Tamsin's Conquest Read online

  Tamsin’s Conquest

  Mary Auclair

  In a far future, where Earth is nothing but a vast desert and what’s left of humanity lives in a world where the strong prey on the weak, headstrong survivor Tamsin is in deep trouble for stealing water rations. Hunted down, she has no choice but to seek refuge inside the Agency, Earth’s interspecies marital organization that provides women to alien races in need of fertile females. What the Agency doesn’t know is Tamsin has no intention of going through with the matchmaking—she’ll flee first chance she gets.

  Tamsin’s plans are foiled when she’s brought to planet Havlan, home of the Tellurian warriors, where she’s Claimed by a tall, golden warrior determined to make her his lifelong mate. Tamsin fights hard first to escape, then harder still to resist the powerful attraction she feels to the alien King Jareth. And yet the hardest battle of all is not against the ruthless traitors set on seizing Jareth’s kingdom, but against losing herself to an all-consuming love.

  Reader Advisory: This story has graphic sexual language and scenes—no closed bedroom doors (or other rooms) here!

  An adult science fiction romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Tamsin’s Conquest

  Mary Auclair

  Dedication

  To the one who always supports my dreams, the one who is always there, my husband.

  Chapter One

  A stabbing pain shot through her midsection and Tamsin applied pressure on it with both hands, hoping in vain to appease it. She knew she’d have to stop running soon. She wasn’t in bad shape but even fear of death couldn’t turn her into a marathon runner. With an overwhelming wave of relief, she spotted an alley to her right, a few dozen feet away. She forced her legs to pump even faster and, gasping dry breaths, left the large empty street behind. Heart thudding, she came to a grateful stop behind a Dumpster, hoping the stench would protect her from Merino’s men. They were a stupid bunch and wouldn’t think she’d hide behind the slaughterhouse’s garbage. The smell was enough to deter even them—at least she hoped so.

  Tamsin crouched in the dust in the shadow of the container, the stench almost enough to make her wish Merino’s bullies caught her. Almost. A wave of nausea hit her stomach and she bent in two. Her breakfast splattered on the ground between her feet, the smell of vomit barely making a dent in the overbearing stench of rotting guts and flesh. She stared at the liquid and bits of food with regret. Food and water were too expensive to waste like that. Too late though. There was no use crying over spilled water.

  Thinking about what would happen to her if she got caught was enough to sober her up. Tamsin took a series of swift, shallow breaths, closing her eyes at the same time. There. It wasn’t that she couldn’t smell it, but she wouldn’t puke again.

  She was grateful for the shadow of the Dumpster. The breakneck running had left Tamsin dehydrated and the midday sun hammered over New Montpelier and the surrounding Vermont desert with its usual hatred. As sweat pearled down her forehead, her back and between her small breasts, she longed for water. It was only wishful thinking, she knew, but she closed her eyes and visualized her ration. This technique had helped her endure—and survive. Curving her fingers around her imaginary steel cup, she took a deep drink of the nonexistent water. She even ran her tongue over her lips, but the dry, cracked skin brought her back to reality. There wasn’t any additional water ration for the likes of her.

  “Are you sure she came through here?” a rough male voice shot from the other side of the garbage container. “It stinks to fuck. She wouldn’t hide in a place like that.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure, dumbass,” another voice answered. “If she’s smart enough to steal from the boss, she’s smart enough to hide in rotting chicken guts.”

  Tamsin’s heart sank down into the sand, in the middle of the remnants of her breakfast. She held her breath. And she thought she was so clever. If she wasn’t so terrified, she’d laugh at her own stupidity.

  Footsteps came closer and she pushed her back against the concrete wall of the slaughterhouse. She shut her eyes so tightly her eyelids hurt.

  Please, don’t let them find me, she repeated in her head, like a mantra.

  The footstep came closer and she jerked her eyes open. Panic took hold of her, gripping her guts in a tight fist as a large figure emerged from behind the container’s steel walls, towering over her. Tamsin saw only his outline but the distended abdomen and bald, round head left no doubt to his identity.

  “Hey, Jibbs.” Tamsin tried a cheerful tone but didn’t quite manage it. “What’s up? I didn’t know you guys were looking for me.”

  “Don’t even try, Tam.”

  He reached and grabbed her arm, jerked her to her feet and gave her a hard shake for good measure. Dear old Jibbs, always the charmer. She yelped and kicked to make things interesting but steadied when he produced a wicked-looking curved-blade knife. Playtime was over. She obediently preceded him out of the alley and didn’t even bite his hand when he grabbed her shoulder. She wasn’t suicidal.

  “Told you she was a smart one.” Jibbs pulled on her hair and forced her to face his companion, an ugly old man, so thin he looked like a cadaver.

  “I missed you too, Chaps,” Tamsin said with a sassy smirk.

  “You don’t steal from the Family, you know that.” Chaps smiled, showing his toothless gums. “Or Family gets paid back the way it wants.”

  “Merino and I were never family.”

  Tamsin closed her eyes and saw a flash of the three extra water rations she’d stolen for her father the day before he died. She didn’t regret it, not one bit.

  Chaps trailed his gaze down her body, his intent as clear as if he ripped her faded blue shirt open. A long shiver ran down her spine, despite the heat. This was going to be her future. She stole from Merino and he would make sure she never repaid that debt. An image of the brothel, with its glazed-eyed whores, came into her mind and something snapped inside her. Death was better than that.

  There was no time to dwell on what would become of her. She had to take her chances and she had to do it now. Following blind instinct, Tamsin spat into Chaps’s face, the sputum landing right on the bridge of his nose. He blinked as if his brain was refusing to register the insult. From behind her, a chuckle broke out of Jibbs’s mouth and she felt his fat belly jiggle on her back. Chaps wiped the sputum from his face and two hateful eyes turned on her. Jibbs continued laughing and it had the effect of spraying oil on the glowing embers of Chaps’s anger.

  Even though she was expecting it, the punch she received still made her curl over herself, her breath gone and her eyes burning with tears brought up by instantaneous pain. It was a cowardly hit but she didn’t expect Chaps to act otherwise. He wouldn’t have had such a brilliant career as a thug if he played fair. Jibbs still stood behind her but at least he had let go of her hair. He chuckled some more, lost in the hilarity of a girl getting beat. Well, she wasn’t a little girl anymore and she was about to show them just that.

  Tamsin quickly pulled herself together. She didn’t have a lot of time if she wanted her last-chance plan to work.

  She began to giggle. At first, it was only a trickle but soon the dam broke and she was laughing, loud and clear, in the deserted street. She laughed and laughed, the hilarity filling the empty space like a throng of merry balloons. She was impressed at how easy it was, laughing in the face of Death. Truth be told, she had prepared her whole life for this instant, the moment when her entire existence hung in a precarious balance.

  Chaps’s feet stomped at the edge of her vision and she remained crouched down, holding her stomach, forcing the laugher out. Her opening was coming and Tamsin knew she wasn’t going to get another one.

  She also knew what Chaps had in
mind. He was going to kick her again and if she let him, she wasn’t going to be able to get up this time. Chaps stepped to her left and she both felt and heard Jibbs take a step back behind her. Without losing a second, she leaped, then bolted.

  Tamsin ran for everything she was worth. She couldn’t stop, not this time.

  Within minutes, the stabbing pain in her side was back, only this time as strong and deadly as a hot poker piercing through her. Chaps and Jibbs were hot on her heels, steering their derelict roller through the streets of New Montpelier’s market, looking for her with blood on their minds. They would catch up to her soon. No use denying the truth.

  Tamsin took a desperate turn and found herself in the market square. An old man grumbled and limped around her as she caught her breath. There wasn’t much time and she scanned the crowded square as fast as she could. A narrow butcher’s counter buzzing with flies, a shop front piled high with buckets of grains—nothing she saw offered much hope of escape.

  Then she saw it.

  The Agency’s gate stood straight in front of her, at the far end of the square, its two heavily armed guards flanking the entry. Local girls called it the Meat Market, because it was exactly that. The Agency claimed to be a matchmaking agency, providing human brides to other worlds in need of females, but everyone suspected it was more for the sex slave trade than anything. Tamsin hesitated for bare seconds before the sound of a roller’s engine forced her decision. There was protection for her behind these gates, at least until she could smuggle herself out of the Sovereign State of Vermont and away from Merino’s reach.

  “Tamsin, come back you little slut!” Chaps’s voice boomed, too close for comfort.

  Her feet flew across the sand of the square. She swerved around a cadaverously thin woman transporting a load of laundry, jumped over a basket of dried meats and ignored the shouts and screams of the angry citizens. They had no right to judge her. They would be running too, in her situation.

  In a few seconds, she was a mere few feet away from the guards protecting the Meat Market’s gates. They were watching her, their guns at the ready. She lowered her speed, wondering if they were instructed to shoot people who ran at the facility, even women. She didn’t stop. She heard Chaps and Jibbs shout her name and wondered for scant seconds if a bullet in her head would perhaps be a kindness. Anything would be better than a life in the depths of Merino’s brothels.

  She was going to crash into the huge guys at any second now but at the last possible second, they both moved, one to either side, and cleared the entrance. Tamsin stumbled forward and fell on the stones in the front yard of the Agency. Still huddled on the ground, she turned to see the guards resume their old position, their guns pointed at the two male figures standing only a dozen feet in front of the entrance gates. Chaps and Jibbs glared murder at her through the tall iron fence, their chests heaving. A crazy hope flashed through her skull that they would drop dead, victims of heart attacks. She had no such luck and watched as Chaps licked his lips, his eyes fastened on her small figure.

  “You’ll get out of there.” Chaps spat on the sand, then wiped the sweat from his forehead. “We’ll be right here for you when you get out, you hear?”

  Chaps turned around and walked away, his stride slow and his shoulders stiff with anger. Jibbs stayed behind, his hard, unforgiving eyes on her, then turned around and walked in his friend’s footsteps. The two guards kept their weapons trained on after her dear ex-colleagues for a while, then brought them down. They turned to look at her, their eyes as cold as the steel of their guns.

  “Shit.” Tamsin tried to swallow but her throat closed up on her. “I’m in deep, deep shit.”

  “Step up to the desk,” a small, shrill voice called from behind Tamsin. “I don’t have all day.”

  Startled, Tamsin turned around and her gaze caught on a small, frail figure sitting behind a desk. She stared at the Iksen man and his pristine surface as he stared back. A large awning protected the alien’s pale-yellow skin from the sun’s rays. His yellow eyes glowed with irritation and he tapped the tip of his electronic pen on the surface of his desk, signaling his impatience. She met his gaze, then looked away and inspected the Meat Market’s front yard. She had never been so close to the interspecies Agency before. It made her skin crawl, her every sense on high alert.

  The square was paved with old stones, clean and polished as if the sand was too scared to make its way onto the immaculate property. The building itself, made entirely of solar glass panels, shone under the sun. Wild rumors abounded of climate controls about the interior of the building, with filtered air and the temperature kept at a comfortable level. Tamsin even remembered a cute girl, about fifteen, maintaining that water was unrestricted inside the Agency, and people used it to wash their bodies and clothes. She didn’t give much credit to those urban legends because, after all, no girl who went in ever came out.

  As she stepped away from Jibbs’s and Chaps’s threats and the guards’ guns, moving closer to the Iksen’s desk, Tamsin’s guts twisted with a new kind of fear. She always took care to keep far away from the building’s gates, made suspicious by the abduction stories that circulated in the depraved neighborhoods where she lived. Young women sometimes walked alone in front of the Meat Market—and didn’t come back. They were never found. It occurred to Tamsin nobody would report her missing. She had nobody left, not since her dad’s passing two weeks ago. It was sad enough that she felt hot tears burn her eyelids.

  “Age.” The Iksen tapped on the glass surface of his desk and a holographic screen appeared.

  “What?” Tamsin dragged her mind to the present, to the here and now. If she could just—

  “What is your age?” The Iksen raised his voice and Tamsin twisted her head to check the guards hadn’t reacted. She had no choice but to play along for now.

  “Age? Twenty-one.” It was a lie. She was twenty-eight, but she’d heard older females got bad deals. She couldn’t risk being cataloged as second-class merchandise in the short time she’d be here, until she jumped ship.

  “Step on the biometric reader.” The Iksen looked up and a flash of interest flickered in the yellow eyes. “Are you intact? We’ll examine you, so don’t lie.”

  “No, I’m not a virgin.”

  Tamsin felt her cheeks burn under the stare. Even if she told the truth, it was still embarrassing. She hoped he didn’t act on his threat of a medical exam. She shivered at the thought of the small man invading her most private place. Without another word, she stepped onto the glass surface and the Iksen’s screen began beeping with information. Her cheeks burned some more. She was sure the biometric device delivered the small man an image of her naked body. She couldn’t wait to make her escape.

  “Good, an honest girl. You’re not intact but you’re healthy.” The Iksen lifted his eyes and smiled briefly. “You’re a fertile female, very pretty. You’ll fetch a good match.”

  “Match? With who? Where will you send me?”

  Her head spun and she had to take deep breaths to stop the world from going crazy. His tone was so matter-of-fact that she was suddenly not sure she could do this. Her gaze was dragged back to the armed guards at the gate, now turned to watch her. What if she wasn’t able to escape in time? The prospect of being a sex slave on some distant alien world was even worse than Merino’s brothels. At least she knew what the girls’ lives were like and she had a sliver of hope of escape.

  “We cater to all five Olan races.” The Iksen’s face took on a stern expression. “The female doesn’t choose but I can tell you with your attractiveness and your fertility you have every chance of being sent to Havlan.”

  Tamsin gulped and turned to look beyond the gate to New Montpelier’s square. A thin old woman wrapped in a cotton blanket walked in front of the gate. Just as she drew level with her, she locked eyes with Tamsin. She was old, way too old for the Agency. Tamsin wondered if the stranger was judging her, thinking her a whore for selling her body to some horny alien, but then
the old woman smiled and gestured for her to go on. She turned and kept walking to wherever she wanted to go, her strides slow and her back curved under the harshness of her existence. This was a foreboding of what life had in store for a lonely, defeated woman. Tamsin watched her until she disappeared, then turned to the Iksen again.

  “And that’s a good thing, being sent to Havlan?”

  “Havlan is the mother planet of the Tellurian Empire. They’re the most powerful civilization of the Sillor star system. Some would argue that they’re the most powerful of the Olan races. They’re in great need of females. You would be a lucky girl to land a Tellurian mate.” The Iksen typed some more on the screen, then flashed her a wide smile. “You’re approved. You can step inside, but first, drink.”

  The Iksen reached down and pulled a flask from under his desk. Without acknowledging her suddenly fast breaths, he poured. A full glass of water found itself between her fingers a few instants later. She stared at tiny translucent cubes that clinked merrily against the glass, floating in the liquid. Her mind struggled to find the right word for the marvel of luxury she was staring at. Ice, this wonder was called ice. She brought the glass to her lips and a rush of cold, pure delight invaded her mouth. She drank in long, greedy gulps until the glass was empty and the shiny ice cubes lay at the bottom. She tilted the glass and her mouth filled with the tiny frozen delights. As she crushed them between her teeth, they exploded in thousands of minuscule melting diamonds on her tongue. She marveled at the near-painful cold. Then she asked for another glass. And another.

  “Don’t you even want to know my name?” Tamsin turned her gaze back on the Iksen, her belly full of water for the first time in her life.

  The Iksen laughed as if she’d just told the most hilarious joke of the century. A second later a glass pane slid open on the smooth surface of the building, revealing a door.