“Is that right? Hmmm.” The Mistress didn’t look worried a bit, though she was looking strangely thoughtful. “It would seem that these two are a danger to whomever you sell them to,” she said to the Horvath guard.
“No! No danger, Mistresss,” he protested. “These slavesss are perfect for the Death Minesss!”
“I don’t think so!” Suddenly, a new female came charging up to the cage.
Gaze looked at her in surprise. The new female looked nothing like the skinny mistress in the red dress. In fact, she couldn’t have looked more opposite if she tried.
To start with, the dress she had on wasn’t in the least revealing. It didn’t show her breasts or sex, though it did cling to her curves—which were lovely and full.
An Elite, Gaze thought, which was the name the Kindred gave to a female who had been blessed by the Goddess with extra generous curves. All Kindred warriors loved Elites, but Twin Kindred were especially attracted to them.
But it wasn’t just the modesty of her dress or the fullness of her curves that set her apart. The little Elite had creamy brown skin, which Gaze had only seen once, during a trip he and Bound had made to the Kindred Mother Ship which orbited a small planet called Earth. Apparently some of the inhabitants there had the same gorgeous skin tones for he had seen several Kindred warriors with such brides.
The lovely Elite also had long black hair and dark eyes that were filled with fire.
“I don’t think so,” she said again, glaring first at the Horvath guard and then at the other Mistress. “You are not going to send these poor males to the Death Mines.”
The skinny Mistress put a hand on her nonexistent hip.
“And who’s going to stop me? I was here first and I’m already bidding on these males for my mines.”
The Elite turned to the Horvath who was watching the exchange between the women with slitted yellow eyes.
“Whatever she bids, I’ll double it,” she proclaimed.
The skinny Mistress narrowed her poison-green eyes.
“Fine. Then I bid five thousand credits for each of them.”
“Five thousssand?” The Horvath widened his yellow eyes in surprise.
Gaze was surprised himself. He didn’t know the cost of a male slave here on Yonnie Six, but he was betting that five thousand apiece was high at a bargain basement establishment like this.
But the little Elite didn’t even hesitate.
“Ten thousand apiece,” she declared, glaring at the other Mistress. Truly, she was magnificent in her fury, Gaze couldn’t help thinking. Her dark eyes were blazing and her full breasts were heaving—she looked like an avenging angel! He thought he’d never seen a more beautiful female in his life
“Twenty thousand apiece,” the other woman countered.
“Forty thousand!” the lovely Elite declared.
And so it went. They kept going until they got to the price of five hundred thousand credits apiece for himself and Bound, which Gaze could hardly believe. If the Elite was trying to rescue them, they were going to have a damn hard time paying her back, he thought uneasily. He and Bound had their own small shipping business but they never saw the kind of credit these two women were throwing around like it was nothing.
But once they reached that ridiculous, astronomical price, the skinny Mistress in the red strap dress suddenly seemed satisfied.
“Fine,” she said, her lips curving into a cruel smile. “You can have them. Five hundred thousand apiece is too rich for my blood. And speaking of blood, my dear Mistress Alexa, you might like to check out the teeth of the fine specimens you just purchased for such an outrageous price. Or should I say fangs?”
“What are you talking about?” the Elite, whose name was apparently Mistress Alexa, scoffed. “You’re just trying to scare me away from them. Well, it won’t work—you aren’t getting these two for your Death Mines!”
“I already said, you can have them.” The other Mistress smirked at her. “Or maybe they’ll have you—for lunch!” she added triumphantly. “Oh, and please don’t bother calling your private ambulance to treat the poor, dear boys—I don’t think they’ll answer.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Mistress Alexa demanded.
She pulled out a personal communicator and punched a few buttons. She put the device to her ear and waited for what seemed like a long time…but no one appeared to answer. With a very unladylike curse, she pulled the device away from her ear and glared at the other female.
“What did you do?”
The other female smiled cruelly.
“I spoke to your crew earlier and as it turns out, they were more than happy to come work for me instead, when I offered to pay them double wages.” She made a sad face. “So I guess now you have no way to transport your new acquisitions to your treatment facility and you’ll have to handle them all on your own. What a shame.”
“You…you nasty bitch!” Alexa exclaimed. “How dare you?”
“How dare you interfere in the running of my mines?” the other women snapped back. “I’ve been buying Down Market slaves for years to work for me—it keeps profits high and expenses low. And now you come here from Zetta Prime, acting all high and mighty, as though it matters what happens to a few stupid males, trying to disrupt my profit margin!”
“Your profit margin is built on death,” the little Elite spat. “And as long as I have breath in my body, I’ll fight you!”
It seemed to Gaze that the other Mistress was about to shout something nasty but then she took a deep breath and seemed to make an effort to calm herself.
“Fine,” she said shortly. “You win today. Enjoy your victory…while it lasts.”
Then she glided away, her head held high, and a secret smile twitching the corner of her cruel, red lips.
SEVEN
Lexi wasn’t quite sure what to do now. Yes, she’d won, but her personal private ambulance—the one she called every time she bought new slaves—was now without a crew. She depended on them to give temporary medical treatment to those slaves who needed it and transport them to the facility on Zetta Prime’s moon. Without them, she didn’t know what to do with the huge males she’d just bought.
To start with, how was she going to get them treatment? The dark one, especially, looked like he needed it. And after that, how was she going to get the two of them to Zetta Prime’s moon? Also, what was all that nonsense Mistress Crueltongue had been spouting about the two of them having her blood for lunch or whatever it was she’d been saying? What was that all about?
She took a closer look at the two of them, studying them to see what exactly she had bought.
The first thing she noticed was that the two of them were absolutely enormous. It was a bit hard to tell how tall they would be standing up, since the blond one was sitting and the dark one was lying on the ground with his head on the other man’s lap, but Lexi guessed that both of them would tower over her. And it wasn’t just their height that gave her pause—both of them were extremely muscular.
They both had sharp, handsome features—not that it mattered what males looked like, she told herself. Lexi thought she saw a resemblance between them, despite the fact that the one had a kind of silvery blond hair and the hair of the other was black as midnight. Were they possibly brothers? She thought they might be.