Baited (Gladiators of the Gryn #2)

Izzy

IZZY

I ’m still in shock, both at what I did and how much I enjoyed it. How much pleasure I took from being his first time and for my first time off Earth to be with him.

I’m still in shock at how my heart flips over in my chest when he accepts my touch and reassurance. And how he stood up to Madame.

“Have you decided yet?” he asks. “About what you want to do?”

“I don’t know.” I hand him a cup of hot joh, a drink which tastes remarkably like a mixture of coffee and tea and is not my favorite, although most occupants of Tatatunga seem to love it.

Yet, somehow I’ve acquired a taste for it today.

Blayn accepts it, sniffs it, and then virtually downs the hot drink in one before wiping the back of his hand over his mouth and smacking his lips. He looks at me with hope in his handsome face.

“You want another?” I ask, sipping mine.

“I like joh.” He does his little, brief smile. “This is better than the stuff at the dome.”

“The food dispenser is over there. Help yourself.” I point to the device on the wall.

Blayn looks at me blankly. “Food dispenser?”

“You don’t know what a food dispenser is?”

“There is a dining hall in the dome. I get my food from there,” he says, eyes narrowing. “It dispenses food, but there is a set of ugly Habosu who make it for us, and sometimes don’t give me enough.” Blayn growls. “But you have a machine?”

He stalks across to the wall, places one huge, clawed hand beside the dispenser, and peers at it myopically.

“Joh,” he states.

The machine does nothing of course.

“Joh,” Blayn growls.

Still nothing. I’m about to come to his rescue when he slams his fist through it.

“No!” I cry out, rushing over. “That’s not…”

It’s too late, the damage is already done, the machine fizzes and spits as Blayn withdraws his hand and looks at his empty palm.

“That usually works in the dome. There’s no Habosu in there though,” Blayn grumbles at me.

“Because it’s a machine which makes drinks and snacks. There’s no one inside.” I stare at the shattered piece of tech.

So far, the whole “keep the violence to a minimum promise” I made the madame is not going well. Blayn is inspecting the broken item intensely.

“No, no one inside,” he announces. “And no joh either.”

“You’ve really never seen a food dispenser, have you?” I query.

Blayn shifts from foot to foot, his wings flaring slightly. “No.”

“You had all your meals made for you in the dome?” I’m beginning to suspect the gladiators had everything done for them, even if it wasn’t for their own benefit.

“Yes,” Blayn says. “Rations three times a day.” He makes a sour face. “Never enough.”

Which explains why he gorged himself every time he came to the pleasure house.

“You were rationed?”

“A gladiator needs careful management,” Blayn says, as if repeating something he’s been told over and over. “Training, sleep, food—it’s all under the control of the captain,” he adds.

My stomach dips. I hadn’t even considered this aspect of who Blayn is. All the stats on the vids I watched, all the slaughter. Blayn isn’t free, he’s a pawn. He belongs to the dome.

“Have you decided?” Blayn is suddenly hard up against me, his hands in my hair, nostrils flaring.

“Decided what?” I’m completely disarmed by having a huge, warm, muscular gladiator body against mine.

Especially when I’m wearing a thin shift dress, the only other piece of clothing I have in the cubicle since Blayn destroyed the rest.

I’m not complaining, but it certainly makes things interesting.

“What you want?” Blayn breathes, his dark pools of eyes boring into me.

“What I want?” His gaze is robbing me of any brain power.

“What you want to do?”

I have a few ideas, but they’re all very, very bad ideas.

His lips get closer to mine. If he kisses me, I know I’m gone. I know this will no longer be what it was before, whatever it was before.

No matter what else we’ve done, I can’t let him kiss me. I can’t push myself up on tiptoes to get closer to him. I can’t possibly let this happen.

Blayn’s lips graze mine and his eyes widen. His wings flare wider than before and the feathers within rattle and shake.

I curl my hand around the back of his neck and this time I press my mouth to his. He doesn’t kiss back.

I let him go, my guts contracting.

Blayn hates touch. I just touched him without asking permission and he didn’t like it.

“What was that?” he rasps.

“Nothing,” I reply.

He puts his fingers to his lips. “It didn’t seem like nothing. It was your mouth on mine,” he says.

“It was a kiss.”

“A ky-ss?” Blayn still has one hand hooked in my hair.

He doesn’t know what a kiss is.

My stomach does another loop, this time one of joy rather than embarrassment.

“On my planet, it’s what mates do to each other, to show how they feel.”

I’m lifted off my feet, Blayn’s mouth on mine, and his tongue flicks out, I slide mine between his lips, and he groans against me before taking the lead and dominating my mouth, our tongues tangling in a kiss to end all kisses.

“Does that tell you how I feel?” Blayn asks when he releases us, his chest heaving and all of the air stolen from my body.

“I think so,” I pant.

“You make my cocks hard, ,” Blayn says, swirling his hips. “With this ky-ss.”

Oh god, Blayn has absolutely no filter.

“We should go out,” I say, hurriedly. “Out of the pleasure house.”

Which in the grand scheme of ideas is not a great idea, but given the madame will already know what we’ve been doing, I don’t want her to think there’s any further way of manipulating this situation.

If we go out, maybe I can reason with Blayn, tell him we can’t get involved, tell him I need to get away, that I can’t stay at the pleasure house or in Tatatunga any longer.

Tell him this is over before it becomes something I can’t control anymore. Before we both get hurt in too many ways.