Taking Tilly by Stacey St. James

any
other excuse, Torin might have been content to wait to launch the
attack. Fear erupted inside him, however. He tried to tamp it with
the reflection that the bastard had just paid a large sum for her
and was not likely to do anything that would mean permanent damage,
but he was singularly unsuccessful.
    In any case, he was a man of
action—not negotiation. He pulled his pistol with one hand and
grabbed the servant around the throat with the other. Lifting the
man clear of the deck and using him as a shield, he stepped inside
the ship and began firing as he acquired a target.
    Kane, Max, Aron and Lucien leapt onto
the gangplank and pounded up it. Bursting into the main receiving
area at almost the same moment, they followed suit, shooting down
anything that moved.
    Satisfied when it seemed they had
taken down all opposition, he split the men in pairs and sent them
to look for other threats and turned his attention to the servant.
“Where is the chamber?” he growled.
    The man had been hit. Blue blood was
gurgling up his throat. He coughed and lifted a shaky hand to
point. Torin dropped him and strode briskly down the
corridor.
    He did not have to go far to find
Tilly.
    He followed her screams, breaking into
a run when he recognized the sound as belonging to
Tilly.
    The cat-man was sprawled on a couch
with a human female attached by the mouth to his cock when Torin
burst into the room, but it took no more than a flickering glance
to determine that it was not Tilly. Tilly, he discovered, was
chained to crossed posts in the middle of the room being
mechanically fucked.
    Uttering a roar of rage, he flew
across the room to her, searching for the releases on the manacles
and the control for the electronics.
    Kane, who’d been directly behind him,
strode to the cat-man, shoved the woman off his penis and lifted
him from the lounge by his neck, snapping it like a
twig.
    It sounded like a twig snapping to
Tilly.
    She was thoroughly disoriented and
confused to discover that it was the commander releasing her and
gathering her up. It seemed more unreal that real—almost like a
dream. She supposed that was why she was able to speak directly to
him when she’d been afraid to before, worried she would say the
wrong thing and the consequences would be deadly.
    “ My sister. Emily. Don’t
leave her. Please.”
    Torin looked down at her in
consternation when she passed out and then glanced around the room,
but there was only one other human present.
    Kane lifted the woman by her neck and
studied her face. “I think this must be the one.”
    “ Good. Let us get the fuck
out of here before the others decide to seek justice for the
bastard.”
    It seemed unlikely, but one never knew
what might happen in that place. They might have to fight their way
out if the others decided to use ‘justice’ as an excuse to relieve
them of their spoils.
    They discovered once they reached the
gangplank once more that they need not have concerned themselves.
Three of the other ships that had come for recreation or to barter
had already taken off and the occupants of the others were heading
to their ships as fast as they could run—inspired, no doubt, by the
gunfire they’d heard on the cat-man’s vessel.
    Shrugging, Torin and his squad formed
a defensive shell around the women and headed to their own ship.
Torin was not completely easy, however, until they had gotten
aboard and locked the ship down.
    Actually, he was not easy then. Tilly
had not regained consciousness.
    He hesitated and then headed to the
cell she had occupied before. Nothing would please him better than
to have her in his bed, but she did not belong only to him. She was
the property of all that was left of the Merkdar people.
    When he had settled her, he went to
retrieve a nano-suit, placed it on her belly, and activated it. The
readings were promising despite her prolonged faint. The nanos
reported mild damage from electrical burning that could be repaired
completely and in a