Accidental Acquisition Read online

  Sauntering over to the bench, she lifted one of the steaming golden cups and inhaled deeply before tossing the contents back like some kind of a shot.

  Jillian was a little more careful with her own tea. She sniffed deeply and then sipped carefully. She didn’t know how Mistress Douchenbag had managed to swallow such hot liquid without burning her throat, but she wasn’t about to repeat the other woman’s reckless actions.

  “Hurry up, will you?” Mistress Douchenbag patted her bare foot impatiently on the marble floor. “We must get into the relaxation grotto so we can start relaxing!”

  She certainly seemed like she needed some relaxation, Jillian thought, as she swallowed the rest of her tea. It had a coconuty flavor with some hints of spice, like an expensive chai that she actually quite liked.

  “Good, now that you’re done, come into the rose-gold room so I can introduce you to my friends and we can finally get our massages,” Mistress Douchenbag commanded. “Well? Come on!”

  She gestured Jillian through the far doorway and into the rose-gold room and then closed the door firmly behind them with a soft, hollow-sounding thud.

  Jillian took a deep breath and clutched her towel tighter around her chest. There was no going back now.

  8

  The rose-gold relaxation grotto was made of white marble walls and flooring which was shot through with streaks of glimmering gold. From the ceiling hung long, broad strips of rose-colored silk. The strips were draped artfully around the room, partially separating the four massage tables which were arranged in a circle in the center of the large space.

  Two of the padded tables were occupied with naked Yonnite Mistresses. Both of them were lying on their stomachs, their bare backs glistening with oil as two burly bodyslaves massaged them. One of them had long green hair and the other was completely bald except for an odd fringe of purple curls around the crown of her head.

  “Oh, Twyla! It’s so good to see you,” the green-haired Mistress called. “And who is your little friend?”

  “This is my cousin, Mistress Jillian, from the outskirts of Opulex,” Mistress Douchenbag said. “She’s rather shy, so please don’t be offended if she doesn’t talk much,” she added, which was rude, Jillian thought, but at least it saved her the trouble of making small-talk with the two Mistresses.

  “Nice to meet you, Mistress Jillian—I’m Ylla Sollasolew and this is Hendris Tagalong. We’re both from the center of Opulex, but we’ve relocated here to Prius Six to be near the Market,” the green-haired Mistress said.

  “Um…nice to meet you.” Jillian nodded to both of them and the green-haired Mistress Sollasolew nodded back genially.

  “Nice to meet you,” the bald mistress with the purple fringe of hair murmured drowsily, not even opening her eyes. She looked so relaxed she was almost asleep, Jillian thought.

  “Well, now that the introductions are over, let’s get down to business. I have been dying for a spa day!” Mistress Douchenbag remarked, climbing onto the table beside Mistress Sollasolew. She turned her head to the side to talk to the other woman and a third burly bodyslave began to smooth oil over her bare back at once.

  “Little Mistress? Are you ready for your massage?”

  Kalis’s deep, rumbling voice made Jillian jump. Turning, she saw that he was waiting patiently for her beside the fourth massage table, holding a bottle of massage oil.

  “Oh, um…right.” She nodded quickly. “Yup, all ready.”

  Kalis gave her an inquisitive frown.

  “Then would you like to remove your towel and get onto the table?”

  “Um, yes. I suppose I will.”

  Jillian lay face down on the padded table and then, awkwardly, she reached beneath her to loosen the towel. For a moment she just laid there, trying to get up the courage to drape the towel over the side of the table. She reminded herself that the other three Mistresses were middle-aged women—the same as her. Also, with any luck, she was never going to see any of these people again after today.

  Taking a deep breath, she pulled the towel free, baring herself completely.

  “I’ll take that for you, little Mistress,” Kalis rumbled, whisking it away. Leaning closer, he murmured in her ear, “Would you like me to use the blindfold protocol? Would it make you less nervous?”

  “Um…no. No, that will be okay,” Jillian murmured. After all, none of the other bodyslaves was blindfolded and the three Mistresses seemed completely at ease with their bodies. Maybe nudity was just more accepted in their culture and it was no big deal to get a naked massage from a big, muscular man.

  “Very well, little Mistress—I’ll start with a warm towel to loosen your muscles if I may?” Kalis asked.

  “Sure, that would be nice,” Jillian agreed. She turned her head to one side on the small pillow at the top of the table, which molded at once to fit the side of her face and cradled her neck gently. It had a faint floral scent, like lavender and lilac and some other fragrance she couldn’t name, but which was delicate and sweet.

  Kalis laid a hot, damp towel over her back and shoulders and buttocks, which really did feel nice, Jillian thought. She was trying not to feel so on edge but it seemed weird to get a naked massage in the same room as three other women—none of which she really knew very well. But since they all seemed perfectly comfortable, she tried to project the same image—though inside she was still as tight as a wire.

  “Now then, let’s get started with some lapsong oil,” Kalis murmured. Taking the towel away, he poured out a generous palmful of some pink oil and rubbed his hands together briskly before placing them on Jillian’s shoulders. “Hmm, you’re so tense, little Mistress!” he remarked in a low voice. “Let’s see if we can do something about that, all right?”

  “Um…okay,” Jillian murmured. She was doing her best to loosen up, but she had never had a massage from a man before—especially not one as big and muscular as Kalis. In fact, she hadn’t been touched intimately by a man in over two years, since her ill-fated marriage with Brad had ended, so she couldn’t help feeling nervous.

  “Easy, little Mistress. Seven Hells, so very tight,” Kalis growled softly. He rubbed his big, warm hands up and down her spine and over her shoulders using firm, steady pressure but not digging any deeper at first. It seemed to Jillian that he was concentrating on relaxing her before he truly started the massage.

  And to her deep surprise, after a moment, it actually seemed to be working.

  Slowly, her knotted muscles began to loosen under the big Kindred’s hands and her breathing—which had been tense and shallow—began to even out. She felt a sense of dreamy calm stealing over her as the soft flute music played in the background and the Kindred’s big hands caressed her.

  “There you are, little Mistress,” Kalis murmured soothingly as he rubbed even more of the warm pink oil into her bare body. “That’s right, just relax and let me take care of you.”

  “You…you don’t have to call me ‘little Mistress,” Jillian murmured. “I’m Jillian—just Jillian is fine. Or my friends call me ‘Jilly.’”

  “Couldn’t call you that,” Kalis objected mildly. “It’s disrespectful to shorten a female’s given name. But I suppose I could call you Mistress Jillian, if you prefer.”

  “I’m not really your Mistress, though,” Jillian protested, but without heat this time. She was feeling calmer and calmer the more he rubbed, she thought—it was like his big, warm hands were magic.

  “Why don’t you want to be my Mistress?” Kalis returned. He didn’t sound offended, just curious, Jillian thought. “I’d be a very good bodyslave to you,” he added.

  “Well, for one thing because I can’t own another person—it’s awful,” Jillian said. “And for another thing, you’re a big guy and kind of scary—especially after Mistress Douche-bag—I mean Douchenbag told me that you’re registered as a ‘deadly weapon.’”

  “That’s just because of my time in the Blood Circuit and my other form,” he murmured.

  His long
fingers had found their way to her shoulders now and Jillian could feel him working on some of the knots she always seemed to have from all the chopping and slicing and dicing she did. When she had been an executive chef at The Palms, she’d had line cooks to do most of the prep work. But Pat-ar was a much smaller restaurant and she had to pitch in to get everything done and make sure the lunch and dinner services ran smoothly.

  It was nice to finally get a massage after all this time—especially a really good one, like Kalis was giving her. How in the world had a huge, muscular warrior like him become a massage therapist?

  “What is the ‘Blood Circuit’?” she asked dreamily. She was feeling more and more relaxed, making it possible to ask the questions she’d been wondering about the big Kindred almost from the moment she’d first met him. “I mean, is it some kind of ultimate fighting thing or what?”

  “I guess you could call it that,” Kalis rumbled thoughtfully. “It’s pretty ultimate since two males go into the arena and only one comes out alive.”

  “Wait…so it’s a fight to the death?” Jillian asked, opening one eye to look up at him.

  “Mmm-hmm…” It didn’t seem to bother him to answer her questions, he still sounded calm and relaxed.

  “So…does that mean you…you had to kill people?” Jillian asked, feeling a bit less calm.

  “Opponents. I had to kill opponents, little Mistress,” he murmured. “And not all of ‘em were what you’d really call ‘people.’ I fought plenty of non-sentients as well—beasts…monsters…that kind of thing. If you’re wondering how many, I lost count around two hundred.”

  “Two hundred?” Jillian’s voice squeaked a bit, going high on the last word and she felt considerably less calm than she had.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Kalis rumbled, still sounding perfectly fine. “Couldn’t help it though—my Mistress had ordered me to fight and if I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed me. Understand?”

  “Um…I guess so. But…you don’t seem like…like a…” Jillian couldn’t get the words out.

  “Like a killer?” Kalis finished for her. “Any male can be turned into a killer, little Mistress, if his life or the life of the female he loves is threatened.”

  “I…I guess so,” Jillian said again, doubtfully. But how did you start in the first place? I mean, fighting and…and killing in the, uh, Blood Circuit?”

  “Ah, well…I’m afraid it’s not a very happy story, but I’ll tell it if you really want to know,” Kalis said. He was working his thumbs into the knots in her shoulders, right on either side of her spine now, and Jillian thought she had never had a better massage in her life. He could even teach her old massage therapist, Helga a thing or two!

  “I do want to know,” she assured him. “And I also want to know…oh, that feels so good! Want to know how you transitioned from fighting to…to this.”

  “To serving, you mean? Ah yes, well that’s a whole other tale,” Kalis rumbled. “But I’ll start with the first one, if you please, little Mistress.”

  This time Jillian didn’t protest him calling her by the oddly endearing name. She just hummed agreement. She was more relaxed again and as the big Kindred began speaking, she almost felt as though she could see what he was talking about—as though his words were forming pictures in her head.

  “I was only twenty-five cycles old when my mate died in childbirth,” he began.

  Jillian saw him as he spoke—a younger warrior, without the streaks of iron gray in his hair and a beard that was jet black instead of salt-and-pepper. She saw him standing over a bloodstained bed and pulling a sheet over the face of a young woman who had obviously died in agony.

  “The doctors did all they could but we were living on Rii—a backwoods planet just a solar system over from the Yonnite one,” Kalis went on. “She might have been saved if I’d taken her to a more advanced world, but pregnant females can’t fold space and there were no stable wormholes close enough when her time came on her. I held her hand as she labored for hours and hours…and I watched the life leak from her eyes as our babe came out at last—also dead.”

  “Oh…that’s so sad!” Jillian found that her eyes were wet. She could somehow see everything he was talking about—like a movie playing in her head. She wondered if any of the other Mistresses could too, but they all appeared to be asleep now as their bodyslaves worked on them—she was the only one still awake.

  “Sorry, little Mistress. I told you it was a sad tale,” Kalis rumbled. “Anyway, after I lost them, I didn’t want to go on living myself. I’m a B’varren Kindred and we mate for life—I knew I would never find another to love and care for and I couldn’t fathom spending the rest of my time in this universe without my sweet Kara. It was more than I could bear.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jillian whispered again. She could almost feel his pain—the unbearable, crushing agony—the wish to die so he could be with his loved ones again in the afterlife. “What…what did you do?” she asked, sniffing back tears.

  “Why, I went out looking for death, didn’t I? I went to the worst places I could find and picked fights. Drinking and brawling became my life for a year after I lost Kara and our babe. I know now that I was hoping to die by the hand of another because I was too much of a coward to kill myself. But at the time, I only thought to numb the pain.”

  Kalis’s voice was still calm. He had moved down her spine now and was working on her lower back. He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, but Jillian could still picture his words in her head. She could see him as a young warrior—his eyes red with drink and grief, fighting and brawling in the darkest corners and alleys, picking fights in the most dangerous bars he could find.

  “What…what happened next?” she whispered.

  “Well, one night I found this dive on the far side of Yonnie Six. Males aren’t supposed to go to that planet, but I didn’t give a damn. I was traveling blind from place to place, trying to get away from my past. Anyway, I got myself good and drunk and found the biggest male I could to pick a fight with. A real bruiser, he was—a Brontian with piss-yellow skin, two sets of beady, black eyes, and two feet taller than me. Oh, and four arms,” he added.

  Jillian could see this in her mind’s eye—an alien that looked something like a spider, she thought. With the extra arms and eyes…weird.

  “Who won?” she asked softly as he continued to massage and caress her.

  “Why neither of us, for his Mistress came looking for him at that moment. Turns out he had escaped from her the day before but the bastard was too stupid to get off-planet. He hung around and got drunk instead,” Kalis said. “Anyway, when she saw me fighting him—she was invested heavily in the Blood Circuit and he was her best champion—she decided she’d have me. So she took me.”

  His words were so matter-of-fact that Jillian was startled.

  “How can you sound so calm about being enslaved?” she demanded.

  “At this point, I’ve lived more of my life as a slave than I have free,” Kalis told her. “I’ve had to make peace with it, little Mistress. Though I wasn’t at peace at first,” he added. “I was enraged the first time she put a pain collar on me—if she hadn’t been a female, I’d have taken my other form and ripped her to shreds. But being that I’m Kindred, I can’t do violence to females,” he added. “And the pain collar kept me in check long enough to make changing impossible.”

  “Changing into what?” Jillian asked, fascinated.

  “My other form, as I said,” Kalis said, which didn’t really answer the question. “Anyway, she told me, ‘if you want to die so badly, I’ll give you the chance.’ She put me in the ring—my very first match. And I couldn’t help fighting—though I had spent that last year seeking death, I couldn’t just let myself be killed. So in a way, she did me a favor—taught me that I wanted to live. And I fought for her for seventeen years—until she died and I was sold off at auction.”

  Kalis sounded like he was shrugging, as though his entire bloody history of fighting for his li
fe wasn’t a big deal, though Jillian found it fascinating. He had finished with her back and now he went back down to the foot of the table, got some more oil, and began massaging her feet.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that!” Jillian exclaimed, trying to draw away. She had never liked feet herself, although hers often hurt from being on them so much during the day. “I mean…ohhh…God, you’re good at it, though,” she moaned, for Kalis wouldn’t let her pull away and was firmly massaging her right foot.

  “Why would I not massage your feet along with the rest of you, little Mistress?” he rumbled.

  “Well, I mean…feet are kind of gross,” Jillian murmured.

  “Not yours,” Kalis said firmly. “They’re little and adorable. I’ve never seen such tiny feet.”

  “I wear a size eight,” Jillian objected. “That’s hardly tiny.”

  “Look back,” Kalis told her. “Your little foot isn’t even as long as my hand.”

  Jillian turned her head and saw that he was comparing, pressing the sole of her foot to the palm of his big hand. Sure enough, his long fingers came up past her heel.

  “See? Tiny,” Kalis rumbled. “Just relax, little Mistress, and let me care for you.”

  “But you don’t have to…ohhh,” Jillian moaned again, as he pressed his thumbs into the arch of her foot, right where it always hurt after she’d been working a long shift in the kitchen. “Oh God, that’s amazing…”

  “I’m glad I can please you,” Kalis murmured. “I was trained at the Glorious Spa of Pleasures and Desire by my second Mistress, you know.”

  “Oh yes, Mistress, er, Douchenbag said something about that,” Jillian said dreamily. She decided to give up and let him massage her feet—they were clean, anyway, and not everybody thought feet were gross like she did.