Slave by Cheryl Brooks

completely when the proximity alarm went off like a siren.
    Not my own personal proximity alarm, mind you, but the ship’s.
    “We’re coming up on Statzeel!” I gasped, releasing my hold on his cock and spinning around to reach the controls. “I’ve got to cut in the orbital engines or we’ll crash right into it!”
    Cat backed away and I shook my head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs out of it. You see! I chastised myself. This is what comes of getting too close to a big, horny tomcat! I should have insisted that he put on some clothes and then locked him in the hold. Or better yet, thrown him in the stasis chamber!
    My fingers hesitated a moment as they switched from the hot, pulsating hardness of his penis to the cold, smooth surface of the control panel. It took a moment to adjust, and then my fingers began to fly over the console. There were too many distractions with him on board! What if I’d been underneath him at the moment of orgasm when that alarm went off, I chided myself. I can’t do this right now! I need to focus! Fun and games must be put off until later, when I’d found Ranata and had somehow managed to set her free. Of course, if I made him wait that long, Cat would undoubtedly decide that he preferred Ranata, just like everyone else, and this whole thing would be a moot point.
Because, after all, I only smelled and tasted like a Zetithian female; Ranata probably looked, smelled, tasted, and felt like one. Hell, she probably even sounded like one! I let out a long sigh, thinking that there was a lot to be said for spontaneity, and also that timing truly was everything. I probably could have come up with at least ten other clichés to apply to this particular situation, but I was too pissed off at the time to think of them.
    What was I thinking to let him get so close? Was I feeling sorry for him, sorry for myself, or just plain willing to let him fuck me senseless and make me forget everything and everybody for a little while?
    Maybe a little of all three, I decided as I heard the engines switch over. Statzeel loomed before us on the viewscreen, less than a million kilometers away, and I noted that it was a very attractive planet when viewed from space. The way my informant had described it to me, it sounded a lot like the whole world was one big planet-sized version of Hawaii, and it looked a lot like Earth from up there, all greens and blues and swirling clouds. I guess if you had to be a slave, it was as nice a place as any in which to live out your servitude.
    “Where will we land?” Cat asked.
    “Right about there,” I said, pointing to a small area of land jutting out into the sea from another larger land-mass. “I’ve been studying the maps for months. With any luck, we won’t get lost.”
    Or encounter any of the other disasters that I had considered as possibilities for landing on a world like Statzeel. Actually, getting lost was among the more minor ones that had occurred to me. Being forced into
lifelong servitude was the one that usually got most of my attention. What I mean is, being lost was a problem that could be remedied by finding a map, but being chained to some pompous Statzeelian asshole for the rest of my life was something else altogether. The thought of it got me to wondering just how often the women killed their husbands….
    “My information was obtained from a smuggler who deals in black market goods. He sold me some clothing that should pass for the local garb and told me which areas to land my ship in to avoid detection, though we’re not going to be sneaking in—at least not at first. I plan to go through the accepted channels as an honest trader and we should be able to find out plenty of information in the spaceport and the marketplace. This isn’t a planet that people visit a lot, though, so I don’t expect to be welcomed with open arms or put up in style at a Holiday Inn! He did tell me that traders aren’t discouraged too much, so we can pull some