Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 62128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
I am the personal possession of a saurian executioner.
Avel is massive, dominant, and more than capable of handling his human prisoner.
He has a complete mastery of the sky, the city – and me.
I have been out of control for years.
Operating well beyond the bounds of any law, I have roamed the universe striking fear into those I encounter.
But Avel is not afraid of me.
My attempts to escape are met with punishment.
My inevitable rebellion is not tolerated.
I am shown his true nature, and in doing so, I discover my own.
I am trained into obedience.
I am made softer, sweeter, and happier.
And when I am captured?
That is when my saurian master shows his full capacity for cold, cruel revenge.
You touch me? You will beg to die.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1 FALLING OR FLYING
I’m falling.
Falling.
Tumbling down, down. Wind rushes past me, makes my hair flutter around my face. I’ve made a huge mistake, but it is the last mistake I’ll ever make, and there is something faintly comforting about that. Life so far has been a series of mistakes, one compounding upon the other, and I’m quite pleased I won’t have to keep making them.
I try to look down at where I’m falling, but the motion makes me tumble forward in mid-air. Now I am spinning. Void. Sky. Pillars. Void. Sky. Pillars. Wings. Arms.
Rescue.
Great big muscular purple-scaled arms wrap around me and massive purple wings extend out across my vision. Dark hair whips across my face for a moment. Mine, maybe, but then it is mingled with his. My captor has recaptured me, and there is no escaping his strong grasp.
“You foolish little human,” the alien holding me growls. I feel displeasure resonating through me as his wings beat against the eternity that was reaching up to take me moments ago.
I should feel relief, I suppose. This means I’m going to survive. I’m no longer being called by the earth and swallowed by the sky — but that also means I’ve lost the freedom one can only feel in the wind. I’ve looked for freedom a long time, and never found anything like the sensation that just rushed through me. I’m so soft and so floppy in his arms. I’m surrendering when I should be fighting.
His strength, the same thing that imprisons me, is the only thing keeping me alive as we rise through the air. It’s a natural thing for this monstrous, winged alien to move through the air in any direction he pleases, and as a creature who is only capable of plummeting, I do have to admit to a certain amount of awe.
Not so much that I don’t immediately argue, though.
“I am neither foolish, nor little,” I bite back. “I am a survivor.”
He laughs, a sharp and quite mocking sound accompanied by the flashing of very sharp, carnivorous teeth. I am reminded that this is a creature designed to swoop down on its prey. That is why he had no problem plucking me out of the air. I wonder how much he is having to restrain instincts to tear me apart and feast on my flesh.
“A survivor,” he says, his voice deep and mocking.
Granted, I was almost very much not a survivor mere seconds ago, as a great descent threatened to end me in the midst of an ill-fated escape from this creature’s lair. But nobody is perfect, and I have always regarded my life as being something I have the right and privilege to lose if I see fit.
It does not take long for him to return me to the perch from which I fell, a series of caves built into the interior of these large pillars of hard rock. This is clearly where his kind of saurian lives. There are at least three kinds that I have seen. The ones that can fly, the ones that mimic the most dangerous kind of predator, and the ones that serve.
This is a world where carnivores rule, and where brutality is the order of the day. I am not fooled by the veneer of civilization cast over this primal world. They wasted no time in taking my captain and me prisoner, assigning us captors, and, I am assuming, turning us into sexual playthings.
I will never be able to get the image of Captain Sullivan standing in as cage out of my head. Entirely naked. Vulnerable. She tried to put a brave face on it all, but I could see everything that had happened to her in her eyes. The alien had debased her. He turned her from one of the most feared pirate captains in the galaxy to his little fuck pet. I cannot believe she allowed that to happen to her. You cannot always control being captured, but you can sure as hell decide whether or not you surrender. I thought I’d lost about as much respect as I could for anybody when I finally reached the point of mutiny against her as my captain, but it turns out you can always lose more.
I steel myself with these thoughts as we approach the very same ledge from which I attempted my escape. Next time, I’ll be more careful. Next time, I’ll pick better hand and foot holds. Or maybe I’ll see if there’s anything that can be repurposed as a crampon or similar. I’m going to escape this alien planet. I’m going to return to the ship, and I’m going to give the order to depart, and anybody who dares refuse it on behalf of the weak, drone-brained excuse for a captain we used to follow can be set down in the middle of this world to fend for herself. I am done tolerating weakness, especially the kind that can only ever lead to disaster. If that means people think I’m a bitch, I don’t care. I’d rather be the mistress of my own destiny than a pawn to some alien male.