what was going to happen.
She fumbled with her safety belt and went to grab a waste container just as her stomach started to heave. She vomited painfully. A stark physical reaction that seemed to be in response—not just to the jerky motion of the transport and the shift in atmosphere and gravity—but also to the adrenaline high of the last few hours and the trauma of the last two months.
Feeling better after she threw up, she wiped her mouth with her hand.
“All right?” Cain asked, a flicker of worry on his stoic face.
Burning with embarrassment, she slanted him a sheepish look. “Yeah. Just pretend you guys didn’t see that, all right?”
Hall laughed, and Cain grunted—a grunt she recognized as both relief and amusement. He said, “I didn’t see a thing.”