Slavery's Release

“Guys, c’mon, it’s a desert planet. You gotta hydrate. How about some respect women juice?”

By the time he finished speaking, he was upon them. Throk’s head whirled at the noise. He, like Oola, saw Hunnak and Gorp move to intercept him, but the man knocked the Gamorreans aside like a bowling ball going through tenpins. He made for Throk without having been slowed a microsecond.

Oola gasped in relief, feeling the lead Gamorrean jerked off of her body, leaving her almost paralyzed with a strange cessation of tension, a feeling of freedom. 

Throk opened his mouth to say something, but the human male cut him off a backhand across the jaw like the one Oola’d received when she’d tried to scream. Throk dropped to his knees, spitting out chipped tusks and green bile. He made hacking noises like he was going to heave and the man put a foot up on his broad shoulder, giving him a push with it that sent him sprawling into the sand.

Oola hadn’t considered her escape attempt. She’d seen her opportunity to run from Jabba’s palace and she’d taken it, even with nowhere to go, her dancing attire slight covering from the twin suns’ heat. After hours, the Gamorrean guards had tracked her down in a skiff. She knew they were entitled to eat a body part of slaves they recaptured. Yet somehow, she was still whole. For once in her life, she’d been saved—cared for—almost like she mattered.

“Are you alright?” the man asked her, extending a hand to help her to her feet. She was too numb to answer him, even as her instincts screamed at her to thank him, to ingratiate herself to him. He had to be better than Jabba. Yet through her tear-blurred eyes, it was hard not to see his hand as a weapon.

Hunnak was up, sand sticking to his drool-ridden jowls, and he moved for Peter like a linebacker after the snap. “You’ve got some nerve--!” he grunted.

“You should see my moxie,” the man said, and hit him in the gut without seeming to move. One second he was there, the next his fist was buried in the Gamorrean’s ample midsection. Hunnak’s face went from green to putty-gray. He doubled up into a surprisingly compact ball.

Gorp held up both meaty hands in a gesture of surrender, then went for his vibro-axe. The man kicked a handful of sand up into Gorp’s piggy eyes, blinding him, then delivered a chop that seemed to penetrate even Gorp’s tree-trunk neck. He sagged down, practically melting into a puddle.

Oola was trying to make herself small, to avoid attention during the violent altercation to keep herself from being a target, but even as her mind told her to run and hide, she couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s commanding figure. He had saved her. She couldn’t begin to thank him. Still gasping for air, she scratched at the desert floor with her fingernails to drag herself over to him. She kissed his booted feet, leaving imprints of her lipstick and drops of her tears. 

“Take me with you? Won’t you take me with you?”

He stooped to help her up. It was a surprise for Oola to find she could support her own weight. She felt so weak—when the Gamorreans ran her down, she’d just gone numb, resigned to what would happen. 

“I’m not going anywhere particular, lady. I don’t even know where I am.”

“Anywhere’s better than here.”

“Okay, then you can go with me as far as there,” he said lightly. “I’m Peter.”

Peter. Even his name sounded like a welcome relief from Jabba’s court of sycophants and sociopaths. 

“Jabba will get you for this!” Throk moaned in guttural pain.

The man crouched down beside the blood-spitting Gamorrean. He grabbed the fur of Throk’s vest and easily picked him up, as if the Gamorrean’s half-ton of weight was equipped with repulsorlifts. 

“It’s nice to know he cares,” the man said in a tight voice. “You’ve got some blubber on you, so I didn’t bother breaking any bones through the padding, but if I see you again, your Jabba can nurse you back to health. And you look like a sedentary lifestyle is already a problem, man.”

Oola looked at Throk, his squat body dangling from Peter’s arm. He deserved something from her, Oola decided, a token of appreciation from the Twi’lek he’d nearly tasted. After all, hadn’t he smacked his jowls and licked his lips, just waiting to close his teeth on her? 

Oola sent her foot up into his crotch. She wasn’t wearing so much as a sandal, but she made up for it with the force of the blow, lodging the bridge of her foot deep into his delicate testes. Throk’s face turned white and he groaned with the airiness of a castrato. She hoped she’d left him wanting a prosthetic. It’d serve him right to have a droid dick for the rest of his days.

Then Oola threw herself into Peter’s slender, firm chest. Surprised, he let Throk drop like a sack of garbage and took her in his arms.

“Easy does it,” he said to her, stroking her back and lekku as she sobbed. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” 

All while his hands relentlessly purred over her lekku, soothing her, stroking her, lulling her into a languid stupor while arousing her need to a boiling point. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it—acting as a master to her, a true and proper master, with the strength and potency to deserve her respect. Oola wasn’t sobbing in relief, but in gratitude, the bond cementing between them with every moment he comforted her. 

Yes. Yes, who wanted freedom, if it just meant dying in the sands? She wanted to be protected. She wanted to be cared for. She wanted to be comforted and soothed, as this man could, and she wanted to comfort and soothe him in turn. He certainly deserved a woman’s gratitude. A woman’s pleasure.

Oola stopped crying. She’d given vent to her emotions. He’d accepted her closeness. As much as she wanted him to keep stroking her lekku so lovingly, she needed more. The fire he’d kindled inside her needed fuel or it would go out. And she didn’t want it to go out. She wanted it to burn her into ash.

“Hey,” Peter said, patting her lekku now. Oola shuddered. So kinky… “You know how to fly one of those things?”

Oola looked at the hovering skiff the Gamorreans had used to run her down. “I think so. I’ve seen it operated, many times.”

“Know anyplace we can fly it to?” 

Oola nodded again, thinking furiously. With someone actually asking for her opinion, her mind shot into overdrive to provide one. “The Jawas. They’d give us some money to strip the skiff for parts, and a ride to somewhere out of its range. Then we could hire a ship—get off this planet.”

Peter puffed air through his lips. “Geez, I come to a whole new dimension and already I’m going off-world. Oh well—I guess it’s not a very good planet, is it?”

Oola shook her head frantically. “It is a very bad planet.”

“I suppose green doesn’t tan very well, huh?”

Oola didn’t quite take his meaning—Basic was her second language. But she understood he was referring to the heat. The stifling, bone-dry heat. And the sand; did anyone like sand? “May we go to a world with more moisture? Please?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Fine by me. You’re already dressed for the beach.”

Oola almost felt faint. “Thank you, master. I will be a very good driver for you!”

She went to start the skiff up.

Peter moved to follow her, stepping over the fallen Throk when he paused in thought. “Master?”