Page 29 of Tempting Jupiter (Arena Dogs #2)

“Arena Dogs have little. What little we have—blankets for warmth, food to sustain us—we share equally within our pack. There were few female fighters from the beginning. Their numbers only grew scarcer over time. But a year ago, we heard the news that the surrogates used to give us life, had died. They would carry no more young.”

“Surrogates?” Feeona didn’t understand.

“They created us in their labs, but the attempts to grow us in artificial wombs always failed. The Dogs created that way never thrived.”

Jupiter lifted his arm and pulled her into his lap. “There were more females of our kind that had been created for the pleasure houses. The masters thought that by giving us some of those females as mates they could encourage us to breed.”

Feeona’s throat tightened with a mix of anger and sorrow for the inhuman way his people were treated.

“Still, their numbers were small. Never was any pack given more than a single female. It’s in our nature to bond with a mate. But our other needs complicated things.”

“Needs?”

His fingers stroked idly over her arm as he talked. “Yes. The need to share with our brothers and our instinct to protect the female.”

“So, you found a solution.”

“The females solved the problem. They would bond with one male, but they would share sex with all males in the pack. They knew any male that was a sex partner would feel protective and sharing themselves freely would prevent tension among the males.”

She resisted the urge to lift her head and meet his eyes. She wanted to know what he thought about that solution. “Did it work?”

“For the most part.”

“Your pack had a female.” Unexpected tension zipped along her nerves. She’d never thought to ask if he had a mate or children, but Seneca had said their brother had a mate, not Jupiter.

“Her name is Hera. We all swore an oath to protect her.” There was no emotion in his voice to give her any hint of his feelings, but what he’d said made it clear all the males in his pack had sex with her.

She couldn’t stand it any longer. She looked up desperately needing to read his face, after all. “You think Seneca considers you being with me as a betrayal of her?”

He wrapped a hand around her jaw and met her eyes. “No. The bond we share with our brother’s mate is not that sort of bond. If she were my mate, I wouldn’t have wanted your touch. Something changes inside us when a mate bond has formed. Nothing about you is betrayal. You are only good.”

Guilt roared to life. Good was so not the word to describe her. She wanted to help Jupiter and Seneca, but she feared she’d end up hurting them. If sex with Jupiter turned that fear to fact, she would just have to find a way to keep her distance.

“I can see you are blaming yourself, Fee. And you’re wrong.” He bent down to capture her mouth.

He pressed forward with a deep, no-holding-back kiss she couldn’t find the will to resist. When he broke the kiss, his features were lighter. The damn Dog was pleased with his effect on her.

He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I’m concerned because Seneca didn’t feel welcome in my bed.”

“Technically, it’s my bed. Don’t you think that might be part of the problem?”

“No.” He shifted his hand to wrap loosely around the back of her neck. “I was here, so it was my bed as much as yours and he should have known it was also his. Whether you accept him as a lover is your choice to make, but that fact and his presence would not stop me from fucking you.”

That pronouncement should have raised her anger, but instead it fueled a need to have him inside her again. “Jupiter…”

He chuckled. “There will be plenty of time for us to learn each other.”

Damn, she needed to rebuild some of her defenses.

The man was dangerous. And she wasn’t the only one to think so.

She thought of all the times she’d seen Seneca watching Jupiter with longing in his lavender eyes.

“Jupiter, you and Seneca have such a strong bond. Is it possible that he might be… hurt, by our being together this way? Maybe sharing isn’t what he wants. ”

He shook his head and frowned. “Our bond is strong, but there is no reason he would be hurt by this.”

“Are you certain? I mean, has there ever been anything physical between you?” Jupiter’s scowl deepened and she instantly regretted her words. Maybe it wasn’t her place. “I shouldn’t have—”

Jupiter shook his head. “No. It’s alright. It’s just that I could never ask Sen for anything like that. I could never risk hurting him that way.”

“Hurting him?”

“I fear he bears deep scars from his time in the pleasure house. He spent years there before he came to us. He isn’t the same Dog now, but he carries the weight of the past.”

“Of course, he does.” She cleared the anger and sympathy from her throat. “Tell me about Seneca. I can’t believe gladiators are sent to the pleasure houses all that often. Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

Jupiter scooted further onto the bed to put his back against the wall, taking her with him. He gave her room between his thighs and she settled her back against his chest.

“You’re right. In the arena and the kennel, they chain us to walls and drug us when they let the female patrons use us.

But the Dogs that work in the brothels are not chained.

The females were engineered to be docile.

But the males that go there aren’t. They go there as pups, too small to be dangerous.

He was just a child when they took him.”

A fist of outrage slammed into her abdomen.

Using slaves for sex was reprehensible, but using children that way…

The tight feeling in her throat magnified, allowing her no air to speak.

She didn’t think she could get a word passed the constriction.

Jupiter’s arms slipped under hers and wrapped around her middle as if he could sense her disquiet.

“Seneca was created two birthings after mine, but his group shared the same juvenile facility. He was always smaller than the other Dogs in his group. And… beautiful. Even humans thought so.”

Fee could hear Jupiter’s appreciation and love in the way he talked about Seneca.

Jupiter softly stroked her hair as he spoke.

“The Master gave the use of him to one of the patrons as a gift. A man who liked young boys. Seneca told me he tried to fight, but he hadn’t been trained.

The man overpowered him easily.” Jupiter’s voice became rougher as he spoke.

“There were others. He has never said—” Jupiter’s voice broke.

Feeona tugged his arms around her and wrapped hers over his in a semblance of a hug. “He survived. He didn’t let them destroy his soul.”

Jupiter nodded, brushing his chin against the top of her head.

“Years later, when they brought him to the kennel, he was weak and far, far behind in training. He tried to learn, but he didn’t have the muscle mass or stamina to keep up.

Other young Dogs like Sen had been brought to the training grounds before. Most didn’t survive long.”

Feeona hated the sadness in his voice. Her heart was breaking for both men.

“Seneca was different. There was a spark of determination in his eyes. But that spark wasn’t enough to overcome his lack of training, his small size, and lack of a pack.

With no pack to sleep or eat with, he had to stay in the training yard all the time.

Many of us tried to take him food, but the trainers wouldn’t allow it.

They said we needed our food to stay strong for training.

He survived eating scraps, but he only became weaker and weaker.

The only water he got was when they irrigated the grass in the training field.

” Jupiter’s muscles tightened as he spoke.

Feeona rested her arms over his, stroking his skin. “They deserve to be tied up in a low oxygen atmosphere and left to see if they’d suffocate or starve first.”

Jupiter chuckled. “You have a devious mind, my Fee.”

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

He leaned down and rubbed his chin against her temple.

“I think the trainers enjoyed seeing one of us brought low. When there was a break in training, I would sit with him. He was so thirsty he would lick the perspiration from my skin. I think his body needed the salt as much as the water. He was so close to death in the end.”

Jupiter’s arms tightened around her as if he’d gone back to that moment.

“One evening after training, I went to look for him. I hadn’t seen him at all that day.

He’d curled up in a corner away from everything.

He couldn’t even lift his head. He had such a strong will to live.

I couldn’t let him die. I carried him inside.

The whip-master tried to stop me, but my pack brothers backed me up.

He didn’t want an open rebellion so he told us we would all have to take lashes for our disobedience. ”

Feeona closed her eyes and fought the toxic emotions roiling inside her. He spoke of unspeakable cruelty without any sense that it shouldn’t, couldn’t, be allowed.

“The whip-master laughed and said we were only drawing out his death. That we shared our water and food only if our performance didn’t suffer.

If we performed badly, they would kill him outright.

Mercury, our pack leader made sure we gave him only what we could without weakening ourselves, but he stood with me and he saved Sen every bit as much as I did.

Now Sen is a full member of our pack, as valuable a fighter as any other.

His body has recovered, but a Dog is more than flesh and blood. ”

Feeona sat up and turned to him. “Go to him. Give him the reassurance he needs.”

Jupiter looked at her like she was made of pure starlight, then pressed a final kiss to her forehead and got to his feet.

***