have you any time, same as I can have Shurla. But once a Public Breeding is announced, well…” He winked one slitted yellow eye at Penny. “Then it’s time for fun.”
And tucking the two blood-stained loaves under one muscular arm, he stumped off down the street whistling between his crooked teeth.
Penny stood and watched him go, feeling like she’d just been punched in the stomach. The message was clear—she was safe until the next Public Breeding was announced and that could happen at any time.
Oh God—what was she going to do?
Forty-Seven
Now, as Penny stood in the shower, reliving her awful day, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Was there any way to ask for a transfer to another job, somewhere else on the Compound? Not from the way Claudette had talked about it, she thought bitterly. She remembered her friend’s words—“If there’s a Public Breeding, you’ll just have to stay there and take it.”
But Penny was damned if she’d just stand around and let herself be raped by the horrible Skrug or any of the other males who happened to be in the Market Place the next time a Public Breeding was announced. She had to find a way out of this—but how?
Only one answer presented itself—escape. She remembered that V’rex had hinted about having a plan to get out of the Compound this morning. Penny hoped that whatever it was, it could be hurried along. She resolved to ask him about it at dinner that night.
Isn’t there something else you ought to be asking him too? whispered a little voice in her head. A pressing problem no one else can help you with?
Penny winced, as she looked down at her swollen breasts. The little white bandages Claudette had given her to wear over her nipples had worked, but not by soaking up any leaking nectar. Instead, they had kept it from leaking out in the first place. Which meant that now she had two whole days worth of the sticky sweet liquid built up in her breasts and she was in serious pain.
But how can I ask him to help? Penny moaned to herself. How can you ask someone you’ve only known a day to suck your nipples to get the weird syrupy nectar out of them? That’s so embarrassing.
But embarrassing or not, she was going to have to find a way to broach the subject. It was, as Claudette had pointed out, a dead giveaway that V’rex hadn’t actually been breeding her. And the little white bandages were no longer useful—they wouldn’t stay in place anymore. In fact, they had barely lasted until she got home. So it was either ask the big Hybrid to help her or…
“Maybe I can take care of this myself,” Penny muttered, looking down at her breasts.
Experimentally, she took one swollen breast between her hands and squeezed. This resulted in a few viscous drops of nectar leaking out…and a bolt of pure agony rushing through the affected mammary.
Penny gasped and stopped at once, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes.
“And m-maybe not,” she whispered in a trembling voice. Somehow she was going to have to work up the nerve to ask V’rex to help her.
Penny just didn’t know how she was going to manage that.
Forty-Eight
By the time V got home—he’d had to stay late, trimming the other fucking trees to match the first one he’d messed up—Penelope had already put Last Meal on the table. It included an array of grilled vegetables, some kind of thin gruel-like soup, and a fresh loaf of the pale purple bread they baked here at the Compound.
The meat was conspicuously absent, but he didn’t blame her for that. Though he still wasn’t sure if the rumor she’d heard about where it came from was true, he would rather not risk cannibalism, just in case.
“This looks delicious, thank you,” V said, taking a seat across from her at the small, two-person table. “But you don’t have to cook every night if you don’t want to—we can trade off,” he offered. “Seems only fair since you have a job now too.”
“Thanks.” Penelope smiled briefly up at him and then went back to poking listlessly at the grilled vegetables on her plate. Her long chestnut hair was damp as though she’d recently showered and V thought she looked beautiful but miserable.
Her whole posture spoke of depression. She was hunched over in her seat, her elbows planted on the table and her chest low, almost as though