Slave Gold 2: Cardinal Warriors (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  “Annie. Annie Strident.”

  “AnnieAnnieStrident,” Baro repeated.

  “No. Annie is my first name and Strident is my family name. Just call me Annie.” She turned her back to them and held up the clothes. She nearly sighed with relief when she saw there was a pair a pants and what looked like a T-shirt. She was aware of them watching her and felt everywhere their eyes touched, but she ignored them as best she could.

  Annie wondered why she wasn’t screaming hysterically right now, but all she wanted at this moment was to cover her body. Her breasts were aching, and her nipples had hardened into peaks. Her sex was wet and clenching. She was more than a little disconcerted over the way her body was reacting to strange men, no, make that strange alien males. She’d never been bothered with the opposite sex before. Not that she’d really had time with her mom so sick and trying to make a living to pay the bills, but there was something about these men that drew her. She felt like she was connected to them in some way. It was like they were pieces to a puzzle that had clicked into place, but there was still something missing.

  She sighed at the way the pants caressed her skin as she pulled them up. They were so soft and comfortable, but what awed her was the way they seemed to form to her body. It was like the material was alive as it shortened to her height and hugged her legs, hips, and waist. She stroked a hand over the shirt fabric and would have sworn it moved of its own volition under her hand, but pushed the thought away as she pulled it over her head and threaded her arms into the sleeves.

  Annie glanced down and watched in amazement as the cloth once more shifted and conformed to her body. After taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, she turned to face the huge men to find them staring avidly.

  “Are you hungry or thirsty, Annie?” Shar asked.

  Since she hadn’t had anything to eat at all today and had only one meal the day before, she was starving, but instead of telling them that, she just nodded.

  Baro took a step closer and held out his hand to her. She looked at it hesitantly before placing her hand in his. His hand was so hot, and once more the heat from his body seemed to transfer to and run through hers. It took everything she had not to gasp out loud as her body responded to his proximity.

  Annie had a wild urge to reach up and kiss him. But it wasn’t only Baro she was attracted to. Shar seemed to have the same effect on her.

  Her pussy was so damn wet her panties were soaked, and it wouldn’t stop spasming. It felt like it was begging to be filled, but she tried to ignore it.

  Baro led her out of the room and into a long hallway. Shar moved up to her other side and took her free hand in his.

  “Where are we going?” she asked and hoped they didn’t hear the breathless quality of her voice.

  “We are taking you to get nourishment,” Shar answered.

  Annie nodded and looked around as they walked. The ceiling in this place was really high, but the colors were drab gray, and it did remind her of a spaceship. She’d watched a few sci-fi movies, and the ship put her in mind of the Enterprise from Star Trek.

  When she saw a window in one of the walls, she released their hands and hurried over to it. There was darkness all around with stars breaking up the black, but they were streaking past at such a fast rate she couldn’t focus. Her breathing escalated, as did her heart rate. Sweat formed on her brow, and her knees became weak.

  She reached out and placed her hands on the cold glass, and as she realized that she was indeed in space and on a spaceship, she began to hyperventilate with panic. Her vision dimmed, and her heart beat hard inside her chest until she thought it may explode. It was all too much, and she once more found herself falling into a faint.

  * * * *

  Shar caught Annie as she fell toward the floor and swept her up into his arms. She was so small, but she felt so right in his arms. Her skin was so pale and fragile looking compared to theirs. He nuzzled his face against hers and sighed in bliss. It was as soft as the petals on a cami-bloom. Her hair was the color of fire, like the sun back on their home world of Cardinal, and her eyes were like the azure moon.

  He knew the moment she appeared in the control room that she was his mate. He had no idea how she ended up on his and his brothers’ ship, but didn’t really care. He and his male kin, Baro, Riek, and Mott, had been searching for their bonded for what seemed like eons.

  When the war on their species, Cardins, with the Sytax had ended, there were so few females left alive. Mostly it was the elderly and a few female offspring. That had been over a hundred years ago, and their population was beginning to die off. The fertile Cardin females only ever birthed one infant in their lifetime, and there weren’t many females being born. When the few women they had finally bore a child, nearly seventy-five percent of them were male.

  He and his warrior brothers decided that if the people of their world had a chance of surviving, then males would need to scout the universe. They were the last of the royal line, and Shar had felt, as leaders of their planet, it was imperative they step up and begin searching for compatible bond mates. He’d never expected to have his own appear from the goddess herself.

  “Is our bonded ill?” Baro asked as he brushed the strands of her tresses off of her face.

  “She seems fine, but I’ll carry her back to medical for a medi-scan just in case. I think she was overwhelmed by what she saw when she looked out the porthole.”

  “She is so beautiful.”

  “She looks like what I’ve imagined our goddess does, though a lot smaller,” Shar replied in a voice husky with desire. Already he could feel the mating heat traversing his body, and if his senses weren’t letting him down, their bonded was feeling the effects, too. He could smell her musky sex, and his mouth was watering for a taste. But her needs became before any of theirs, so he turned and carried her back to medical. After gently placing her on the medi-bed, he scanned her body with the handheld scanner and sighed with relief when the reading was all clear.

  Even though their world population was slowly dying off, their technology was far more advanced than any other world in their solar system and, from the planets they’d visited over the last hundred epochs, in the universe. The medi-scanner had already mapped their bonded from the inside out when the medic had scanned her earlier, and he had been very joyous to find out that she was compatible to their species.

  If he and his male kin could get her to bond with them, hopefully she would be able to breed females. The male-to-female ratio on their home world was five hundred thousand to one. Male kin had come together in the hopes of creating more females for future bonds, but time was passing too quickly for there to be any difference to the ratio discrepancy. They would also need to find out what planet their bonded come from so they could send out more warriors to find their united.

  “All is well,” Shar said, coming back to the present as he met Baro’s gaze.

  “Thank the goddess.” Baro sighed and glanced at Annie as she moved her hand.

  “You are fine, Annie.” Shar took her little hand in his and felt the mating heat engage fiercer than before.

  His cock was so hard it was throbbing, and he could feel the ridges underneath swelling in preparation to pleasure his bonded. His sacs were hard and roiling with his seed. He wanted to strip Annie down and bury his organ into her wet depths, but that would have to wait. He and his brothers needed to talk to their breed mate so she could get used to them.

  She’d had so much fear in her eyes when she’d first seen him. It made him wonder if she was from a female-only planet. Although they were rare, he and his brothers had found such a planet, but fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the outlook, the species had not been compatible with theirs. He and his brothers had not been the least bit attracted to those purple-tentacled oily looking aliens. Or maybe the males on Annie's world weren’t as tall and muscular as on Cardinal.

  He would ask Annie if she would be willing to download their planet’s history and upload her
s to their central processing. It would help him and his male kin to understand their bonded and help to alleviate any fears she may have. The universal translator that was now attached to her brain stem also had a central processing unit installed. He’d inserted the device into her ear, and it would have immediately burrowed into her brain stem without causing any pain or harm. All he needed to do now was place the portable silver discs to her temples and she would know all about them and their world.

  But convincing Annie to do such a thing sounded easier than he expected it was going to be.

  Chapter Two

  Mott had been patient for as long as he could. He needed to see his bonded right now. It didn’t matter that he and his brothers were linked by mind and he could feel everything that Shar and Baro could when they had been touching their female. The mating heat was making him feel anxious, and his body was crying out to mate with his united, but he needed to set his eyes on her more than he needed to love her. It felt like hours had passed since he’d caught that brief, unsatisfying glimpse of her when she had appeared in the control room. He and his brothers had been stunned frozen, but then Shar had scooped her up into his arms and raced her to medical.

  From the way Riek was muttering under his breath and stabbing at the control screen, he was dealing with the same pain.

  “Central, engage auto navigator,” Mott commanded. As soon as the navigator engaged, he pushed out of his seat and headed out of the control room. He didn’t have to look back to know that Riek was right behind him.

  They entered medical just as their bonded sat up. She was so diminutive in height and weight compared to him and his male kin, but by the goddess, she was stunning. He and his brothers had to be more than three times her body mass, and even though he hoped she would eventually agree to bond with them, he was worried they would hurt her. Never had he seen such a tiny female, aside from younglings. Even most of their young would be taller than their mate, but it had been many moon cycles since they had been on Cardinal. And since their females were so few, he could barely remember the first and only sight he’d had of a female offspring.

  He breathed in deeply and nearly growled when he smelled the musky aroma of her desire. His fangs lengthened, and saliva pooled in his mouth. He wanted to race over to her, pick her up in his arms, and devour her mouth before shoving his cock into her wet heat, but from the expression on her face, she was intimidated by him and his brethren.

  “What happened?”

  “Annie, you became overwhelmed when you looked out the porthole and fainted,” Shar said as he lifted the back of her hand and licked it.

  Mott nearly snarled with joy when she shivered and the smell of her arousal became stronger. Baro turned back from placing the medi-scanner aside to face their mate again. From the look in his eyes and the way he was holding his body so still and tight, he was also having trouble controlling his desire for the female.

  Baro finally took a deep breath and after exhaling released the tension in his body and moved closer to their bonded mate. “Annie, this is our other male kin, Mott and Riek.”

  Annie cocked her head and frowned for a moment, and then she nodded her head at him and Riek, before shifting her legs to hang over the side of the medi-bed and jumping down. Baro tried to steady her when she wobbled on her feet, but she slapped his hands away.

  “Back off, buster,” Annie said.

  Mott shivered as the arousal coursing through his body heated even more. The sound of her light, musical, yet surprisingly husky voice seemed to pierce him right in the heart before shooting down to his hard cock. Fluids leaked to the surface, and it took everything in him not to move closer to her. He could see that although she was responding to their proximity sexually, she was also wary.

  When she moved her arm, he noticed the shimmer of gold under the bright illumination in the medical room and stepped forward to get a look at her upper left arm. As if in a trance, he reached out and touched the gold metal, and he nearly went to his knees as his arousal notched up another level. There was something familiar about the jewelry, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it before. He would access the ancient archives later, but for now he just wanted to be close to his bonded.

  “What are you doing?” Annie asked as she took a step to the side.

  “Where did you get that bracelet?” Riek asked before Mott could.

  He glanced at his brother and saw awe and hope on his face.

  “I found it.”

  “Where?” Shar asked.

  Mott decided that he needed to access the archives right away, so he used the processor in his brain and thought about what he wanted. Immediately the information came up, and he gasped as it flowed into his mind. Now he knew where he’d seen it before.

  The ancients of their planet had been explorers and often traveled through space. They had landed on the planet Earth thousands of years ago, and some of their kind had even settled there for a few hundred years. Since they were a shifter race and had obviously been seen by the humans in their changed forms or while shifting shape, the Cardinals had been depicted as a godlike race and dubbed the label of Anubis. He nearly laughed at that, because when they called to their animals they didn’t resemble the jackal in any way shape or form. Their animals were more like a mix between the saber-toothed tiger and a panther. They didn’t have long, tusk-like teeth like a saber tooth, but they did have elongated fangs. In fact, their eye teeth were longer than any of their others, even in their humanoid form.

  The goddess Branwen had been depicted in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and that was a surprise to him since she was supposed to be from Celtic origins. Branwen had supposedly traveled the lands of Earth with her brother Bran, who had been killed by a fearful human when he’d been spotted. The human male had died when Branwen had lopped off the man’s head and left the Earth plane, never to return. But just before she’d died of a broken heart, she’d flung her slave bracelet out into space.

  Mott could hardly believe that gold wrapped around Annie’s arm had once belonged to Branwen, gifted to her by her brother just hours before he had died. Now that he knew the story of the slave gold and the spell cast upon it, he was so excited he was having trouble keeping his beast at bay. Annie was their mate, and he was going to do everything within his power to get her to join with him and his brothers.

  “Near my home. On Earth. Why?”

  “That bracelet is from the gods,” Baro said in a calm voice, but Mott could see the excited gleam in his eyes.

  “What?” Annie asked in a whisper and then started to shake her head. Mott wrapped an arm around her waist when she began swaying on her feet. “How is any of this possible?”

  Mott and his brothers began to explain. “The ancient people of our race were explorers and scientists and visited your planet, Earth, a long, long time ago.”

  “How is that even possible?” Annie whispered. “Your technology must be far ahead of anything we have, to have been able to travel through space so long ago.”

  Mott nodded.

  “Some of our people even lived on your world over a couple of centuries, mixing with the locals, but they never interfered with or educated them about things they weren't ready for. Such as our advanced technology,” Riek said. “The Earthlings treated our people with awe and respect.”

  “I wonder why?” Annie muttered her question.

  Mott realized that he and his kin weren't supposed to have heard the words she'd spoken, but because of their inner beasts all of their senses were exceptional. He would have smiled with happiness at her avid perusal of him and his brothers, because every time she looked them over the scent of her arousal grew, but he didn't want her to feel like he was laughing at her or make her uncomfortable. However, it gave him hope that she would eventually agree to mate with them.

  “Your people were so young and innocent,” Mott took over from Riek. “When some of the Earth people saw some of our technology and a spaceship by accident, they were in
awe and treated our warriors like deities. They built the pyramids and other godlike statues, like Anubis, as idols of worship as a symbol of deference and respect.” He smiled at her, trying to ease her anxiety when he saw her frowning.

  “You find that amusing?” Annie asked in a cold voice.

  “Not at all,” Shar answered before Mott could. “It is part of our history and yours, why would you think we find humor in it?”

  “I…Never mind.” Annie waved a hand in the air and sighed. “Tell me about your world.”

  “From what the archives hold, Cardinal is very similar to your Earth,” Riek said. “Except we have two red suns instead of one yellow one.”

  “What about the ruling hierarchy?” Annie asked.

  “Four warriors of royal blood lead our world,” Baro began to explain. “But we also have a group of six Council Elders who give advice to the leaders and make sure the rulers don't let power of reign got to their heads.”

  Shar cleared his throat. “Cardin has a long-standing enemy called the Sytax. They had a tentative alliance with the Qins, and both species warred against our world many sects ago. The Qins were already small in number and were all killed in the war. The plan was to decimate our entire race so they could take over our home world and rape the land of its natural resources. We were able to stop them, but the damage to or planet was great and although the land has been able to recover and is flourishing once more, the women of Cardin were nearly wiped out.”

  “Oh, God. That's terrible,” Annie whispered and covered her mouth before lowering it again. “I'm so sorry.”

  “You have no need to apologize for something you weren't aware of or did, Annie.” Riek placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Mott opened his mouth to explain about their crugs, but Shar shook his head, and he made sure Annie didn't see the slight movement. Mott closed his mouth and was pleased his male kin had stopped him before he could continue.