Otherworldly

by C F Rabbiosi

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “It is like…flashes of color. Beauty. And immense suffering.”

  Swallowing hard, my mind manufactures every awful fate imaginable. I dare to ask, “What is done to her?”

  “To her?” he chuckles. “The male is the one to suffer.”

  “Why, what happens to—" Oh. “Was that a joke? Do Koridons joke?” It’s off-putting, like Mr. Darcy putting a frog down Ms. Bennett’s bodice. “I thought you were going to tell me something horrible.”

  “No Koridon female would allow a male to do something horrible to her,” he mimics my high tone. “They are as strong as we are.”

  He hasn’t answered any of my questions, and none of it justifies the unharnessed glee of moments ago.

  He slows to a stop and pushes me to the ground near a stream of flowing water. My mouth rejoices as I suck in the reflective blue cupped in my hands.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as he frees his long black hair from its ties.

  He sips the fresh water then sits back on his knees. “Far enough away that Kassien cannot follow us easily when he regains his strength.” He drags me to my back so that I lay in front of him. His silvery eyes shadow with that strange desire I’ve seen stir there before. Touching a line down the middle of my breasts and down my stomach, he shudders and his shoulders jerk. Like Kassien, he seems so enamored, his feral glint settling over my vulnerable skin.

  “What was Kassien planning for me?”

  “I want to explore your body.” He yanks the brown leather upward to ride around my waist and rests a hand over my exposed mound. I shouldn’t have expected him to answer. His tongue swipes over his lips and the fire that consumes him scares me in its inevitability. Is it every Koridon that smolders with such paralyzing desire that they become hypnotizing to their prey? Kassien, please come for me soon. He was injured pretty badly, but the warrior within will not allow him to stay down for long.

  “What is it that’s so fascinating about this body?” What sexual prowess can I draw from myself? Something inside him reaches for me, ethereal fingers that dip inside and taste my soul.

  “I am only drawn to it because of what it promises me.” He bends down and the tip of his nose makes the inside of my thigh quiver. He breathes in my golden skin. “Our women are beautiful and I can see this. But you…” He drifts up and flicks his long tongue over the pink nub embedded under my sparse hair. I swallow my gasp because of his; he inhales roughly and his hands shake as they don’t know where to touch or what to do.

  “Have you ever done that to your woman?” I ask as I fill with unwanted fiery longing.

  A smile creeps at his lips. “Of course not. She would hit me.”

  “I should hit you.” His face snaps up, painted with a level of cruelty beyond imagination. He warns, but I refuse to let myself care. “And what will she do when you throw her aside to marry a human woman?” If these males don’t end up killing me, their mates will. “Why weren’t any of the other women you loved to death valuable?”

  “I’ll tell you…Granted you do everything I ask.” He can’t look away from the place he is so drawn to. “How did that feel?”

  “When you—?”

  He bends down, his penetrating eyes holding mine hostage, and extends his tongue an inch from the place he licked before. I spark beneath his suggestion.

  “I—”

  “You smell even better, now. How can that be?” He places a palm on his forehead. “Putting my tongue here takes me to an edge I cannot resist treading.”

  “You aren’t as attracted to your females because they are meant for fighting, Kassien told me. Beauty and sexual chemicals have been lost to them to make room for muscle and testosterone.”

  “We reproduce dutifully. But this…” He pops my breasts out and brushes his fingertips down my nipples. “You are something else. Like animals who are driven to reproduce because they are too mindless to do it without the enticement.”

  “So you must hate what I’m doing to you.” Caressing that part inside of him that has been suppressed, I draw him like an animal, wild to my scent. He’s more animal than the perception he has of me, but we have something in common. We have never been allowed to feel our entire lives. They tried to keep it out of our society, but they failed to keep it out of me. So many stories of how people love, free and madly, painfully and sometimes to death…It all bled from the pages and stained me.

  “It is against our laws to mate a human. Some say it is to protect them, but if I lost myself in a bitch, I would kill her, too. To destroy the shame by destroying her. To make sure she can never tell anyone what I had become.”

  More unfeeling threats. Aggression to buck against the weakness he feels. “Chemistry. Science. Is it nothing more? Doesn’t love exist? Maybe the real reason Koridons unleash upon us is because with us, they’re allowed to.”

  “We have extreme loyalty. We honor each other.”

  “Well, life should be experienced with love bursting out of the heart and bliss taken from every moment possible.”

  “But you don’t get a life at all, little one.” His grasp snaps around my sore chin. “Because a supreme race has overtaken your pathetic one.” Crawling on top of me, his voice touches my lips like an icy breeze. “Because we do not waste time on love or satisfaction every moment possible.”

  “You could now.” My head falls to the side and I watch the leaves dance next to the twinkling water that streams around moss covered rocks. “Something’s wrong with both our worlds, Brekter.” I turn back, and before he can say another ugly thing, I lift up to let him feel my lips.

  16

  ~Calypso~

  A low rumbling vibrates from Brekter’s throat as I explore his satiny mouth. If I have any chance of surviving, I have to make him see! Kassien melted into my kiss, a hidden treasure and only one of many I have to offer. I am not just an animal to be abused. My fingers trail down his cheek and I reach deep to transfer love and passion from my lips to his.

  He pulls me from the ground and lays me across a huge tree stump. He’s surprisingly gentle but I fear him more than ever. He spreads my legs and kneels between them. Lowering his mouth, my blood races and I pulse.

  He burns with fantasies, just as I do. Has he done this in his mind many times over? Has he thought about every forbidden position and every taboo act that could be performed on a woman if she were caught alone?

  He nudges my clitoris with his large, glistening tongue. When I tense, he glances up, and whatever he sees in my expression encourages him to lick again and again in small, quick movements. It’s torture, because I’ve never felt anything so pleasurable before. He twists a hand around his hardness, up and down as he laves my entire sex, his tongue dancing over places that shoot pure excitement through my spine. I should be afraid; what’s wrong with me? I don’t want to feel this way! If he becomes fond of me, it will mean more protection against this new world I’ve been thrust into. I’ll be ashamed of these feelings later, but right now, I mustn’t shut down on him. He’s starving, and I need to be special to him. It might save me later.

  He moves my hips to the edge of the sawed-off trunk and, though I should be afraid of him trying to enter me, only wicked delight reigns. He sucks the tip of my breast into his mouth and his hardness hovers at my entrance. He laps at the nipple and roughly draws it across his tongue, making my hips move instinctively to find stimulation. The rolling of his tongue, the pressure almost painful, he’s casting a spell that makes me crave a soothing of the ache his crown pushes to caress.

  He moves back down, hitting his knees hard in the earth, and grabs the back of my thighs. With a hard jolt, he yanks me into his his face, his large tongue deeply submerged inside my sex.

  My body trembles. His fingers dig into my hips and with my knees wrapped around his neck, he slams his long tongue inside me, over and over, with strength only a Koridon has. An impassioned utterance escapes my lips, and with every filling thrust, I am clawing out of my skin.
It doesn’t hurt. Heat rushes from his relentless stimulation and engulfs my entire body. He continues to jam inside savagely, moving with slick propulsions, and my back rubs against the rough wood as I arch and writhe. Kassien is forgotten as my body betrays me in ways I’ve never felt.

  With a desperate groan, the Koridon jumps to his feet and my legs drop. I’m breathless as he strokes himself over me, a strange but safe connection as his quicksilver pools of desire fixate upon me. I rush with inhibition and beauty and like that I have caused him to be in this state. He buckles with one last massaging hold, and pearly liquid spills onto my chest. He rests one hand on the stump and his chest heaves. I drag my fingertips through his essence as it drips from my breasts and lick the little drops that have splashed up to flavor my lips.

  My nerves raw at every point below my waist, I sit and touch Brekter’s shining locks. What he encouraged to come to life in me puts this violent, merciless male in a different light. He showed restraint and passion, but—

  It was still completely wrong. Paling in comparison to Kassien’s warmth and genuine affection, I feel utterly used. There was no point in fighting Brekter, true, but enjoying it while Kassien still lies in the dirt, bleeding after fighting for me…Oh no. What kind of person am I? Bruised and broken, a prince who tried to save me has been betrayed, but I should be more upset about betraying myself.

  Brekter hits my hand away and straightens his back. “Get your clothing in place.” He puts himself back into sorts and, when I sit there, frozen, he yanks the corset over my chest. My stomach roils at his harshness and I fumble behind to tighten the strings. “Clean yourself.” He drags me to the water and, cupping it in my palms, I wash the evidence of the Koridon’s lust from my skin. He paces the perimeter and peers through the heavy tree cover.

  As I follow him, his silence is so profound that all the sounds of the forest echo painfully into my ears, so full of shame and confusion the mossy trees and hanging vines all blur past. I blink hard and focus in on the Koridon’s back. I hope we aren’t returning to their grounded aircraft where two females will now have a vendetta against me.

  “Tell me why, Brekter.” I finally get out, just to trip over a fallen branch.

  He stops dead in his tracks as I recover flawlessly and walk around to his front. He presses his lips together and his fists tighten. “What makes a little animal think she may ask anything of her master?”

  “I am less animal than you.”

  Chin down, he peers up through long lashes. His jaw ticks and he attacks. My head smacks into the ground and his weight crushes me, my wrists pinned in the dirt. “My little bitch believes she is superior.”

  “Animals only live to hunt, to fight and reproduce; they do not love. They don’t sing, dance or laugh. They don’t make love.” Behind his stone-cold expression, weakness flickers. From deep in my throat, a melody vibrates, the prettiest one I know: Silent Night, a song from the old days that my mother taught me.

  He slaps the notes from my mouth. “Like a bird, you babble on about nothing and sing. Animal.”

  “You’re not able to hear the beauty in it, or see it in anything. Animal.”

  “I think I might cut those singing lips off.” He pulls a dagger from its holder at his side and snaps the tip into my bottom lip.

  The silver gleams menacingly and I flinch as it digs in. “Why do you use such primitive weapons?”

  He pulls it away and shakes his head with amusement. “No need to waste precious energy on such weak beings.” He grabs the nape of my neck and wrenches my head up. The tip of the blade obscures my sight on one side. “Do not underestimate what I can do to your face with this primitive weapon.”

  “And after you carve me up, will you still pleasure yourself as you make my body climax on your tongue?” I flash my arctic blues wide open, challenging him to do what he will.

  He bites toward my face. “I absolutely will. In many ways, and for as long as I wish.” He stands up and, still holding my wrists, throws me onto my stomach. He slides my leather bottoms down and a hard hit lands on the soft globes of my backside. The sting ripples out like rain drops on the lake when the sky cried upon Kassien and I.

  “Is this not how your bad children are punished?” His next smack cracks through the wilderness. “Mmm!” I scream through closed lips. The pain registers, but it doesn’t bother me. It silences the shrieks deep inside my hollow blackness and leaves them without a voice. For a time. Just like the cuts into my flesh back in the village. He hits again and again, and I tense from his immense strength. The searing pain bends into pleasure as I force my screams back. I’m used to keeping everything that hurts inside, but each sting of his hand makes my heart race and a warm sensation to spread through my body. He runs his fingers down the furiously blushing skin of my backside and then spreads my legs. He touches the place in between and his breath stops. I flip around and put my foot into his chest, my cheeks red with shame.

  He slides his shining forefinger and thumb together. “You have enjoyed the pain I gave you.” He examines the thin slashes along my thigh.

  “What are you going to do?” I crawl backward and move to my feet but he brings me against him with the crook of his elbow. The top of my head hardly reaches his chest and he lifts me, my toes sweeping the ground. “Stop,” I croak out, trying to squeeze in air. My weight pulls down against his hold and a high-pitched static rings in my ears, tiny dots tunneling my vision.

  He lets go and sighs. “You are so entertaining.” My head throbs and I’m still dizzy but force myself to stand anyway.

  “So are you,” I say between breaths.

  A sardonic chuckle. “I want to stay out here with you all night.” He rushes to me and yanks my chin up. “I want to… touch you in every place. Explore you with my tongue for hours.”

  My back burns in response, the scraping against the tree stump fresh in my memory.

  “I want to feel every place inside you.” He grips my jaw and my lips fall open. “Each different opening into your body is a new form of heaven. I want your screams, your pleased utterances as I brace you against me, my entire shaft swallowed by your body. My sack flush against you. I want to take turns there,” he grips one of my sore cheeks, “and in here. Then, I want to finish with my seed rushing inside you and bathing your insides. Make a child in you.”

  “But you can’t—” Could I become pregnant by one of these things? No. I’ve read enough biology to know that two completely different species cannot mate. “Kassien will kill you if you do any of that to me.”

  His head cocks back ever so slightly. “Why do you think Kassien feels any different about you than I? He is dangerous, so don’t wish for him.”

  “He is your prince.”

  “And what if I was?”

  He acts as though marrying me, a human woman, will help him become the ruler of his people, but it has to be just the opposite. What are they not telling me?

  “Are you going to keep me out here with you tonight?” I ask.

  “Do you think that is why your kind is found out here in mangled glory? Because a member of our master race has spent an entire night with her, doing everything I want to do to you now?”

  The thought chills me. Ravaged by one of these oversized monsters for hours and without restraint…maybe that’s exactly what happens. Kassien was careful not break bones with his incredible strength or sink into me like a sword through the torso, but if they had no care for her to live…

  Brekter shoves my face away from him. “If you are to be bonded to me, I cannot enter you with this.” He grabs his cock and continues. “That must be saved for the wedding ceremony.”

  17

  ~Calypso~

  “The ceremony?” Kassien had planned to bed me in front of all of the Koridons? “Why would you do that?” I ask Brekter. He hoists me into his arms and continues on our path, but I struggle out of his hold. “I will walk!”

  He swipes toward me and I jump back. “It is a natural thing to
do. It is meant to be a christening for all to enjoy.”

  “Sex in front of anyone in my culture would be obscene.” I suppose their sexual natures are different from ours. We are taught that people of the past had a tendency to take the act as far as it would go, as depraved as possible to create an intense high. But the more they dived in, experienced and relished it, the more stimulation they needed to keep that level of arousal. I understand why it has been kept modest in our society, I do. We know our capacity for delicious sex but choose to repress it. The Koridons do not know their capacity because those feelings have been shut off over time to focus on survival.

  “And the woman is always ripe.” Brekter’s towering form inches toward me, but I’m lost in thought.

  “Ripe? Oh, you mean to be impregnated,” I say as he clutches my arms at my sides. “How do you know when she’s able to conceive?”

  “We know.” He lifts me up two feet and we’re face to face. “And I will know when you are.” I swallow a ball of dread. “I can only imagine what I will do then, when your body begs for me more than it does even now.”

  “Is that what Kassien wants to do to me?”

  “Yes,” he offers.

  “Then I want it to be him.”

  He jars me, my neck catching the strain, and snarls. “Your prince is weak, little animal. He will not live long enough to mate you. He might be dead already, the way I left him.” He throws me over his shoulder and walks on, his feet crunching upon the twigs. Bright moonlight cracks through the heavy tree cover and, as he speeds off, it amazes me that he can see the path. He is incredibly strong, but even he couldn’t barrel through a big rock or large fallen tree.

  “Brekter, how?”

  “Hmm,” he grunts and hits a large branch out of the way. It splinters as we pass.

  “Why do you think it’s even possible to breed me? How can a human and a Koridon produce a baby?”