WAS TODAY THURSDAY? Yes, probably Thursday. Though it didn’t really matter. Abriela only called it Thursday because naming the days reminded her of Earth, and she clung to the memory of home like a drowning man to a life raft.

She was pretty certain she’d been here 227 days, though, because Angie had been making tiny marks on the wall next to her bed since the day she arrived. That was two days before Abriela herself was pulled through some crazy rift in the universe to end up on a planet straight out of a kinky, perverted version of a sci-fi movie.

Her mind was fuzzy from the drugs, as usual, and she struggled to think straight. She’d managed to do the times table in her head last week, only to be interrupted during the ’9’s with an orgasm that erased everything from her mind. So, she’d started over.

She rolled over and off her pallet, landing her feet on the rungs of the ladder with the ease of practice, and climbed down. She passed Melissa, still asleep, and poked her. “C’mon hon. Gotta get up.” She noted the fresh tear tracks on the sleeping woman’s cheeks and shook her head. There was nothing she could do but hold her while she cried, again.

She passed Serena’s bunk, but the tall, willowy woman had already climbed out to join the others milling around quietly on the bare gray floor. Angie, Lori, and Cara had already left, pulled out of bed a while before to cover the early shift. Some Anterrins loved to start the day with a little nectar.

Abriela sought out April. “Anything?” She nodded towards the bunk on the opposite wall. Unlike all the others, the front was closed.

“No.” April shook her head. Her bunk was right over the closed-up bunk where Stella lay confined in silent darkness for the 5th day. There had been no noises for the last two of those days. At first the quiet had been a welcome relief from the constant talking and singing, and then the pleas for help that had kept them all awake and crying for two nights running. But at least they’d known she was okay then. The silence was worse.

Abriela gave her a hug. “It won’t be much longer. C’mon. We have to line up.”

All thirteen women—short, tall, pale, dark, all under thirty years old, and all dressed in short shapeless gray tunics—moved to the bare wall opposite the door. They stared at the floor, silent and waiting.

The door opened and two aliens entered. They were shaped the same as humans, but were easily two and a half meters tall. She’d seen a few that might top three. The skin tone of these two was a medium brown that was flat and had an unhealthy grayish cast. Most of the Anterrin men she’d seen, whose skin tones ranged from barely tan to almost pitch black, had a strange luminescent look, as though a hand could go right through them. And every one of them, when they got angry, got darker. All the women in her group knew exactly what color each guard here was when he was calm, and what color he was when angry, and they’d learned to fear that color change.

One alien nodded to the other, who went over to the closed-in bunk, and opened the cover, lifting and pushing it back to slide between the bunk below and the bunk above. Other than screwing her eyes shut at the sudden light, the woman inside didn’t move.

Diro, their owner and the owner of this public nectar house, looked at the rest of the women with the feline-shaped eyes of Anterrins. “She goes back out tomorrow. If she isn’t capable of satisfying customers any longer, she’ll be removed. The next time one of you thinks about attacking one of us, remember her.” He turned and left.

The second alien, Jev, took up his usual position by the door, folded his arms, and ignored them. The women slowly left the security of the wall and drifted towards Stella’s bunk, looking uncertain.

“Hey, guys, I’m not really hungry. I’ll wake her up while you eat, okay?” Abriela was feeling a little more alert than the others looked and Stella would need someone who could move quietly and carefully for a while.

The group changed direction and wandered to the tables. Abriela sat down on the thin pad next to the unmoving woman. Any stimulation was going to be overwhelming to her. But there wasn’t much time before the group had to get showered and out to the floor. Abriela didn’t know how Stella was going to recover, to be honest. Three days was usually the longest their captors had kept someone in complete darkness, with noise cancellation that kept them from hearing themselves singing or talking. A food patch, and a tube of water with a flat patch at the end that her skin absorbed, made sure they didn’t disturb her to be fed. After three days, a woman held like that could usually walk and eat, though it took days before she stopped seeing hallucinations and was able to talk. The drugs that Abriela knew they were being given to keep them obedient didn’t help the recovery at all.

“Stella?” she whispered. “Stella, It’s Abri. “You’re done now. You’re safe.” What else can I say? “Can you move a finger, or squeeze your eyes?”

Nothing.

“Stella, I’m going to touch you.” She brushed her finger as light as she possibly could over the back of Stella’s hand. Stella jerked her hand away, rolled away from Abriela and curled up, and let out the most horrifying scream Abri had ever heard. It was the scream of an animal—frightened, wounded, and in pain. Abriela jerked backwards in surprise and hit her head on the frame of the upright supports. She held back her own cry of pain and frustration, rubbing her head as she stood up.

She didn’t know what else to do except let Stella come back around gradually. She hoped they would give her enough time. She wasn’t really sure what would happen if Stella was removed, but she could guess. Abriela had made a friend when she arrived, a woman named Keelie, and Keelie had been removed and never seen again. Rumor had it that she’d been sold to some tentacled alien and taken to another planet. Abri hoped she was dead, rather than alive with that fate.

She glanced at the table, but the other women had gone back to eating again, their minds already dulled by the drugs in their food.

This was her life, ever since she had been sitting on the couch in her apartment, wandering through a dating program and mildly mocking the pictures of available men. She was giddy because school had just let out and she didn’t have to see or teach any of the little monsters again until fall. By that time, she’d miss them dreadfully. But now the summer stretched out in front of her, warm and sunny, and wonderfully plan-less.

And then dark clouds rolled in, and thunder and lightning crackled, and before she could do more than set her phone down, a burnt smell followed by a bolt of lightning hit the middle of her living room. The air split open, a large bronze arm reached through, and she was pulled into the hole, screaming, until everything went dark.

And when she woke up, she was in a cage, on another planet. The next day she was auctioned, and then she was here. ‘Here’ was one of many public nectar houses, where Anterrin men came to sip the nectar between a human woman’s thighs after she had an orgasm. Human nectar gave them a mild high, and Anterrins were mad for it. The women had been sorted by flavor when they arrived, with the best flavor going to private houses and clubs, and more common flavors to the public nectar houses like this one.

All the women had been fitted with small translators placed behind their right ears. It had been a nightmare of tiny wires burrowing into their brain while they screamed. Once it was done, though, they could understand and speak Anterrin the same as a native.

Stella had been sold to a private master at first, but she’d angered him and been sold to Diro. She said that there were hundreds of human women here, all of them nectar slaves. Even King Acestes and his brother, the high priest or something like that, owned dozens. But there were no human men, anywhere, and no one would answer her questions about why.

Abriela was so tired. She knew, when her mind was clear, that no human woman could continue having dozens of orgasms a day for too long, so there must be a high turnover. And where the exhausted ones went—well, that was where it might be better to let the numbness take over, so she didn’t dwell on it.

She reluctantly joined the other women at the table and ate as little of the tasteless brown mass in her bowl as she thought she could get away with. A thick pink beverage in a tall cup was laced with supplements to flavor their nectar. She glanced up at the Anterrin guard, who fixed her with a look that said she was being watched, so she had no choice but to choke it down. She hadn’t been able to puzzle out how to avoid either drug yet.

And then there was the pill that made them hyper aroused, sitting off to the side. She hated that pill.

A scant five minutes later they were herded into ultrasonic showers. Food, clothing, and accommodations were all as bare bones as possible. But their Anterrin masters were obsessive about keeping them clean. They’d all been permanently depilated from the neck down upon arrival. That was at the same time their nipples were pierced. The big thick rings sat way back, almost to the edges of their areolas, with a tracking device inside. Dangling from one ring was an ID tag with one side showing the open flower symbolizing a nectar slave, and the other with the name of her owner.

The drugs were starting to work already. She felt her anxiety calm at the same time an itching and wetness grew between her legs. She could see the other women starting to rub theirs together, too. They lined up once more, now naked except for cuffs and collars, their thoughts no longer on the silent woman on the bed, but on how to get an orgasm as soon as possible.


FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, they were all strapped onto the small ledges that jutted out from the wall about two meters off the floor. Their legs were pulled wide open and fastened almost flat against the wall to either side. Their arms were pulled up above their heads, fastened with manacles to chains. The only sounds in the hot, airless club room were the clanking of chains as they shifted, trying to relieve the itch between their legs, and small desperate groans. Angie, Laurie, and Cara, who’d started duty three hours ago, sat with their heads falling forward, exhausted by the nonstop orgasms they’d already endured. They would stay for the morning rush, and then go back to the dorm to rest, and return later in the evening when the second rush began.

Anterrin males wandered in after paying the fee up at the front. She recognized some regulars. Some headed straight for their favorite human; others took their time, running a finger between each woman’s open folds, tasting the nectar, and making a careful decision. Even the touch of a finger was enough to make most of them groan and arch forward enticingly, and let out a sob as they were passed over.

Abri had wondered why they didn’t just bottle the nectar and sell it, instead of going to the trouble of displaying women. She’d quietly ventured that question to a customer one day who seemed to be conversational. He’d thought about it as he licked and sucked, and she writhed and panted. When he was done, and she was coming down off the short high her orgasm gave her, he told her that Anterrins loved watching the human women become desperate, pleading for the relief the orgasm would bring. Then they could give that orgasm and lap up the nectar as it dripped out.

She was basically an orange on a juicer. Some people liked to juice their own oranges instead of buying a bottle.

She recognized one male, and sure enough, he made a beeline for her. She groaned inside. He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his red cat-like eyes as he leaned in.

“Look at me.” He would never let her retreat inside her own mind like the others did. Sharing her emotions felt like more of a violation than the orgasms he forced out of her.  She focused her eyes on the bridge of his light brown nose. She would not stare at his red eyes. No.

With his eyes locked on her face, his long, slender tongue darted out straight into her depths. It was a scratch to an itch that only inflamed her more. She groaned and bucked in the restraints, her body betraying her by begging for more. Without thinking, she closed her eyes and a moment later a sharp pain in her left nipple made her eyes fly open as she shrieked. Her customer was twisting the ring.

“Eyes open all the time!” he barked. The twisting continued.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, please!” she cried. He let go. Her nipple throbbed to the beat of her heart, gradually fading as she tried to breathe and fix her eyes on his creepy red ones.

He resumed his exploration of her wet and glistening folds with his tongue, taking his time, lapping slowly. This was the worst part of this customer—he enjoyed the torment almost more than the orgasm. He would prolong his teasing, stroking every fold from front, to back, to front, occasionally brushing her clit just enough to make her cry out. She’d get dizzy from breathing too hard, and he usually finished the session only after Diro barked a time warning.

Her eyes were still fixed on his as he came in close for the finale, flicking the narrow point of his tongue across her clit, each stroke a jolt of lightning. Slowly, then faster, the tide inside her rose, until at last she screamed out and came, closing her eyes helplessly as she rode the waves. His tongue wasn’t done. He slurped and licked her nectar and worried her clit with his teeth, and she flung her head from side to side, desperate to get him to stop, but knowing the penalty for begging.

At last he was done, mostly because Diro was tapping him on his shoulder with irritation and motioning him to get out. He straightened up, his pupils now dilated to dark ovals with only a ring of red remaining. He’d be high for a couple hours and then he’d come down. And he might come back later today. Nectar slaves in this run-down public house were cheap.

“I gave her a direct order to look into my eyes the whole time. She disobeyed again, just like yesterday.”

The owner nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll whip her.”

The customer nodded and left.


BY THE TIME SHE WAS released, she’d had more than thirty orgasms, spread out over about a third of an Anterrin day, which was slightly longer than an Earth one. It was a pretty typical shift. At the beginning the supplements made her desperate for orgasms, one after the other, and she stayed wet and ready. But by the end there was no arousal left, her pussy was mostly dry, and she wept when the customers continued to come in.

The tired women looped arms around each other for support as they were herded back into the gray room that was always hot, and smelled of too many people and no fresh air. They pulled on their tunics and sat at the table or on the bunks, talking softly, heads hanging with exhaustion.

Cara, released from the early shift hours ago, lay on her bunk turned away from everyone. Abriela sat on the edge.

“Cara, are you okay?”

“No,” she whispered. “He let one of them have me.”

It took a moment for Abriela to digest what she’d said. “He let a customer fuck you?” Anterrin penises were huge to human women. Anterrin males loved the tightness of human pussies but it was too easy to injure human women, and only a few houses were licensed for fucking. This house wasn’t one of them.

“He let the guy in early. I was still standing near the seats and saw a lot of solluses change hands. Then instead of placing me on the seat, he bent me over that horizontal pole that’s off to the side and clipped my wrists to my ankles. I realized what was about to happen and I started struggling and pleading, but…” She trailed off. Silent tears spilled down the side of her face. Cara had been barely eighteen when she arrived and was still the youngest one here. “Abri, I’d never…I’ve never…”

A wave of horror swept through Abriela. “You were a virgin?”

Cara nodded. “Diro knew it. That’s why he picked me. It hurt, Abriela. It’s better now, and I’m not bleeding anymore and Diro let me take a shower, but it hurt so bad.”

Abriela lay down behind Cara, and without words she pulled the young woman into her arms, holding her until she fell asleep.


THERE WERE DAYS when she barely held it together, whatever ‘it’ was. She moved forward, ate, drank, bathed, and tried not to think of the future. Her old life seemed so far away. Her fourth-grade kids would be in the middle of their year at school with another teacher, and by now the questions of “where did Ms. Larson go?” would have faded away. She tried to fight against the heartbreak that thought brought. Her roommate would have found someone else to move in—apartments were too expensive to keep alone. She hoped her cat was okay.

Her mom had passed away a long time ago. She’d been sick for years, and Abriela had been raised mostly by her abuela, her grandmother. Ella, whom Abriela had been named after, was from Cuba. After making her way across the dangerous waters to Florida, back when Cuba and the United States were enemies, she wound up in cold and snowy Minnesota, of all places. There she met and married Trig Larson, who was as pale a Norwegian as he could be. Abriela had always wanted to visit her grandmother’s home but she’d never made it to Cuba before her abuela had died, something Abri deeply regretted.

Stella woke up enough to huddle in the back corner of her bunk, as far away from the noise and light as possible. From time to time one of the women drifted over to her, but she ignored them, whispering to herself and rocking.

Shortly after the strange stew-like slop that was their second and last meal of the day—ironically called ‘lastmeal’—the door opened and Diro walked in, his bulk filling the room with its presence. He stood with his arms crossed and watched the women line up against the wall and stare at the floor again. In his hands he held a wide leather strap, and Abriela shook as she realized it was probably meant for her.

Being beaten by him meant bruises that lasted for weeks. It had happened to Abriela only once before. Four of the other women would be tasked with holding her still as she lay on her back on the table, arms above her head, legs spread. He’d stand by her head, swinging the strap down to land precisely on the soft flesh of her labia and clit. The first blow would cause her to scream. Ten would find her hysterical, and the strength of her friends would be sorely tested. Twenty was the usual sentence.

A punished woman was instantly the center of attention the next day, sipped and orgasmed nonstop by Anterrins who believed her nectar tasted better than usual. There were always a few who visited only to enjoy the cries of pain as they bit and pulled on her black and blue swollen folds.

As they waited against the wall, motion to the side caught Abriela’s attention and she swung her head around just in time to see Stella launch herself off her bunk and race across the floor. She let out a loud scream of rage just before she barreled into Diro. The small woman barely nudged the big Anterrin. In one quick, horrible motion, Diro grabbed Stella and threw her across the floor, her body and head smacking into the frame of one of the beds with a sickening sound.

There was silence as the women struggled to comprehend what had just happened. Abriela pushed herself off the wall and ran to the crumpled form. The blood leaking onto the floor, the dent to her head, and then finally the lack of a heartbeat as she pressed her ear to Stella’s chest gave her all the information she needed.

He’d just killed her.

Something broke inside Abriela. The anger and despair that she’d tried to keep in check, that she’d buried under a false layer of hope that this nightmare wasn’t forever, rose through the crack in her mind like a volcano. And just as volcanoes destroy everything in their path, the anger destroyed every shred of control she had left.

She turned to Diro, who had moved closer to peer down at them. “She’s dead, you sonofabitch.” Abriela wasn’t sure the translator knew exactly what that word meant, but it didn’t matter. She stood slowly, looked at him straight in the eyes, and without consciously planning what she was going to do, threw herself at him. But not at his bulk; she grabbed for the strap in his hand. He let go in surprise. She managed to get behind him, regain her footing, and as he turned to her she lifted the strap and whipped it across his face. He roared as blood spurted from a cheek. She backed up, but he was on her in one step. He picked her up as she clawed at his huge arms to no effect, and then she, too, was flying through the air towards the still body of her friend. Her arms and ribs met something solid, her head met the same surface a split second later, pain exploded behind her eyes, and the world went dark.