Filthy Beginnings, page 2
part #3.50 of Ruthless Warlords Series
Of the future they would soon make together.
Her sex grew wetter as she rolled her hips, the movement brushing the toy against her clit.
Priming her for Damien.
“A truly sensual delight. Untouched. Trained just for you. All consortium prizes have a pretty gift, but this one is especially lovely—and flexible.” The announcer droned on, but she tuned him out, letting the movements carry her away.
Taught the galactic mating dance from the moment her gift first appeared, her trainers made her practice until her feet bled, her muscles honed sleek as a fighter’s, and she could call her gift on cue, willing it to appear and disappear across her body to the rhythm of the music.
Failure had not been tolerated.
She’d hated every moment—until Damien arrived.
Now, she danced for him.
Her hands snapped above her head once more, her wrists crossing. The music ended.
Silence.
The slight rasp of her breath was the only sound she heard.
Then a roar. Catcalls.
“That prize is mine.”
“No, mine. The rest of you don’t stand a chance.” Stomping boots and boastful declarations echoed through the arena as the fighters’ aggression amped up—exactly as the consortium intended.
But she cared only for the reaction of one male.
She didn’t dare look at him, but she felt Damien’s emotions slam into her through their bond: pride, desire, and possession. Right alongside seething frustration, rage, and determination.
He wanted to tear out the eyes of every other Alpha looking at her. Rip their tongues from their leering mouths. Bathe in their blood.
The depth of his rage frightened her.
Fighters needed to rule their emotions, not be ruled by them.
And if he lost any of his matches this rotation…
“You want this golden, virginal prize leashed and performing for you every night, in whatever position you desire?” The announcer’s taunt only amplified the fury she could feel thundering through Damien’s blood. “Then you’d better do whatever it takes to win your matches this next round.”
The lights in the arena flashed back on.
“Prepare!” At Egan Avitus’s sharp bark, fifty fighters hustled onto the raised rotating platform in the center of the room, forming two lines on either side.
She was supposed to return to her stool.
She stayed where she was, her nose nearly pressed to the glass, unable to look away.
Scowling, a near-feral glint in his red-streaked eyes, Damien swaggered forward with the others, his movements sleek and graceful
He might be younger than many of the males, but he moved with a rare, innate confidence. As if he already knew he was the best, his victory assured.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd, Damien’s name a soft whisper among many. Already, he was proving a stand out.
A few of the omega groupies shouted his name and waved.
The attention only seemed to make him stand taller, glow brighter, as if he soaked in the stares and used it to fuel his power.
He was rumored to be as good as the United Galactic Fighting Federation’s favored fighters: Kadon Stormhart and N’gal Verish. Unlike her brother, who was owned and sponsored by the consortium, those two males were fighters like Damien, independently-trained warriors bankrolled by their own families.
Unlike Damien, however, Kadon and N’gal were the eldest sons of influential Brotherhood crime families. That meant preferential treatment, better trainers, and nicer sleeping quarters.
She might be biased, but despite their advantages, she still thought Damien was better than either favorite.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw security lead several prizes-in-training into another one of the consortium’s transparent cells on her level of the stadium. They were there to observe and learn—the consortium was always thinking ahead to their next source of profit.
Though fraternization among prizes-in-training was discouraged, three in the group were the closest company she had to friends: Rose, Ebony, and Amber.
She tried to catch their attention, but Rose’s gaze was glued to the floor, Ebony’s trained on Kadon Stormhart, and Amber’s locked on her brother Luc. A usual occurrence.
Fraternization with other consortium personnel was even more regulated, and intermingling between non-familial consortium assets strictly forbidden. That didn’t stop souls from longing for each other though.
“Take your positions.” Egan’s barked command drew her gaze back to the fighting mats below.
Damien dropped into a ready-stance across from his opponent, a plated-Alpha with four arms and small spikes across the top of his shiny head and spine.
But her Alpha was not without weapons of his own. Damien’s muscled arms rose to defend his face as his knees bent, his red-skin gleaming under the arena lights while his onyx horns snapped straight and his fangs flashed. He subtly shifted his weight, his thick, carved thighs bunching as his claws lengthened, ready to pounce.
Her breath left her in a rush.
His body was a true work of art.
Dark bands tied around his bulging biceps and thick wrists seemed like they might split at any moment while the veins that corded along his forearms and thighs when he flexed made her want to trace each one with her tongue.
Equally appealing were his wide shoulders, powerful chest, chiseled stomach, and that mouthwatering V above the band of his low-slung leathers. Much of his visible red skin was covered in thick, scrolling skin designs and the fighting scars of a true warrior.
A drop of sweat rolled down his neck, over one flat nipple, and then the indentations of his stomach, before disappearing into his waistband.
Her pulse picked up.
Damien might not be beautiful. His jaw was a little too square, his forehead a little too broad, his nose broken one too many times, but she found him mesmerizing. The raw, primal way he moved his body—used his body—devastated her senses and her common sense.
Every mouthwatering inch of him screamed of power and steady strength—and made the gentleness he showed her when they were alone even more astonishing.
Because that’s what he was with her: gentle and adoring. Dominant, yes. But never cruel like so many Alphas.
She already knew too that the substantial bulge between her fighter’s thighs could grow huge and hard, with ridges swirling from base to top that rubbed her clit just right.
He hadn’t claimed her fully.
A torment to them both.
But it was essential.
An unsmiling consortium beta medical personnel inspected her every morning to confirm there was no trace of Alpha sperm in her vagina or anus.
If that changed, they’d punish her with the lash, revoke her prize status, and immediately exile her to one of the lesser off planet brothels to work off the money her transgression would cost the consortium.
That alone kept her and Damien in line.
But that had not stopped them from bending the rules. Taking risks.
Damien was a master at both—and she was learning. And relishing every new lesson.
His endurance and focus as a fighter made him an extraordinary lover.
She couldn’t wait to see how it felt to have him inside her, his knot stretching her wide as it locked them together.
It was going to be a revelation for them both.
He’d told her he’d been with no other.
She believed him.
Unlike everyone else she knew, Damien was no liar.
“Begin!” Egan Avitus’s shout rang out and Damien leaped before the rest.
His reflexes were astounding.
He’d told her it came from being the runt, the fourth and youngest brother in his family, and a greedy bastard who wanted as many sweets as he could get.
He’d framed it as a joke, but she’d sensed the truth to his words. The need to prove himself, to be the best, was a driving part of who he was—and why he’d come here.
And why they remained, even though running away together had crossed both their minds. But that brief freedom would have come at a terrible cost, their families paying the price.
No one tangled with the consortium without losing a pound of flesh, or part of their soul.
The slap of bodies echoed through the room.
She held her breath.
Damien had already made it through the first three rotations of matches with ease, winning every bout.
If he performed as well this rotation, he would go onto the final event.
The consortium drew out the tournament over five long rotations to build interest and anticipation, but it was driving her to near madness.
Each waking hour of the first four rotations was filled with one-to-one fighting matches, with opponents assigned at random and the loser of each fight eliminated from the tournament. Those who tapped out during this stage of the tournament lost their pride and the chance for any prize winnings, but kept their lives.
By the end of the four rotations, only a hundred fighters would remain to take part in the premier cage fighting event.
The fifth rotation of the tournament, called the Elite 100, was different.
Unlike the earlier rounds, the main event took place in a separate arena, one even grander. Nicknamed the Cage, it held a pit in the center of the main stadium, with laser bars at the sides and ceiling, and enough seating for the hundreds of thousands of ticket buyers, as well those willing to pay top universal chits to have the action beamed into their homes across the galaxy.
The Elite 100 was a free-for-all brawl with no rules and no boundaries, where all combatants fought at once, whittling down their numbers however they could, until there was only one Alpha left standing.
Those who made it to the final sixteen fighters would win an impressive monetary haul. The final eight even more. But only the fighter brave and skilled enough to be the last combatant conscious in the ring would win her, fame, and enough money to make him rich as a planetary king.
Crash.
The sound of a body hitting the mats jerked Scarlett from her thoughts.
Damien’s opponent lay trapped on the ground in a figure-four leg choke. One of his four palms slapped the mat in submission. Damien won.
Relief thudded through her.
The fury she could feel inside him pulsed as hot as ever, but it hadn’t weakened him. His focus was as keen as ever.
All the other fighters were still grappling to win their match, including Stormhart and Verish.
Her gaze darted toward her brother, who stood tense, watching the favored Kadon Stormhart fight. Her brother’s hands fisted at his side, his arms twitching ever so slightly, as if he wanted to be out there himself.
But the consortium never allowed her brother to participate in the bigger tournaments.
Egan said it was because they needed his help with training, but they all knew the truth: the consortium had no intention of letting such a valuable commodity win enough prize money to bribe or buy his way to freedom.
Despite his tremendous strength, skills as a trainer, and new promotion, her brother Luc was still a pawn and a puppet like all consortium-owned commodities. Just like her.
“Next.” Egan’s command had another opponent hustling onto the mat as Damien resumed his fighting stance in one fluid motion—and took down that male in the blink of an eye.
He really was going to win it all.
Pride rushed through her. Hope too—until her gaze darted to Egan Avitus and she saw him looking up at her, a calculating smile spreading across his face.
Her stomach clenched.
She’d seen that same look on his face the rotation she met Damien.
3
Five lunar rotations ago… One rotation before the start of the tournament
“Take your look and then move on.” The head of her security team, Nars, shouted into the voice amplifier as he strutted down the line of bodies that had formed on the street in front of the training stadium entrance, the golden lights from the dome and the arena’s shining tinsel façade turning his green skin and matching tusks an even more putrid color. “You want more time with the prize? Win the tournament.”
Scarlett kept her head down, her arms overhead, her hips undulating back and forth as colors flickered across her body and onto the crystal barricade of her display case, each hulking form that trudged past to stare at her little more than an over-sized blur.
The start of the tournament was nerve-wracking—and she suspected it would only get more intense with each passing rotation.
Visitors always crowded the streets beneath the Golden Dome, known the galaxy-over as the city that never went dark, taking advantage of the casinos, fighting arenas, and pleasure houses open all rotation long. But the consortium-sponsored United Galactic Fighting Federation tournament was the greatest draw of all, bringing in hundreds of thousands of extra tourists and more fighters than usual.
It felt as if they’d all come to gawk at her at once.
Of course, that was the point—and why the consortium had placed her display case on a small dais directly in front of the arena entrance and ordered her to dance.
She’d been at it since right after her first meal.
Already her body was sore, her mind exhausted from maintaining her gift continually, making her feel far older than her twenty-one planetary rotations.
And worse, just a few moments ago, a strange itch had rolled across her skin, leaving her restless and out of sorts.
It didn’t matter.
If Egan Avitus ordered her to perform as the fighters disembarked from the shuttles and made their way into the fighting stadium, she did.
“More turns. Show them that ass—and brighten those gift colors. More flash.” Egan’s command piped into her crystal cage. Even from the observation deck, a story up from her display case, he saw everything. “We want these fighters willing to do whatever it takes to get the chance to bend you over and rut.”
She did as ordered.
She always did.
The consortium ruled everything inside the dome and owned most of it too. The planet on which the dome rested was nothing much. Just endless, unrelenting mountains of sand scorched by four hot suns that rose and fell in near perfect harmony and that had, before the consortium, made it impossible for life to flourish on the surface.
But her mother’s kind had survived in small underground villages for generations. Then, the consortium bought the planet from someone who had no right to sell it. Overnight, everything changed.
They slapped a huge golden dome over the old villages and built their glittering golden skyscrapers on the surface. A huge, hundred thousand seat fighting stadium in the center square was the main attraction. They created a seeming glittering paradise, every building facade lit up with vid screens that broadcast every available vice to those with universal chits to burn.
But it had been no paradise for her mother’s kind, most of whom were killed or enslaved. Her mother had been a prize once. Then, a brothel whore. Then, she’d been dead.
Scarlett had been a consortium-owned omega all her life, trained early on for her fate. Her brother had been similarly molded into a consortium warrior.
She’d watched him bleed and almost break to become what they demanded.
They’d forced her to twist herself into what they required too.
But she hadn’t shattered and she didn’t intend to end up like her mother. Her dreams remained her own, and soon she’d escape the dome and gain control of her fate.
She’d made plans to run away before, but something had always come up.
This time, she refused to let anything distract her.
“Break time.” Nars’s shout jolted her from her thoughts as the lights inside her cell dimmed and the music shut off. “Next shuttle arrives in five.”
Scarlett took her first full breath and leaned against the rough curtain with the door hidden behind it, rolling her neck from side to side. No stool for this. It ruined the optics. And sitting on the floor? Forbidden.
She wasn’t sure she could have sat, anyway. A strange restlessness pulled at her, her skin hot and prickly.
She pushed off the wall. Was she getting sick?
A slight tap from the other side of the curtain distracted her.
She recognized the source easily. No one else asked. They just barged in.
Steeling herself, she pulled back the curtain and knocked back. Then she moved to the side to make room.
There was no handle to open the door from inside.
The panel slid along its track to create an opening. Her brother Luc’s big shoulders filled the space, his expression concerned as he loosened the straps of his scent mask and let one side hang off his ear, a defiance of the usual rules only tolerated because they were related and he was a high-level trainer. “They said it was okay if I brought you a drink.” He held out a gleaming, gold cannister. “It’s an infused rali energy drink.”
“Thank you.” She smiled wide. Took the cannister and choked it down. The liquid was too bitter for her, but the energy drink was what the consortium served their fighters, and therefore everyone else by extension.
“Good, right?” He shifted on his feet.
“Delicious.” Her chest tightened. Five planetary rotations older than her, Luc always looked out for her as best he could.
Though he was more than twice her size, the familial connection between them was unmistakable. They had the same nose and hair color, though he kept his shorn close to his head so no one could use it against him during a fight.
But on the inside, they were so different. He might make his living as a warrior, but he did not choose to fight outside the ring. He could have broken a hundred consortium necks with his hands alone, but then he’d be dead. Her, too. So, instead, he embraced his work as a trainer, accepted his lot as consortium property, and did not ask for more.
Which was why she never felt more alone than when she spent time with him.
She handed him back the drained cannister. “Thank you again.”
