Taking Tilly by Stacey St. James Page B

heading
home. They would use the time between the pickup there and the
supply pickup to train the women and, if any proved difficult or
unsatisfactory in any way, they could use them to barter for more
goods when they stopped for supplies for the colony.

Chapter Fourteen
    Tilly recognized the cell that had
been hers for weeks on end as soon as she opened her eyes. What
confused her was how she’d gotten there. And why she was once more
wearing the nano-suit.
    It was almost as if none of the things
she thought had happened actually had, but she knew better. They
had landed on an alien world and she had been sold and found her
sister and been tortured by that horrible creature!
    She bolted upright at the thought of
her sister.
    After a moment, though, she remembered
that they’d taken her sister, as well—the commander.
    He’d come after her. The question was,
why?
    He’d taken her to start with to sell
her and he’d sold her.
    Were they more like pirates, then,
than simply slave traders? Not even that honest? Taking women
captive, selling them, stealing them back to sell again?
    She didn’t think she would care except
she didn’t want to be sold again.
    Of course, the alternative was staying
with the commander and his crew … at least until they got tired of
her and sold her for good.
    Or worse.
    She considered that, but regardless of
what they’d done, she didn’t believe they would harm
her.
    The problem with that was that they
had jettisoned several of the women during the
processing.
    Well, she didn’t think any of them had
actually done it, but the equipment had damned sure been programmed
to dispose of any of them that were found to be
defective.
    She could argue that the poor things
were dead already, that it had only been a matter of time and that
the quick end had been far more humane than allowing them to die
slowly, but maybe they’d wanted those last few days!
    She shook the thought. There was
absolutely no point in judging them or dwelling on it. They weren’t
human and they had no reason in the world to care and every reason
not to want to be bothered with something—product—they couldn’t
sell.
    She couldn’t have done such a thing to
a dying animal—let alone a human—but that was her. And the truth
was there were probably plenty of humans that could have and would
have done just the same.
    Human traffickers selling other humans
into the sex slave trade were far worse, preying upon their own
kind and ….
    Well, worse.
    So she thought she could probably
count on them growing tired of her at some point and hopefully
selling her rather than shooting her out a porthole.
    There was no getting around it. That
cat-creature had given her a whole new outlook on the alien giants.
She was grateful to be with them instead of that
creature!
    And she was grateful they had rescued
Emily.
    She didn’t think Emily would
be.
    That thing had turned poor Emily’s
mind!
    But maybe—hopefully—Em would come to
look at it as a rescue and not hate her for interfering with her
life.
    At this point, she thought Em did hate
her for it, unfortunately, but she still felt better because she
knew Em was better off and in less danger.
    She couldn’t take Em home, but thanks
to the alien slave trade she’d managed to recover her
sister.
    Getting up at the sound of food being
delivered, she ate and then headed into her bath, hopeful that she
would be allowed out—and possibly to see Em.
    And if not—well she was more than
ready to show her gratitude to the men for reclaiming her and
rescuing her sister.
    And the beauty of it was
that she was once more in the control of the nano-suit. She could
be grateful and submissive without having to actually be submissive.
    * * * *
    Despite the assurance of the nanos
that it was completely safe to have intercourse with Tilly, Torin
found he was uneasy about it.
    He thought a good part of it had
nothing to do with that at all, however, was not fear that he would
disturb the