CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Kade

M y master had been subdued the entire way home. Ever since he’d come back from his meeting with Henderson. I unlocked the front door, resisting the urge to step aside and let my master enter the house before me. He’d asked me to stop doing that during our first week together, though the automatic action still tripped me up sometimes.

“Shall I prepare some dinner?” I asked. He was still teaching me about cooking human food, but given that it was the end of our rotation and he would be tired, I wasn’t sure whether he’d want to show me something new, or just have me make something I already knew how to do.

“No, uh… Fuck…”

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

He stared at me desolately for a moment. Then he said, “Come and sit down.” He led me to the sofa, perching on the very edge of it. I sat, trying not to seem too stiff, but it was hard not to mimic his body language. Had I done something wrong? Was Henderson unhappy about the way the mission had gone? I’d followed all of my orders. And Associate Nors had seemed very pleased. I couldn’t think of anything that would have caused a problem… Unless this was about the Associate’s two aides. The women had died… Okay, so maybe this wasn’t just about me, but what the whole team had done wrong?

“I have something to tell you,” my master said. “And I think you’re going to have trouble understanding it. It’s something that was probably not covered in any of your training. And I’m…” He broke off, his voice cracking. His hand on my own tightened, squeezing me firmly. “Let me say first of all that I have been incredibly impressed with your training, and your skills, and the way you’ve adapted to life on Rendol 4. I know it’s been a challenge for both of us to figure out what to expect of each other, but I think you’re doing absolutely wonderfully. ”

The usual thrill I would have felt at such praise was noticeably absent. His tone and the fear in his eyes contradicted his words, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

“The fact is, Kade… The truth is… Fuck…” He scratched at his hair and stared at the floor. Then he chewed on his lip.

“Have I done something wrong?” I asked finally, his nervous tension eating away at me.

“No. You have done absolutely nothing wrong. None of this is your fault.”

“Then what’s the problem?” My voice came out thin and quiet.

“When your training on Eumad was complete, you were packed into a container and put on a ship, right? To be sent to your master?”

“Yes,” I said. Why was he suddenly talking about Eumad?

“And your master had chosen a dimari to be trained in a particular way, and paid the Eumadians’ fee for you.”

“Yes,” I agreed. He was my master. Why was he talking about himself in third person?

He took a slow breath. “What happened next was… not supposed to happen. The Eumadian ship you were on was attacked by Culrads.”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “The Culrads we were fighting in the jungle.”

“You understood that bit?”

“Yes,” I said again. Was I missing something here?

“Right. Well, the thing is… the destination that the Eumadian ship was heading for was not Rendol 4. They keep hijacking our wormhole and a certain amount of their cargo gets accidentally lost on our planet.” He squeezed my hand a little harder. “You were not supposed to end up here.”

I felt a rush of ice run through my veins. I was… on the wrong planet? But that meant…

“I was not supposed to be your master,” my master told me. “I didn’t buy you. I just found you. But I’m determined to do everything I can to give you the best life I possibly can. You have wonderful skills, and I really enjoy your company…” He was speaking so fast now, trying to get all the words out. But I could barely hear him. My mind was spinning. I felt dizzy. So many things made sense now. So many small incidents that hadn’t quite fitted at the time.

“And you’re learning to cook human food, and you’re amazing on the missions we run…”

I felt like my heart had stopped beating. My master didn’t want me.

“Kade?” He sounded almost panicked, and I didn’t like that sound. If my master was panicking, then what was I supposed to do? Should I be panicking too? How was I supposed to protect him when I was the problem? He didn’t want me. He never had.

“Kade? ”

“Yes, sir?” I said mechanically.

When he spoke again, his voice sounded strangled. “The reason I’m telling you this is because the Eumadians want you back. They’ve asked the Rendol Parliament to return you to them, because they consider you to be stolen goods. There’s going to be a hearing in court. We’re going to have to prepare a formal legal case, and we’ll both have to attend the hearing. You might have to answer some questions. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I did. But he was lying. The Eumadians would never ask for a bonded dimari back. It was a complete waste of time. He was going to send me back, and he was using the Eumadians as an excuse. “Yes, sir,” I said. “There’ll be a court case with lawyers and politicians, and they’ll debate whether to send me back, because they have to avoid starting a war with the Eumadians.”

“I’m not going to let them take you,” my master said. That made no sense. If he didn’t want me, why would he pretend that he did?

I nodded, my eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes, sir,” I said. My entire world had just been ripped out from under me. It was unfortunate that Vangravians had such a firm constitution, otherwise I might have just passed out and escaped from this nightmare for a few moments. I waited, wondering if he was going to say anything else. When he didn’t, I offered, “Would you like me to make something for dinner?” My gaze was fixed on the floor. I hadn’t been able to look at him since he’d told me I wasn’t supposed to be here.

He was silent for a long moment. “No. I’ll just…” He sighed. “I’m going to order some pizza. It’ll be easier. I don’t think either of us are in the mood to cook.”

I nodded. He didn’t even want me to cook for him anymore. I was unwanted and useless.

He took my other hand in his and tugged me around to face him. “Kade, look at me. Please.” I did, because what else could I do? “I never wanted to hurt you. I am so, so sorry for having to tell you this. I have truly loved having you here. It’s been strange and confusing, but so much fun and… you’ve saved my life twice, at least. Kade, I care about you so much. I just don’t know what to do here.” A tear trickled down his cheek, and I watched his lower lip tremble.

I felt hollow inside. My master didn’t want me. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?

???

I ate the pizza, when it arrived, because my master expected me to. Afterwards, I told him that I was going to have a shower, a stray part of me hoping that he’d join me, like he had that first night at home. He didn’t. Afterwards, I sat on the sofa, reading a book I’d found in the military library about the history of the humans joining the Alliance. I’d been gradually expanding my knowledge about this unusual world that I lived on, and even though I now knew I wasn’t going to be here for much longer, I didn’t know what else to do with my time. So I continued pretending that I was going to be here, that this information would be useful someday, because…

Because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how else to live.

What would the Eumadians do with me, when they took me back? Would they even take me back? I wasn’t useful to them. So maybe they’d just kill me. Or maybe they’d put me to work in manual labour. It was about all a rejected dimari was good for.

I kept trying to figure out what I’d done that was so wrong. Had I been too confident? Made too many of my own decisions? Had I been too slow to learn my master’s culture? Had it been because the two Solof women had died? I wasn’t sure how I could have protected them, but if I’d known they were that important, I would certainly have tried to think of something.

My master was staring at his comm, occasionally fiddling with one of the settings, or scrolling through some file or other. But every minute or so, he’d glance my way. I didn’t know what he was looking for. Did he want me to leave already? Was I supposed to say something to try and change his mind?

Eventually, he turned his comm off. “I think it’s time we got some sleep,” he said, and the soft tone of his voice rasped over me like warm satin. Fuck, I wasn’t going to get to listen to his voice for much longer. I savoured the words, memorising the tone.

And then I nodded. I was tired of pretending to read my book anyway.

He turned off the kitchen light. I checked that the front door was locked. I kept my eyes on the floor as I followed him down the hall to the bathroom. We brushed our teeth, side by side, as we so often did. That wasn’t going to happen anymore, was it? Not if he was sending me back.

Then I followed him into his bedroom, but the instant I set foot inside the door, I wondered if I was doing the wrong thing. I stopped in my tracks, averting my eyes as he stripped off his t-shirt. Did I even have the right to look at his body anymore? Those firm muscles that had held me, and lifted me, and pinned me against a wall…

“Should I…?”

“Hm?” He paused his undressing and looked over at me.

“Should I sleep in the spare bedroom?” I offered, in a timid voice. I didn’t want him to say yes. But I knew he didn’t want me here.

But his reaction was nothing like what I had expected. “Jesus Christ, I’m not doing this,” he snarled, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “This is ridiculous. ”

I froze. I hadn’t heard him sound so genuinely angry in… well, ever .

“Kade. Come here,” he snapped, waving me forward. I went immediately, trained to respond to his commands on a hair-trigger, no matter how terrified I was that I was about to be punished for… something. “Sit down,” he said next, pointing to the end of the bed. I sat.

He sat beside me, still shirtless, his jaw and fists both clenched. “I’m going to explain something to you,” he said, then added, “Look at me.”

My head snapped around almost against my will. It was so rare for him to give me such a direct order. Even in the middle of a mission, he was usually more vague, asking for opinions or giving me options. I felt like my body was being pulled about on strings. “I’m going to explain something to you,” he repeated, “and I want you to actually listen . Put aside whatever preconceived ideas you have. Forget about whatever expectations you were taught to have of your master. Because I am not the master you expected, and this situation is not one that you could ever have been trained to deal with. Listen to what I’m actually saying. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, clearing my mind and doing my best to put aside all of my expectations. I wasn’t sure how successful that would be, but I was going to give it my best shot.

“Okay. When I found you, I didn’t know you were there. I was not expecting to have a dimari bond to me. But once you did, I wanted…” He hesitated at that point, and I waited for him to continue, reminding myself over and over again to not try and fill in the end of the sentence for him. No preconceived ideas. “I wanted to be the best master to you that I could be. We both misunderstood each other a fair few times, because neither of us was ever taught how to understand the other. And I think you’re misunderstanding something I said to you today. And I’ve spent the past half an hour trying to figure out what it was, but I don’t know enough about how dimari think to know what’s going through your head. I care about you as much now as I ever did. I am as pleased with you as I ever was. If it was up to me, I would keep you, but the Eumadians want to take you back. That!” he suddenly shouted, pointing a finger at me. “What was that? What thought just went through your head, right there?”

I made a somewhat garbled noise as I tried to backtrack a moment and pinpoint the exact thought he was referring to.

“Your expression changed. I saw it. I said the Eumadians want to take you back, and you got this look of… I don’t know… annoyance, or something. Like you don’t believe me, or like there’s something you want to say about that that you can’t say.”

The thought came back to me, clear as day, and I nodded.

“Say it,” he ordered me. “Whatever it was, say it to me. I’m not angry. I’m not going to punish you. I want to understand you. So tell me. ”

My stomach lurched. A dimari did not tell their own master that he was wrong. A dimari did not call their own master a liar. But an order was an order. “The Eumadians would never ask for a bonded dimari back,” I told him, attempting to sound as meek as possible. “There would be no point. A bonded dimari is completely useless to them.”

His frown deepened. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that,” he said, more to himself than to me. “I thought that was fucking weird. Henderson thought it was weird, too. But they’re going through the Rendol Parliament, so until the Parliament holds a preliminary hearing, there’s not much we can do.”

I stared at him, as if trying to solve some unsolvable puzzle. “The Eumadians have actually asked for me back?”

“Yes,” he said. “They really did.”

I shook my head. “That makes no sense.”

“I totally agree with you. But I’m not lying to you, Kade.”

However bizarre the story sounded, I couldn’t help but believe him. But the Eumadians were only half the problem.

“Okay, what else is bothering you?” he asked abruptly. “You’ve been frighteningly depressed ever since I told you about this, and I want to know what you think is actually happening here.”

It was so simple. And yet so terrible, it was hard to get the words out. I dropped my gaze from his face, finding it simply too painful to continue staring into his earnest eyes. “You don’t want me,” I whispered.

He took my hand in his again. “I want you very, very much.”

I shook my head. Again, I was about to call my master a liar. “You just told me that you didn’t. You didn’t buy me. You didn’t choose me. You don’t understand me. You don’t want me.”

He was silent for a long time, and I braced myself for him to agree with me. “Okay, so here’s some brutal honesty for you, Kade. The truth is that when we first met, no, I didn’t want you. I didn’t know what to do with you, and I didn’t know how to look after you. But now ? Four weeks on, I’ve seen how absolutely amazing you are, and what you can do, and how very much you please me. You like pleasing your master, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, hope and despair warring inside me.

“So now , Kade, I am very, very pleased with you. And I want you here very much.”

I dared to look up at him. His eyes met mine without wavering. “I’ve been doing well?” I asked hopefully. Could it actually be true?

“Yes. You’ve been doing so well. You’ve had a huge amount to learn. And I’m not going to pretend that you know everything you need to know yet. There’s still some more to learn. But in four weeks, you’ve come so incredibly far. You’ve proved that you’re able to learn, and able to adapt, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Henderson was incredibly impressed with you. Bryce thinks you’re amazing. And that’s just after four weeks. Imagine where we could be in another couple of months. I’m very impressed with your progress and absolutely committed to helping you learn everything else you need to know.”

The tightness inside me finally began to loosen. He hadn’t said I was perfect – which was probably a good thing, because I wouldn’t have believed him if he had. But I was doing well enough to convince him to keep me, to convince him to let me keep trying.

“I said I wanted you to sleep in my bed with me,” he went on. “And I never changed my mind about that. So I still want you in my bed.”

“You didn’t let me cook dinner for you,” I blurted out. I dropped my eyes again, sure I’d overstepped the mark this time. This was the problem with my risk-loving nature. It had made me perfect for training as a combat specialist, but it also tended to get me into trouble.

He cursed and sighed. “It’s a typical human behaviour that when we’re tired or at the end of a particular project, we order food from a restaurant as a way of relaxing. For me, it’s often a reward I give myself for getting to the end of my two week rotation. It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of your cooking. Like I said, you’re learning very quickly, and after a couple more lessons, I think you’ll be perfectly capable of taking over planning all the meals for this house.”

It was frustrating to have gone through so much training, only to come out the other side and realise I wasn’t as equipped to serve my master as I should have been. But it was easy to resolve to finish this new style of training, and to learn to accommodate the sometimes odd traditions of the human species. “Yes, sir,” I said confidently, reminding myself that there were bound to be a few more confusing conversations over the next couple of weeks. There were still things about my master’s culture that I didn’t know.

“Are you okay now?” he asked, his voice firm but soothing. “Are you still upset?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Well… mostly no. I’m still confused about the Eumadians. But you want me here. So…” I smiled crookedly. “So that’s okay now.”

“And you do like pleasing your master, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said emphatically.

“And you like being rewarded for good behaviour?”

I felt my scales prickle with anticipation. Was he suggesting that…? “Yes, sir,” I answered him.

“Good.” He let his eyes roam over me, all the way down to my toes, then back up to my face. “Take off your clothes,” he ordered me.

I leapt up and hastily began removing them. Less than thirty seconds later, I stood by the end of his bed, as naked as the day I was born, my clothes laid neatly over the rack at the side of the room. I’d only just put them on, after my shower, so they didn’t need washing yet.

He stood up, then came to stand directly in front of me. We weren’t quite touching, but there was hardly an inch of space between us. I could feel my breathing pick up and my heart rate increase. He put his hand on my chest, and I tensed in anticipation. My cock was slowly hardening, though I wasn’t entirely sure what he had planned yet. He licked his lips, then smiled, mischief dancing in his eyes. But I clearly didn’t know my master well enough yet, because his next words were the last thing I expected him to say. “You’re not allowed to come yet.”

My jaw dropped. After four weeks of an entirely decadent level of sexual freedom, the sudden restriction was… intoxicating. My cock swelled, hardening rapidly in an ironic response to my master’s words. “Yes, sir,” I replied, suddenly desperate to find out what he wanted to do to me.

His hand ran down my chest, over my abdomen, landing squarely over my groin. He fisted my cock and stroked it, and I couldn’t help thrusting my hips forward, just a fraction. “Fetch the lube, then kneel on the bed,” he told me.

As I stepped away from him, he tightened his grip on my cock, forcing me to pull it out of his hold in a slow, tantalising glide. I stepped around him, tripping over my own feet as I did so and causing him to chuckle. I took the tube of lube out of the bedside table, then got up on the bed, on my hands and knees, with my ass pointed his way. Belatedly, it occurred to me that he hadn’t actually specified which way I should be pointing. Perhaps he wanted to make use of my mouth, rather than my ass? But the lube had suggested…

“Is this how you want me?” I clarified.

“Perfect,” he said, running a hand over my ass. Then he flicked my left ass cheek sharply, causing a stinging sensation that made my cock throb. With the exception of that time at the military base, he’d been very gentle in our sexual endeavours so far. I was starting to get the impression that this time was going to be different.

“Give me the lube.” I looked back and held it out… and then was forced to continue holding it, as he slowly, sloooowly undid his pants and slid them down his legs. He kicked them off into a corner, then took the lube from me. His cock was standing out proud and thick, and he squeezed a dollop of lube onto it, slicking himself up with fast, efficient strokes.

He climbed up onto the bed behind me, and I waited for him to press something inside me – perhaps his fingers, or maybe he’d jump straight to his cock. I didn’t mind either way… but I continued waiting, as he didn’t touch me at all. I parted my legs a fraction wider and arched my back… and still, there was nothing.

“Kade?” came my master’s voice, calm and confident .

“Yes, sir?” I felt a trickle of doubt. Had I pleased him in bed before? Was I pleasing him now? How was I supposed to know?

“What are you here to do?”

“To please my master,” I answered automatically.

“Uh huh. And if it pleases me to make you wait?”

A thrill of arousal shot through me like lightning. “Then I will wait, master,” I said breathlessly. A second later, I realised my mistake. “I mean sir,” I corrected myself. “Sorry.”

“Good boy,” he crooned, sending a tingling rush up my spine. Oh, stars, where had he learned to do this ? For someone who claimed not to understand the dimari, he was playing me like a fiddle. “What if I wanted to leave you here all night, hard and wanting?”

“Then I would wait, sir,” I told him.

“Because is pleases your master?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmm. Well, fortunately for you, I have more interesting things to do tonight.” His hand landed on my lower back, and then I felt two slick fingers press inside my entrance. A moan escaped me as they pressed in deeper, and I wondered if I should be making a noise… But he’d never reprimanded me for expressing my enjoyment of this. He pressed down a little on my lower back. “Arch your back a bit more,” he instructed, and I did… then gasped as that made his fingers press against a particularly sensitive cluster of nerves inside me. “I’ve been doing some reading,” my master said, twisting his fingers inside me. “And it seems that Vangravians aren’t built quite the same as humans, but you still have…” He spread his fingers wider and I arched into him with a whimper. “…a few exploitable pieces of anatomy.” He added a third finger, and my eyes rolled back in my head as he pressed against that sensitive cluster again. I grunted and worked to control my breathing, knowing that I wasn’t allowed to come yet. Oh, stars, he was doing this deliberately, wasn’t he? Forbidding me from climaxing, then stimulating me as firmly as possible? I breathed fast and deep, keeping my back arched, as he’d requested, though it only made the stimulation worse.

Suddenly, he withdrew his fingers and replaced them with his cock. He pressed in slowly but relentlessly, then pushed down on my shoulders, making me drop to my elbows, so that my ass was sticking up in the air. With his cock buried deep inside it. He pulled out, then thrust in hard.

“Who owns you?” he asked me, his voice a deceptively soothing croon.

“You do,” I replied, on a breathless moan. Then added, belatedly, “Sir.”

He stopped moving. “I didn’t like that answer. Let’s try again. Who owns you, Kade?”

“You do, sir,” I responded immediately .

“Very good.” He gave another powerful thrust, making me cry out as pleasure speared through me. Oh fuck, I wasn’t allowed to come yet. I held it back, grimacing and gritting my teeth.

“So whose opinion matters more here; yours, or mine?”

“Yours, sir,” I replied, desperately hoping for more stimulation as a reward… and dreading the need to hold myself back at the same time.

“Very good.” He thrust once, twice… three times… four! Oh fuck! I shoved my face into the blanket and yelled as the stimulation ricocheted through me. I honestly couldn’t tell what was making me hotter, his words or his cock inside me.

Suddenly, he grabbed onto my hair, pulling me upright against his heated body. He wrapped one arm around my chest, the other hand maintaining a firm grip on my hair, and the position pressed him deeper inside me. Oh, stars, if he didn’t let me come soon, I was going to do it anyway… and I so hated the idea of disappointing him.

“So if I think you’re good enough…” He thrust once more inside me to make the point. “…then who the fuck do you think you are to disagree with me?”

“No one, sir,” I panted helplessly.

“Good. And just so we’re clear, I think…” He thrust hard. “…that you…” Another thrust. “…are absolutely…” A thrust, and a sharp tug on my hair. “…wonderful.”

He shoved me down again, to land on my elbows, as he thrust into me hard and fast. My fists gripped the blanket, and I buried my moans in the fabric as I took everything he gave me, eagerly, greedily.

“You can come now,” he said, even as he continued to thrust, and I screamed . Pulses of hot pleasure shot out of me, painting the blanket, my hips undulating wildly, even as I felt the warm spurts of his climax inside me. It took him a moment to finish, a few lazy moans and thrusts milking the last of his pleasure, while he steadied himself against my back.

As gently as ever, my master pulled out of me, leaving my thighs trembling and my mind struggling to catch up. He looked me over – my heaving chest, my dripping cock, the mess I’d made on the blanket – and looked thoroughly satisfied. “Go and put the blanket in the washing machine,” he said, sounding just a touch breathless. “Don’t run it tonight; we can do that in the morning. Then clean up a bit and come back to bed.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, forcing myself off the bed and onto my shaking legs. I tugged the blanket off and scrunched it into a ball, staggering to the bathroom. I shoved it in the machine, wiped myself off with some toilet paper, then flushed it. What the fuck had just happened? I felt safe. I felt complete. I felt owned . I finally felt the way I had always imagined I would feel, when I eventually bonded with my master .

And he was right. If he thought I was wonderful, then who the fuck was I to disagree?

I stumbled back to the bedroom, to find that my master had already found a new blanket to toss over the rumpled bed. He climbed in, then held up the edge of the sheets in clear invitation. I went to him like I’d been pulled by an invisible string. He tucked me in against his side, then reached over and switched off the lamp.

“You belong here, Kade,” he said, as he stroked my hair in the darkness. “I’m not going to let anyone take you from me.”