The Bid by Jax

and sweet lips. The kiss deepened, crossed the line into bittersweet passion for just a moment, but then he pulled back and stepped away from her. The tears filling her eyes were more than he could bear. Fighting the tightness in his throat, he said, “I have some training with the guards in a little while. I’d better be headed to the yard.”
    He turned and left the room, refusing to look back and forcing himself to look only forward.
     

    Vejhon awoke with a start when he smelled food. There wasn’t a single thing about it that smelled familiar, but he knew it was food because the aromatic scent made his stomach twist into a painful knot of want. Gods, he hadn’t eaten in so long he wasn’t even sure his stomach would keep anything he ate. Although, he thought with a grimace as a loud rumble of demand ground out of him, it was willing to try in spite of his own reluctance.
    Rolling over, he took a moment to adjust to the changed light in the room. Daylight had disappeared, but the recessed lighting along all the seams of the walls and ceiling had taken over the job. The room was very well lit, almost like daylight itself. Most worlds, in his experience, ran on cycles or days ranging from twenty to thirty hours in length. From what he had surmised watching the slow course of the sun for the past day, this world spent an entire cycle in daylight and the next in total darkness. It was unusual, but not unheard of. The planet rotated so slowly on its axis that schedules had had to be adapted to provide a healthy balance between waking and sleeping time, whether it was dark out or not.
    “Did you enjoy your rest?”
    Vejhon jerked upright in bed at the sound of her voice. She was setting a tray onto the table acting as center point of the conversation area, the same location Najir had used for the previous plate of food. The platter was the source of those amazing smells, he realized quickly, but he tried to school himself so she wouldn’t be able to read how strongly he desired what she had brought. She’d proven herself an accomplished torturer, he thought bitterly, and the control of a prisoner’s food was a classic manipulative tool.
    “Come, Jhon,” she invited with a sympathetic little smile. “I’m not here to harm you in any way. That unpleasantness is over with. It will never be repeated so long as you are within the protection of this House, and I am hoping that will be for a long, long time.”
    “I’ll bet you are,” he bit out sharply. He swung up onto his feet and paused when he realized there was no one there to protect her from him. He was free to approach her, to touch her…
    …so long as you don’t combine it with laying hands on me with the intent to hurt me.
    Vejhon reached to rub at the metal around his arm that she had called her safety measure. A neurotransmitter, perhaps, engineered to cause pain as a deterrent so a slave wouldn’t harm his master. But…Vejhon had bucked incredible pain before and managed to kill enemies by the handful in spite of it. And it wouldn’t take much to disconnect her spine from her brain. Only a few seconds.
    He approached where she was and watched with amazement as she actually turned her back on him to begin setting out the covered dishes she’d brought. It was too prime an opportunity to waste, and he was too well trained a warrior. His brain was already calculating how to use her hand to activate the door across the way even after she was dead. Guards could be dealt with, and in the darkness he could find a million places to hide in a city. Vejhon’s entire body shifted into automation. The quick length of his stride covered the distance in a heartbeat and his hands reached out to grab her by her head.
    He barely saw her move, her speed was so remarkably unexpected. She swung her arm back, capturing his wrist and squeezing the painful wound on it mercilessly as she came around with her second hand and flat-palmed him in the ribs so hard he felt his