Page 14 of Breaking the Bloodstone Curse
But she shook her head.
“No, I don’t want that either. I want…that is…” She was nibbling her lower lip as though she wasn’t sure how to phrase her next sentence. “I want you to get in the bed with me!” she burst out at last.
Brax raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Really, Mistress? But you barely know me. You think you’d feel safe with me in the bed with you?”
“Yes, I think I’d feel much safer if you were close.” She gave him a pleading look. “The eyes…they were right there—at the other side of the bed! I’m sure they were trying to come right across the mattress to get me!”
Brax nodded in understanding.
“I see. Well then, if you really want me to, of course I’ll sit on the other side of your bed and watch from there. If you think you’ll feel safe with me.”
She looked up at him.
“I’m sure I will if…if you’ll agree to tell me why your old Mistress sold you.”
Brax frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“That’s a painful memory you’re asking me to dredge up, little Mistress.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked abashed. “I didn’t think?—”
“No, it’s all right.” Brax shook his head. “I’ll tell you. Just let me get settled.” He went to sit on the other side of her bed, making sure to leave some room between them. He positioned a pillow behind his back and leaned against the headboard. “Do you mind if I call for the lights?” he asked. “I think this would be easier to tell in the dark.”
“Of course—that’s fine,” she murmured. Her large, dark eyes were fixed on him, wide with interest.
Brax was happy to call, “Lights out,” and plunge the room into darkness. Some memories were hard to face in the light.
12
SERENAI
“As I told you before, I was captured by slavers when I was just nineteen cycles,” he began in his deep, rumbling voice.
He seemed huge in the bed beside her—a giant. But Serenai wasn’t afraid. As close as he was, she could feel the heat radiating from his big body and smell his scent—a dark, spicy, wild fragrance that seemed to draw her to him. She was glad that this room had a window which let in a little light between the curtains, so she could see the big half-Kindred.
“Yes?” she asked softly, because he had paused.
“I was angry and frightened,” he went on. “Both my parents were dead and I was on my own for the first time—that’s probably why I was stupid enough to get caught by slavers.”
“How did they catch you?” Serenai asked.
He sighed.
“I walked into a bar in the wrong sector of the galaxy and someone drugged my drink. When I woke up, I was wearing my very first pain collar.” He lifted one hand to indicate the thick collar around his neck. “I fought it, of course. But there’s no fighting a pain collar. I nearly gave myself permanent nerve damage before I finally gave in and realized there was no getting away.”
“That’s terrible!” Serenai exclaimed. She suddenly felt twice as guilty—not only for owning her new bodyslave but for having him in a collar. But Brax shook his head.
“No, that’s life,” he said simply. “Anyway, once I was ‘tame’ enough, they sold me to my old Mistress—Mistress Leelah. And she was fucking beautiful.”
“She was?” Serenai couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy she felt, though she told herself it was ridiculous to feel jealous of some woman her bodyslave had been attached to in the past.
“She was,” he rumbled. “She was older than me by probably fifteen or twenty cycles but she took a liking to me and decided to train me as her personal bodyslave.”
“Train you? How?” Serenai asked curiously. “You mean to wait on her and serve her?”
“More like service her. She taught me…” He cleared his throat. “Look, little Mistress, I don’t know if I should tell you this. You might be too innocent to hear it.”
