Page 3 of The Bride Contract (Princes of Xaavia #1)

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Chapter 3 - Niska

Star Pleasures Club takes up a large lot on this level, and is about as dark, and as seedy as you might expect a club to be on level three-hundred-and-forty-two out of a rumored five-hundred or so. The Ceraphrixii had jerked his head for me to walk inside and make my way to the bar to check in with the staff for my shift. When I enter, my eyes struggle to adjust to the combination of the dark and the strategically placed neon strip-lights in various colors. A loud, strange music with a rhythmic base that I can feel in my chest draws me forward. I’m not wearing any shoes, and the floor is sticky as hell, which is honestly… disgusting . There are two huge lit-up tanks flanking the entryway, and inside, there are some aquatic alien species - naked female ones, to be precise. I turn to one of them. She has green scaled skin and bright pink hair, with webbed fingers and toes, and a thick tail that looks like it would propel her really fast through water.

She notices me and blows a ‘bubble-kiss’ in my direction before pointing at a section of glass on her tank. I squint, seeing the strange, glowing, alien lettering before my translator kicks in and the words melt into English. ‘Tip amount for a show, tip amount to touch, tip amount to enter my tank…’

Oh.

I shake my head at her. “Oh, no. I’m not a patron,” I blush. “I-I’m here to work.”

Her whole demeanor changes, her engaging smile, morphing into a snarl before she whips her tail in a way that makes an aggressive wave of her tank water spill over the top of the glass. I gasp, jumping back, narrowly avoiding getting drenched.

“ Hey! ” a female voice calls out angrily above the music. “ What the hell , Aquixia? We just mopped this floor before opening!”

It really doesn’t feel like the floor has been mopped in the last decade, but looking at the angry, tall, purple woman coming toward me, I don’t think it would be wise to mention that. “Sorry, that’s probably my fault,” I crane my neck to tell the woman. “I-…She thought I was a patron, I think? And I think she got her hopes up.”

The tall woman who I now see is wearing a little, frilly apron and… not much else besides strategically placed strips of leather, tuts and shakes her head. “Don’t mind her. She hasn’t figured out which land-species are the spenders around here yet.” She then looks me up and down and jerks her chin in my direction. “You here to work off a debt?”

I’m nodding my head and barely get to answer her verbally before she turns and gestures for me to follow further into the belly of the club. I don’t know why my anxiety has waited until now, but my stomach drops, my heart starts to beat double-time, and I find it hard to swallow. It all starts to become very real as I’m led past booths and tables, some with various alien women dancing nude atop them, with a group of transfixed males gathered ‘round, and some with women writhing in the laps of the vastly varied patrons, too.

I stop dead in my tracks when I’m led past one booth in particular. Right there, for anyone to see, is some kind of species of man where he almost looks part-shark, with a wide, toothy grin and markings that resemble the ripples of sunlight on turquoise waters. His attention is solely placed on the two orange-skinned females kneeling between his wide-spread legs, both their heads bobbing up and down over a cock each.

“Keep up!” the purple female calls over her shoulder, causing Mr Sharky-Two-Cocks to lift his head, run his tongue over his razor-sharp teeth and… wink at me .

Oh, hell no . I feel my face pale as I scurry to catch up with the woman while she weaves and bobs her way to the bar area. I can sense a few heads turn, and eyes following me as I go, and at one point, I’m sure I hear someone shout out ‘ I claim first service from that human !’

I shudder at the thought.

But what really guts me is the thought that Jaya might be sent here one day. She’s technically an adult, but she is a sweet girl with little life experience and she is not adapting well. The whole situation with her has sparked a fire within me to try and get us out. Or at least to a safer kind of situation than part of Mama Z’rykby’s stock for sale.

And this place…well… maybe I can somehow learn something here? Turn a negative into a positive?

I get to the bar and take a look around while the purple woman is barking orders at the bar staff. There’s an area where the neon lights are lit up in red, looking like the patrons in that section are all bathed in blood as club workers sit in their laps and hand feed them their meals - all while being groped by tentacles. Off to the other side is a huge cage with neon light bars where several dancers show off their writhing bodies to the beat of the music. A group of males crowd the cage, occasionally one will enter enough credits at the scanner so that the cage door pops open and he reaches in to grab a dancer to take back to his table. Like a vending machine I guess, but instead of a bag of peanut M I’ve either managed to turn the conversation around from the patron trying to buy services from me, to them licking Trixi dust off the breast of one of my Raxilli colleagues instead, or just incessantly asked them questions about their lives. One thing seems to be universal; men everywhere love to talk about their favorite topic - themselves .

But just as I feel that I’m going to come out of this whole ordeal unscathed, I happen to walk by a booth occupied by three white males - and I don’t mean your regular human Caucasian white, either. I mean white-white . As white as a sheet of paper. All over their bodies, including their long, silky-looking hair. They look like they’re made of porcelain. The only parts of them that aren’t as white as snow are their eyes. They’re large, black and shiny, like someone had popped two big, black marbles into their eye sockets. The neon lights of the club reflect in the blackness of those eyes and something about this species unnerves me greatly.

“ Come ,” one of the males hisses in a sickening-sounding voice. “Come, we want the services of a tasty little human female.”

I shake my head, but before I can decline and make out that I’ve suddenly got somewhere very important to be, a hand shoots out and grabs my wrist, pulling me closer to the booth. It’s then that I realize that not only is this species eerily white, with soulless-looking eyes, but they have two sets of arms too.

That’s way too many hands for my liking. Especially when I’ve got a pretty good hunch about where they want to put those hands, too.

“Uh… no, th-thank you, but I really have to-”

I tug and struggle, trying to yank free of the big, milk-white hand currently gripping onto me. The owner of that hand grins at me, showing a set of teeth with each small tooth tipped into a sharp point. The sight makes my stomach churn, and I don’t know why I notice that of all the things that should be white, this guy’s pointed teeth are stained a reddish-brown.

“Do not fret, human,” he tells me uselessly, because whatever kind of panic my body is going through right now, it is way beyond ‘fretting’. “Yoxxarii do not always eat their fuck-mates. Perhaps you can make it too good for us to consider you food, hm?”

Yoxxarii.

Holy shit! These guys are Yoxxarii?!

My breathing speeds up as I continue to try and struggle free. This is one of the species Yix warned me about. Jesus Christ! Why couldn’t I be grabbed by those guys who look like giant teddy bears?! All they wanted to do was to cuddle and use my tits as a pillow! I could have dealt with that. Not these guys. No, no, no, I can’t get caught up with these guys!

Suddenly, I’m violently tugged down onto the lap of the Yoxxarii who has a hold of me, my heart leaping to my throat as I yelp and try to scramble away. It’s no use, though. He has too many hands, and each of them has a strong grip on me, his lower set of arms banded across my middle. His friends laugh viciously as they gleefully watch me struggle. “Quit wiggling, little human,” one tells me, reaching across and putting one of his large hands on my shoulder, ‘comforting’ me in the most patronizing way possible. “You cannot get free.”

A rumbling laugh erupts at my back. “Do not tell her this! I like when they wiggle and squirm.”

The Yoxxarii who is holding me on his lap, lifts his hips to emphasize the erection he’s sporting.

I feel sick.

Maybe if I actually do throw up all over these guys, they’d let me go?

One of the orange-skinned, Raxilli girls hovers by, no doubt following me to see if I can cue up more patrons for her to collect tips from. I make eye contact with her, making mine go big, trying to silently beg for her help here. I see the exact moment she realizes what type of clientele I’m with. The sultry smile slides right off her pretty, high cheek-boned face as she takes in the Yoxxarii holding me captive.

“Hey!” I call to her. “Come here!”

But the Yoxxarii clamps a big hand over my mouth and leans down to murmur into my ear. “Raxilli are good with their mouths, but you wouldn’t believe how flavorless they are.” His hot, rancid breath prickles my skin as I watch the orange woman hurry away. I can only hope she’s gone to get Tringa to come and save me.

“You see, this is why all of your bed slaves try to kill you, Yashhi,” one of the other paper-white aliens drawls, draping his upper set of arms across the back of the booth seating, the lower ones crossing over his chest. “You come on too strong with the fear. The poor thing is terrified.”

The guy holding me to him - ‘Yashhi’ - snorts in reply. “You are too soft, Byakii. Besides, it is more fun when they try to fight back.”

I try to calm my breathing, but it just doesn’t seem to work. There’s got to be a way out of this. Tringa wouldn’t just let them eat me , would she? I crane my neck, trying to get a glimpse of her at the bar, but she’s deep in conversation with the club owner, jowly Master Joolyx.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Ok, Niska, calm down. You can talk yourself out of this. You can… I don’t know… charm them or-

Byakii, the one sat opposite me leans forward and reaches out one of his too many hands to play with a lock of my hair, the black contrasting with his ghostly white. “You would probably prefer to service me, would you not, little, delicate human? I have all kinds of substances back at my quarters you can take so you won’t feel a thing.”

He smiles at me like what he’s saying is a terribly kind offer.

“B-but, you’ll still eat me.” I state, shaking my head. “No, I can’t… I have to-”

I’m struggling and squirming again, trying to escape the iron-like grip the alien has on me. This time, Yashhi clamps down on both my wrists and forces them to the table top, pinning my arms and torso down while his lower set of hands start to caress my thighs, trying to part them. I press the side of my head to the cool metal of the table’s surface and clamp my eyes shut, willing this to all be a terrible nightmare.

“What’s this?” Byakii asks, and I can feel him leaning over me from the opposite side of the booth. He tugs at the black leather strap Tringa had given me to hide that big ol’ ‘for sale’ sign I have stamped on my skin.

No.

No, no, no!

The strap comes loose and someone takes my wrist from Yashhi’s grip and turns it over. “It looks like human may well be on the menu,” I hear someone say as Yashhi’s hands start inching their way under that one flimsy strip of fabric that drapes over my bare pussy.

My head spins.

I think I’m going to black out.

“Get your fucking filthy hands off the female,” a gravelly voice demands from above me.

Did I imagine that?

Hope sparks low in my belly and I dare to crack one eye open, then the other. My cheek’s still pressed to the cool metal table so what’s directly in my line of vision is… a crotch. A crotch clad in tight pants with a couple of leather belts and gun holsters strapped to the biggest, most jacked thighs I’ve ever seen.

I swallow and chance a glance up at what is hopefully my knight-in-tight-pants to see the tallest alien I think I’m yet to see. He is easily above seven feet, but from my position down here on the table, I can’t make out much more. Shifting, I try to glance back at Yashhi and it’s then that I see it…

The newcomer has one of those alien blaster-guns pressed right into the asshole, Yoxxarii’s temple.

The others seem frozen and it’s almost like the rest of the club fades into nothing, and I can’t tell if that’s the thump-thump-thump from the base of the music, or from my heart trying to burst out of my chest.

“I’m tipping for her service,” Yashhi growls, apparently not so willing to give up on his meal.

“No, you’re not,” the newcomer says before reaching out with his other hand to touch my little floating credit-collecting orb, causing it to make a little ‘ping’ noise and glow a little brighter, indicating that he’s just paid. “I am. And I suggest you release the female before I start decorating this ‘fine establishment’s’ walls with your brains.”

Yashhi grunts and I can feel all four of his hands release their grip on me.

I can breathe again.

“ Come ,” the newcomer demands, replacing Yashhi’s hold with his own, a large dark gray hand clamping down on my arm. “You are mine until this place closes.”

He yanks me to my feet, and from this position, I can see that yes, he is indeed over seven feet tall, possibly eight if you factor in the large, black, spiralling horns that sweep back and up over his head of dark hair. The rest of his skin is gray, too. Albeit a lighter, more bluey-gray than that of his hand - the hand that still holds me. His bright green eyes sweep me up and down now that he can see all of me and I don’t miss the way his throat bobs with a swallow.

God, I hope he’s not another human-eating species.

For a few beats of pounding music, he just stares at me, like now that he’s prized me from the Yoxxarii, he doesn’t quite know what to do with me.

But whatever this guy has in mind, it has to be better than being a dish on the après-fuck menu, right?

“There’s… um -…there’s an empty booth over there,” I gesture over my shoulder to one of the darkest corners of Star Pleasures, desperate to be anywhere that’s not near the ghoulish flesh-eaters still watching me from their table.

The tall male’s eyes don’t even look to see where I was pointing, he simply jerks his chin in a single nod and says, “lead the way, female.”