Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“Here.” Need yanked his own shirt over his head and thrust it at her. “Cover yourself.”
Instead of putting it on, the girl clutched the garment to her chest. She was still looking up at him with mute terror, not moving.
“Come on!” Need caught her under one arm and jerked hard to get her going.
She gave a cry of pain and tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t reproach him or protest the rough treatment. Shame filled him but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
Relentlessly, he towed her away from the auction block and stage where the slaver was already crying out his next sale. The girl stumbled along behind him, trying to keep pace with his long strides, her bare feet kicking up the dust as they went.
When they reached the edge of the marketplace, Need dragged her to the side of a building so that they were out of the crowd. Then he dropped her arm as though the touch of her flesh burned him. He took a step back and crossed his arms over his bare chest.
“Very well,” he told her. “You’re free now. Go.”
“Wh-what?” She didn’t seem to understand him.
“I said you’re free.” He made a shooing motion with one hand—a flick of his fingers. “So go. Leave. Get out of here.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t understand, my Lord. You just paid…paid forty thousand credits for me.”
“Don’t remind me.” Need ground his teeth. “You cost me my entire savings, girl.”
“I did?” Her eyes widened. “But then…don’t you want to keep me? I mean…you bought me.”
“I’ve taken a vow never to be with a female again,” he said stiffly, though he had no idea why he was telling her such an intimate detail about himself. “They’re nothing but trouble—nothing but heartache.”
She shook her head, her dark eyes confused.
“But if you hate females, why would you spend all your savings to buy me, my Lord?”
Need didn’t really have an answer to that question. He remembered the voice shouting in his ear for him to buy the girl, but even that didn’t account for his willingness to part with such an obscenely large amount of credit to free a female he didn’t know or care for.
Or want to care for, he thought angrily.
“I’m Kindred,” he said at last, speaking stiffly, reaching for the only explanation he could find. “My people worship the Goddess—the Mother of All Life. They don’t believe in allowing females to be hurt or mistreated. That’s all.”
“Your people sound very kind,” the girl said cautiously.
Need shrugged uncomfortably. He didn’t want to think about the way he had ignored his heritage as long as possible—didn’t want to explain that he had turned his back on the Goddess when she turned her back on him. When she had taken Cleah and his son from him.
“Just go,” he told the girl. “I told you—you’re free now. So go.”
“But…” She looked around the dusty marketplace. “Go where, my Lord?”
“Stop calling me that! I’m not your lord and master,” Need said savagely. “I don’t want a slave girl or a concubine or anything like that. I only bought you to set you free. So go.”
He nearly shouted the last word in her face. The girl flinched back from him, her gold-flecked eyes filling with fear.
“Yes, my Lord,” she whispered and began moving away from him at a ragged pace.
Need watched her go, his heart burning in his chest. He couldn’t help noticing how small she looked—how helpless. She shuffled along as though she was in pain—as though every step she took hurt her. Her gown was split in the back too and he could plainly see the firm globes of her buttocks, but that wasn’t what drew his eye. It was the smear of dark blood he could see on her creamy brown inner thigh as she limped along that made him look twice.
Blood, he thought and at that moment, he saw the two Torgians that had been bidding on her earlier appear as though from out of nowhere.
“Well now, girlie,” one of them snarled, coming right up to the little female. “And what might you be doing here, all alone?” He licked his three sharp rows of serrated teeth as he spoke, the dark fin that rose from the back of his thick neck growing red with blood-lust.
“I…please, I don’t want any trouble.” The girl stumbled backwards, her eyes filled with terror. She was still clutching Need’s shirt to her chest, holding it as though it was some kind of shield that might protect her from the Torgian male’s advances.
“We don’t want trouble either, girlie,” the second Torgian said.
He moved quickly, getting around behind her so that she was trapped between himself and his friend—cutting off her escape.
“What we want is lunch,” he growled and the two of them broke into trollish laughter.