“I’m not upset with you, baby. Calm down. Now what do you want to eat, sweetheart?I’ll fix you something.”

“Just some toast maybe. I may be coming down with a stomach thing, though it’s easing up some now.”

Blayde typed in something on the food processing machine and turned to gather Ryan in his arms.“I’m not mad at you, baby.Not really.” He kissed him gently and Ryan’s stomach cramps eased off. He felt immediately better too, like a load of worry had been lifted from his shoulders.

“Why do I care if you’re mad at me or not? I’m mad at you! Oh no, wait a minute, you’ve got to be kidding! I feel like this because of you? This venom thing you keep blathering about?” Ryan’s voice was filled with disbelief and shock.

“Or you could say that you feel bad because you’re a little out of control. Six of one, half a dozen of another…”

“I hate you.” Another hard cramp almost doubled Ryan over.“Ow, Blayde! Help me, please!”

“No, you don’t hate me, sweetheart.Stop doing this to yourself.” Blayde took him in his arms, unable to bear seeing him in pain, and kissed him until the pain eased off.“Come over here and sit down, honey, and eat something. I made you some toast and eggs.Some coffee too.”

Blayde sat him down at the breakfast bar and gave him the plate from the food processor and took a cup of coffee for himself. Ryan was starving, so he ate every bite before looking back up accusingly at Blayde.“I feel like you didn’t give me a full disclosure, Blayde.”

“A what?”

“Like when you go for a loan and the bank has to give you a full disclosure on all the fees and stuff.I didn’t get one of those for what was going to happen when I agreed to be your mate.” He glared accusingly at Blayde.“First pack discipline and now this. Are there any other nasty little surprises I should know about?”

A laugh from the front door made them both turn in surprise. Kyle and Lucas stood in the doorway. Kyle came in and sat at the bar beside them.“Have you told him about what happens if he watches porn,Blayde?”

“What happens?” Ryan asked.“What does he mean?”

“Shut up, Kyle,” Blayde said.

“No, tellme!” Ryan said.“What will happen if I watch porn?”

“It’s not important, baby. I’ll tell you later. You won’t be watching any anyway. Kyle’s just trying to start trouble.”

Kyle sauntered in with a big grin and sat down at the counter. Lucas followed him and leaned over the end.“Got any more coffee, Blayde?”

Blayde punched in their coffees and in a few seconds sat a steaming mug in front of each of them.Lucas took a long pull of his and regarded Blayde closely. “I was awake a long time last night thinking about this and I only came up with one idea.It’s not the best idea I’ve ever had, but it was all I could think of that might keep you and your mate out of an Allianceprison.”

“Well, what is it? I’m open to anything that keeps my mate with me where he belongs.”

Ryan sat quietly, leaning a little toward Blayde almost subconsciously. This conversation made him nervous, and he wasn’t used to others deciding his fate. As a matter of fact, he’d almost forgotten about the sentence hanging over his head. Blayde was so vivid, so larger than life, he didn’t leave any room for anything else. He sat back and listened, though, knowing Blayde would do his fighting for him. Though he would never admit it to Blayde, he trusted him more every minute to take care of him.It did occur to him briefly that he’d just been complaining about Blayde taking control, but this was different. He wasn’t sure how, but he was sure it was. And exactly how is it different? the annoyingly rational part of himself asked. Oh, shut up, he told it.

“The way I see it, you have no choice but to begin your voyage to take the prisoners to the prison moon.We’ll just have to help him escape en route. Or at least make the prison officials think he did. We can say he died in the escape attempt, and we disposed of the body. In the meantime, Ryan will have to be one of those prisoners in every way, Blayde. He has to stay among them, sleep and eat among them.They can’t be aware of any favoritism on your part. They’re sure to be questioned after all the shit hits the fan.”

“Yeah, only one problem.I’m not putting my mate in there with them. Hell no, out of the question.I don’t want those animals around my mate.”

“If you don’t agree, I don’t think we can pull this off.”

“Damn it, Lucas, look at him! One of them would take him as their bitch the first night! Hell, the first hour!”

“Hey!” Ryan interrupted heatedly, as they all turned to look at him.He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or embarrassed.“I might have something to say about that! I can take care of myself, you know.”

All three men looked at him for a moment and then turned back to Blayde.“You may be right, but I can’t think of any way around it. They have to believe he’s really your prisoner.”

“I have an idea if anyone is interested,” Ryan said.

Blayde glanced at him.“Of course we’re interested, honey.What’s your idea?”

“Blayde can bring me on the ship like he’s already claimed me, but I resist. I make it very clear I don’t want to belong to Blayde, and I act belligerent and hard to handle. Blayde puts me in solitary to teach me a lesson, and he says it where the others can hear it. I continue to resist and we have a very public fight. He tells me I have to stay in solitary the remainder of the trip.”

Kyle laughed out loud.“Well damn! He’s smart as well as pretty!”

Blayde frowned and slid closer to his mate, not liking Kyle calling him pretty. Lucas smiled though and said,“Good idea, Ryan. Blayde, does that meet with your approval?”

“Maybe.”

Lucas looked at him seriously.“He’d have to actually be in solitary.You can’t be sneaking him out to your room.”

“How long is this supposed to last? And what’s the point,anyway?”

“The point is to establish him as a prisoner, and leave no doubt about it when the next part of the plan goes into effect.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“A prison break, in which one of the prisoners is unfortunately killed. That would be Ryan, of course, but naturally we fake his death.”

”Thanks.That would be a plus,” Ryan said in a dry tone.

Ignoring him, Blayde nodded.“Pretty dangerous, isn’t it, to allow the prisoners any kind of freedom?A break could backfire on all of us.”

“We’ll only let Ryan try to escape. All four of us will be on the trip, you two, plus me and Nikolai.We’ll plan it all carefully to make sure we control everything. When it all starts to go down, we neutralize Ryan, make sure the other prisoners see his body and then control the situation.We’ll remove him, inform the others he died in the escape attempt, even stage a body disposal in transit.”

“Wait a minute, what do you mean, ‘neutralize’ me? I don’t think Ilike the sound of that.”

Blayde patted Ryan’s shoulder and kept talking as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Where can we stow Ryan afterward?Somewhere in my quarters?”

“No, they might search there. I don’t think they will, they have no reason to doubt our word. But let’s go to the ship and find a place we can rig, just in case they decide to search the ship. It has to be secure and well hidden,” Kyle said, standing up.

Blayde and Lucas got up to follow him.Blayde bent to drop a kiss on Ryan’s forehead.“Be back soon, baby. Stay inside and rest.”

The three men barely glanced back at Ryan as they left, intent on getting to the ship and taking care of business. Ryan sat for a few minutes at the bar, feeling strangely bereft at Blayde’s absence and wishing they’d allowed him to go with them. He was out of sorts and feeling a little miserable for no particular reason. He wondered if the venom Blayde kept talking about had anything to do with the way he felt. Sighing, he wandered over to the living room and pressed the button the wall that made the movie screen descend. Maybe he could relax and watch a good movie, try to take his mind off the journey to come. Everything hinged on this going as smoothly as possible for both him and Blayde.

He turned on the screen and flipped through the listing of movies available. He saw some of his own old porn films and, smiling, he punched the menu to bring them up. It always turned him on to watch himself on screen with ahot guy. Jealous as Blayde was, he probably wouldn’t let him watch porn anymore anyway. Might as well go for a little farewell performance. As the movie unfolded, Ryan didn’t find it as stimulating or sexy as he usually did. He thought idly that it was because he’d seen it so many times, but when two of his friends came on, really going at it in a scene, he felt nothing but boredom. He glanced down at himself, surprised to see his cock was completely uninterested. He reached down to give himself a little pull or two through his pants, but nothing happened. Growing alarmed, he yanked harder, and still was unable to get even a little hard.

What was it Kyle had joked about earlier?“Have you told him about what happens if he watches porn, Blayde?” Oh, no. What has he done to me? He flipped back to the main menu and found more porn not featuring him. He watched gorgeous guys in various positions doing all kinds of things to each other from sweet to really filthy and still, nothing was happening. Oh, good gods, I’m impotent! I’ll kill him. I truly will kill him!

He sank slowly down onto the sofa, his eyes glazed over. Why had this happened? How could Blayde do something like this to him? He turned the movies off and retracted the screen. Sitting on the sofa, stunned and miserable, he waited for Blayde to return.

* * * * Blayde opened the door and walked into the darkened living room. When he’d left that morning, he’d had no idea it would take them so long to locate a secure place to hide Ryan. They finally found a storage compartment, not huge, but big enough to house Ryan for a few hours while they made their way to the prison planet and dropped off their charges. It was imperative the other men think he was dead and his body disposed of in space, so no trace of him could be seen anywhere on board once they made their claims. They pulled in a mattress for him to sleep on, along with some other improvements and made sure it was totally secured and defensible before they were satisfied. Then they had to get Lucas and Nikolai on board and situated, and finally, of course, the other prisoners.