D. Reynolds - Aden

There was no need to change clothes. He had only the one set, and it had been too cold last night to sleep naked. The shirt was ragged and unhemmed, the pants torn and too short for his long legs, but they were the only ones he possessed. And even these were owned by his master. Aden owned nothing. He was nothing. He was a thing, a possession, easily discarded and of very little value.

“Aden!”

He heard his master’s bellow and rushed from his room, drying his hands on his pants as he went.

Dropping to his knees at the open door to his master’s morning room, he bent nearly in half, face to the floor, and shouted, “How may this useless one serve you, master?”

His master’s laugh greeted his query. “Didn’t I tell you?” Hafiz chortled. “Perfectly biddable.”

“So you said,” a woman’s husky voice responded.

Aden didn’t move from his prostrate position, but he was intrigued. His master didn’t entertain many women. Boys were far more his style, and only the smallest, weakest ones at that. It was one thing Aden had to be grateful for, that his Scottish blood had made him too big to suit Hafiz’s perverted taste in sexual amusement. Even at the age of five, when Hafiz had first purchased him from his father, Aden had been too strong, his attitude too arrogant. The arrogance had been beaten out of him quickly enough, but his size and strength were there to stay.

“Get in here, worm,” Hafiz’s hated voice called.

Aden lifted himself from the floor, and, keeping his head lowered, eyes downcast, he shuffled into his master’s audience chamber, where he promptly prostrated himself once again.

“Master.”

He felt the sharp end of Hafiz’s cane dig into his shoulder and tensed, but then the woman intervened.

“No,” she said sharply, and amazingly, Hafiz stopped his poking. “Stand up, boy,” she commanded. “Let me see you.”

Aden froze uncertainly. The woman had given him an order, but Hafiz had not. If he stood without his master’s permission, he would be beaten. But if he ignored the command of his master’s guest, he might very well be beaten, too. Though perhaps not as severely. So he remained prostrate.

“Do it, imbecile.”

Aden stifled a sigh of relief, jumping to his feet at his master’s order.

“Raise your head,” the woman said. His mind told him the words were a command, but his gut felt it was a request. He chose not to obey either his brain or his gut, because the words didn’t come in his master’s voice.

Hafiz sighed deeply. “This is becoming tiresome. Do whatever she says, worm.”

Aden lifted his head and tried not to stare. He barely managed not to meet the woman’s eyes, which would have earned him far more than a lashing in punishment.

“You’re right. He’s very big for his age,” the woman observed, standing suddenly and coming close to Aden. He fought the shiver that tried to race along his nerves at her nearness. No female had been this close to him since he’d bid his mother good-bye. Hafiz didn’t own female slaves, didn’t have a wife or a mistress. His entire staff was male.

“Take off your clothes,” she said quietly, leaning close enough that he caught the flowery scent of her perfume. It confused him for a moment, because it reminded him again of the last time he’d seen his mother.

“Take off your clothes, boy.”

Hafiz’s harsh command broke through his confusion, and he jumped to obey. Slaves had no souls, but Aden had gained enough religion before being sold to know that it was unseemly for this woman to see him naked. But that didn’t stop him. Modesty of any kind was something he’d lost long ago. He loosened the tie on his pants and let them fall to the floor as he tugged the rough garment that was his shirt over his head. Stepping out of the pants, he folded both pieces neatly and set them aside before standing straight once more, eyes cast downward.

The woman’s delicate laugh tightened his gut with fear. Did she find his nakedness amusing? Was there some flaw that proved him unacceptable and would result in his punishment for embarrassing Hafiz?

“He’s certainly tidy,” she said over her laugh. “And very pretty, too.”

Aden surrendered to the shudder that rolled through him as her soft hand stroked over his skin, starting at his back and caressing his buttocks, the trail of her fingers following her slow steps around to his chest. He fought against his body’s instinctive reaction, but he was a twelve-year-old boy who’d never been touched by a woman like this. His abdomen clenched with an entirely different kind of fear as her slender fingers glided down to his belly and lower, finally grasping his erect cock with a boldness that shocked him. And terrified him.

“Lovely,” she commented. “Though you’ve marked him more than once, Hafiz.”

“Boys require discipline,” Hafiz said casually, as if the beatings he subjected his slaves to were for their own good and nothing to remark upon.

“Fortunately,” the woman said, “the marks will fade with proper treatment. It’s a shame you don’t appreciate true male beauty. Still, your loss is my gain. I’ll take him.”

“And the price?” Hafiz inquired in his oily voice.

“I’ll meet your price,” she said negligently. “But he goes with me this morning. I know you and your discipline. I’ll not have you marking him out of spite. The last boy I bought from you couldn’t work for nearly two weeks.”

Aden listened to this exchange and wondered what it meant. Clearly, his master had sold him to this woman, and that was a good thing. Or so he hoped. Aden was untutored, but not stupid. As much as he despised Hafiz, he knew there were far worse fates that could be his. It seemed unlikely, however, that this woman ran a slave ship, or any of the other detestable positions he could find himself in, especially given her admonishment to Hafiz about not marking him. He took that as a good sign, but, in truth, he had no idea what it meant.

His head still lowered, Aden watched from the corner of his eye as the woman picked up his clothes and fingered them with distaste.

“Put these back on for now. The matron will clothe you more suitably later.” She turned away dismissively as he began to dress. “Our business is complete, Hafiz. Come, boy.”

And that easily, Aden’s entire existence changed once more.

Chicago, IL, present day

SID WOKE THE next morning, feeling frustrated and angry. It wasn’t supposed to have worked out this way. Dresner had assured her that vampires were horndogs, always looking for an easy conquest to score both blood and sex. Unfortunately, she was now forced to question everything Dresner had told her, because it seemed the prof had been working for Silas all along. Dresner had all but admitted setting Sid up as bait for Aden, purely so she could help Silas win control over the territory. And now, because Sid had visited Aden’s office once or twice—with Dresner’s encouragement—she was in the crosshairs of this Silas, a vampire she’d never even heard of before last night.

Sid didn’t even care who won the territory. The only reason she’d approached Aden in the first place was because Dresner said he was the guy most likely to win, and therefore the guy most likely to help her fulfill her crusade to shut down Klemens’s old slave trade.

Granted, that was before she’d actually met Aden, the overbearing asshole. And now that she had, she really didn’t care who won. Or so she’d told herself all through her long walk in the dark last night, from Dresner’s house to a busy club where she’d caught a cab. And ever since she woke up this morning, too. Unfortunately, she wasn’t having much luck convincing herself that it was true. Somehow that infuriating, chauvinistic, high-handed . . . gorgeous, powerful, and intensely masculine hunk of vampire had gotten under her skin. And wasn’t that a bitch? Because as long as she was listing things that frustrated her, Aden had to be at the very top. One minute he was seducing her, and the next, like a switch being thrown, he was all business, all don’t get in my way, little human, the big bad vampire will handle everything.

“Fuck that,” she muttered and stormed over to her computer. Hadn’t she been working this story for months? She knew more about Klemens and his sleazy businesses than Aden did. He hadn’t even been sure there was a slave network until she’d told him. He’d seemed upset once he found out, though. She’d give him that. Of course, then he’d immediately gone all high-handed me-Tarzan and shuffled the little lady off to the tree house where she’d be safe. Well, double fuck that. She’d worked this story alone so far, and she could keep doing it. She didn’t need almighty Aden’s permission to do her job.

Checking her calendar, she saw it was the eleventh of the month, and the slavers maintained a surprisingly strict schedule, for bloodsucking bottom feeders. The newest shipment of girls would have come in last night. They’d be penned up in one of several holding houses, awaiting the next online auction, which would be on the thirteenth. The number of women to be auctioned varied. It could be as few as five or as many as twenty. It just depended on the gleaners and how much merchandise they could round up. Sid’s problem would be determining which of the houses the women were being held in. If she could figure that out, she could do some recon and maybe gather enough evidence to take to the police. If she could only persuade them to conduct a raid while the women were still being held prisoner, they’d have no choice but to open a wider investigation. Granted, she’d brought the police evidence before, and they’d never moved on it. She suspected they’d been bought off, though she’d never been able to prove it. But she kept trying, and maybe this time her report would fall to someone who wasn’t in the slavers’ pay, someone who would follow up on her information.