Otherworldly

by C F Rabbiosi

  He does not understand either, but after I licked and stimulated him, he must be confused as to how Brekter came of this knowledge.

  “I did not climax.”

  He shakes his head, the statement nonsensical to him, and my cheeks sear with heat. “He did it to you, Calypso, to make you favor him. He turns your heart against me.”

  The shame he dripped with afterward would suggest something else. The way he stood over me and cried out in passion as he painted my body with the liquid pearls of his release…it meant something I am missing. “I cannot say why he did it, but this I can: he has not touched anything as deeply as you.”

  21

  ~Kassien~

  He hasn’t touched anything as deeply as you. Her words do not comfort me. Brekter had his chance to claim her, impregnate her even, and instead he tasted her in the places she would squirm from the most. Places I regrettably never considered placing my tongue. There was nothing she could have done, and still I want her to suffer. I can only imagine what he made her feel.Did she let herself be intensely pleasured by him, succumb to him? She should have fought; if not physically, fought to deny him internally.

  I am going to have to kill him.

  She is already scared, taken from her village by a villainous man and forced to submit to him, then into the arms of the most terrifying creature she had ever heard of. So why do I wish to bend her over and squeeze life from her throat while I force her to take my abuse from behind? The quick to the fight savage in me longs to chain her up and take everything from her, roughly, slowly, then roughly once more. But the heart she has born to life in me yearns to scrape and beg at her feet to choose me and not him. Choose me, forever.

  Utter turmoil twists my insides into balls of angst, and the ecstasy she sent pulsing through me has been eaten alive. By something so gut-wrenching, I would like to see the end of my sword sunk through it to end the torment. I grab her throat. She hits my choking grip away and I peel her off of my lap, her defiance angling my decision toward completely dominating her.

  “Kassien, wait. What have I done?” She backs away, half scared, half not caring through her anger. I storm toward her, unable to let her go as she would demand. She doesn’t run.

  “Nothing!” I roar. “Everything!” I throw her onto the cold floor beside the bath. She hits hard and the slap of her body along with the groan she swallows ignites my anger, my pain, and it all confuses me. I bend down to her ear. “I hurt things, Calypso. It is my nature.”

  She snaps her teeth toward my whisper. “You aren’t going to hurt me. What you’re doing is running from me.”

  Threading the hair at the top of her head in my fingers, I yank her neck back to look at me. “You make no sense, human.” I take a handful of her luscious backside and squeeze. “Trust me when I tell you that I do want to hurt you. So very badly.”

  “Because I’ve felt Brekter’s tongue? His forced desire?” My grip into her scalp intensifies and the breath my lungs fight to take in refuses to ease the burning. What is wrong with me? What has she done to me? My blood has turned to rage.

  Her voice does not waver though tears slip past it as her neck strains. “You are feeling jealousy, Kassien, that is all. Release me.”

  “I cannot,” come the words before the realization sinks in. I know what she speaks of because I feel it torrenting through my veins. I hit the hard surface of the bath instead of her. “Will you deny that you were enticed by Brekter?”

  “No!” she growls. “I will never lie to you, and he will likely tell you anyway, so you should know the truth from me. I was incredibly uncomfortable, but my body betrayed me and enjoyed what it should not have.”

  With a rage-filled yell, my fist flies into the tub again. She should have lied. My hand still balled into her scalp, I take her face to the floor. She lets out a frustrated groan and opens her legs.

  “Yes,” she hisses. “Take what’s yours. Take what no man has ever truly had! Because I did not give it!” Her voice, low and heady, bewitches the twisting balls of anguish in my gut to tear out. I am flayed open and will die if I do not take her now. “But I will give it to you,” she cries. “I’m offering my body and soul to you. Only you.”

  My fingers digging into the small of her back, I lift my engorged erection. I sink my tip at the verge of her promise, and a moment of clarity seizes me. This is not the way. How can I do this to her? I draw myself back against the pain of losing her tender feel, and it drips with her desire.

  With a steady thrust, I stab through her tight barrier. Chills engulf my entire body.

  “Kassien!” Efafelty’s voice breaks through my trance, and I am torn away from her.

  Shoving fury down, I stand in front of my woman, who curls up to cover herself. “Leave us, Efaelty.”

  My Koridon mate shakes her head, a new expression splashed across the face I’ve never seen bear emotion before. “At least give her the honor you would a true princess, Kassien.” She holds her head high, her tall, lean body postured as a savage high-born should, with strength and utter composure. But her lip trembles and her silvery eyes gleam a new story. She is right. How dare I swear to claim this human girl in proper Koridon tradition and then defile her now?

  “Leave us,” I say again, but this time it holds a warning.

  “Not until you lock her away for the night.” Efaelty’s gaze flickers as she fixes it upon me. Her voice as steely as her fists, she orders, “Lock her away for the night, Kassien.”

  “Come,” I relent and take Calypso in my arms. Efaelty follows behind, a stern presence ensuring I safely tuck her away in her protected quarter.

  I place her on the bed and kneel before her. “Are you hurt, Calypso?” I kiss the back of her hand and silently beg for her forgiveness. I have betrayed her. Unable to control the onslaught of love, jealousy and rage, I have become the very thing she always thought me to be. Tearfully, she told me to take her, but only because she was being forced to prove her loyalty. She shouldn’t have had to do that. She did nothing wrong.

  I hate that the others may be right after all. It should not be me who binds her tomorrow.

  The softest stroke along my scalp makes me jump albeit hardly noticeably. She plants a kiss upon my head, and I am utterly hollowed.

  ***

  “Senton lev dra…think you are doing with her, Kassien?” Efaelty stands against the closed door of our sleep chambers.

  “Please understand, my friend.”

  Her face tightens and I know exactly at which word. But the Efaelty I know would never have shown her annoyance at this. We are friends; this is not strange territory. “I do understand what you are trying to do, but something is not right.” Regal in speech and movement, I have always thought her to be beautiful. Does she know that?

  I think to bring her into my arms, but I hesitate. “I still care for you. We have ruled the best we can.” She smells like my strong female with a hint of flowers from home. She came to me from the ruling sector on the shore of the Pacific and has always smelled the same. Specializing in this planet’s growth capabilities, she oversees operations of the fruit and vegetable farms ran by the humans in the warm climate to the west. “Trust me,” I tell her, though I do not trust myself anymore.

  She dips her head forward and wrings her hands. “I watched you in there before intervening. You acted so strangely. I have never seen you so…animalistic. What is it you are hiding?”

  I was so possessed by the moment that she watched us, heard us, and I did not sense her presence. “We are in crisis here, Efaelty. Order is slipping, our numbers are so low, having not a live birth in over ten years. I must create life with her.”

  “And you want to.” She pulls away and sniffs the air. “You have a different scent, too. The girl changes you.” Her hand drifts below my waist. “I think she changes us all.”

  “Yes. I want to. But I am also right.”

  “Perhaps.” Her shoulders lift and a glow touches her cheeks. “I have never seen you
with such sexual longing before. The state you were in, it frightened me, and then it—” Her breath shudders. “Then it stabbed me. Here.” She brings my palm to her chest. “I have always put our survival first. It is what we were taught, always. But desire for another, I have never let it past the gentle nudge in my mind at the sight of you.”

  “We do not waste time on it.”

  Her shoulder twitches and she unlatches the clothing from her body. It falls to the floor and she side-glances nervously. “Perhaps it isn’t a waste of time.”

  Her female form, more muscular and less curved than Calypso’s, still bears an obvious beauty, but I cannot feel it. “What is your wish, my mate?”

  “You were shaking.” She moves wary hands over her small breasts. “What must I do to make you want me like that?”

  “You are special to me because of your stable and unemotional nature. You will always be special to me and will remain of highest rank in this household.”

  She rolls her lips in and her brows move together. “One last night, then.”

  “You do not have to do this,” I say softly.

  “I want to try!” Her composure snaps, and as soon as the words burst out, she looks different, a wildness washing over her.

  “Efaelty, please do not do this.”

  “I have felt that way.” She slides a hand across her face. “I have felt a stirring upon seeing you. That moment after Dreyna’s clan attacked and tried to steal your rule. You killed her in the last of the battle, and as I watched you pull your sword from her chest, dripping, I wished to fly on top of you and push you into my body right there next to her twitching body.”

  Standing before a mate I do not know, I blink alluringly up at her. Perhaps we are changing because of Calypso’s presence or could it be that our inability to sustain our species has boosted our mating instincts?

  “We’re valued for our skill and strength. I don’t know how to be like—”

  I bring her into my chest and squeeze hard, knowing she can take it. “You do not have to be like her.”

  “I cannot make you a child,” she sobs. “I always thought myself a good ruler and expert grower, but I have failed at this.”

  “We all have.” I hold her away to grasp her attention. “Help me save our race. We must protect her.”

  She nods, blinking a tear down her cheek. “You are still ruling prince and my lord. I will do everything you ask of me.”

  I hold her throughout the night, my special, amazing Efaelty.

  22

  ~Calypso~

  I turn over and grimace, the ache in my body seizing me awake. He hurt me a lot. The aggression he is capable of, can I handle it? He was crazed with jealousy, as though feeling it for the first time exposed an array of raw nerves. The more I think about Kassien’s violent treatment of me upon sharing the intimate abuse between Brekter and I, the more my anger rises.

  In the moment he spiraled, I found myself lost in him and drowning, too. I could sense his pain and anger and I wanted to ease it and show him my loyalty. I wanted him to force himself inside me until I screamed and broke in half. He would have if Efaelty hadn’t stopped him. A thrilling sensation trickles down my spine remembering the feel of him finally filling me to bursting in that one, long stroke. But something happens when a Koridon uses a woman to completion; I’ve seen the violent marks upon the bodies of the dead as they lost control and tore them apart.

  Something very depraved lives inside me, an unnatural entity. I can’t stop myself from wanting to take and take more, to be slaughtered by his love. I want him to dive inside this numb form and submerge holding my beating heart. No one in my village would understand, but I’ve always been an outcast, a damaged piece of flesh, so it is no wonder I am also a sexual deviant.

  I have a strong desire to be Kassien’s mate, but should I tell him that I am a product of mutation and don’t believe I can breed? That I may only live another three years? If I did produce healthy children for him, perhaps I could change things enough to count for Momma and the others, but I’ve been told that my womb is barren.

  Gray light cracks through the dawn sky, the glass-like walls of my room providing the perfect distraction from the fact that I will be bedded by a beautiful monster today and bound to him.

  Mossy boulders lead down the path into the dense forest and encroach up the tree bark ascending to the multi-colored leaves swaying in the morning breeze. My insides sear as I remember the way Efaelty burst in upon Kassien driving into me from behind. I feared for my life in that moment, but she protected me.

  She really is a divine creature. And suddenly she appears. “Come, girl.” Efaelty folds the covers off me. “We need to ready you for your—” She moves her head to the side.

  “Union?” I offer, sounding uneasy.

  With a curt nod, she beckons me to follow. In my night garb, I stay close to her back as we move through the ship, one light-activated sliding door after another, worried one of these Koridon enemies will snatch me. I remind myself to be fearless, the worthy mother of a new people. What if I am making history right now, in my short life, walking toward the union with an alien species? Then I am inconsequential, and our union means everything.

  We come to another room with the strange liquid-like walls that reflect the outside, and she instructs me to sit upon a clear chair in the middle. I watch her move as she gathers a gown and sets different items out on a clear table that ascends from the floor. She’s graceful like a dance, except I imagine her more sleek and predatory like Rudyard Kipling’s Bagheera.

  She drags a comb through my snarls and, as she works, I long to ask her things. How are you feeling about this? What is Kassien truly like? But as she runs a purple lighted object over my front and back and then rubs in a sweet-smelling substance, I cannot bring myself to speak. She doesn’t ask me anything, either, though she too must be burning with questions.

  Kassien’s mate lifts my arms and slips a shimmering, sapphire colored dress over my head. It melds over my curves like soft clouds.

  She barely lifts her gaze to my finished form before it darts away again. “I will come for you shortly.” As she turns to leave, I take her hand.

  “Thank you,” I say. “And…I’m sorry.”

  “I do not blame you.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  She finally looks at me. “I cannot. He is my prince.”

  “Will that stop the others from killing me the first chance they get?”

  “He and I will protect you. You will be untouchable once you conceive a Koridon child.”

  Exactly as I feared. This may all be for nothing if what I’m hoping to do depends on my body doing what it was cursed against. “Efaelty, my womb is barren. Look at me. I was born wrong.”

  Her large, exotic quicksilvers narrow at me. “Born wrong?”

  “I have defective genes…do you know what genes are?”

  “Of course. In our language, they are called crektons.” If my question was insulting, she doesn’t show her annoyance.

  My words shaky, I am compelled to reveal my fear. “Sometimes, because of the nuclear chemicals back during the war, a child is born with a certain genetic mutation. My mother and father carried the defective gene and passed it to me. My condition is rare but well documented. We don’t get pregnant and—” tears blur over as I force out, “I will die very soon.”

  She quickly moves to my back before I can make out her strange expression and begins twisting and pulling my hair into a braid. “Perhaps we can help with that,” she says as she yanks at my locks. “It may be that you need a Koridon male to bathe you in his powerful seed in order to conceive.” I can’t imagine how it would matter if a Koridon bred me; my barren womb wouldn’t care how powerful or abundant the sperm.

  “We also died very quickly,” she says, “when we first arrived here. Your people were providing us with certain foods and vaccines to acclimate us to the bacteria and viruses our immune systems would encounter.”

>   I spin around, ripping the strands from her fingers. My people had tried to help them? They must have welcomed the new race, trying to ensure peaceful relations. “Why then? Why did you turn on them when they tried to help you?”

  She shakes her head slightly and turns her back. “It’s true, the humans of the past had welcomed our race when we reached out to them. We were weak, not only from the conditions of our dying planet, but generation after generation had been born upon the ships when we took to the stars. For so long, we spread out and followed every star that had an outlying planet as close to it as this one is. Life bearing temperatures.”

  When they found us here, they had to take Earth or die, I suppose. I understand, but it still hurts.

  “When we made contact with Earth, my race was in no condition to fight. We appealed to the humans’ hearts and begged for help. And they did. At first.” Darkness touches her words. “Our strength grew as we hovered in our crafts, eating the fruits, meats and vegetables of your planet until finally we were asked to come down and meet with the most powerful leaders on every continent. That’s when they attacked and unleashed their bombs upon our ships in perfect sequence.”

  “You’re saying we caused the end of the world?” No intelligent species would orchestrate a nuclear attack that would kill a threat but also billions of their own.

  “Yes. They decided to eliminate the Koridons instead of welcoming them. A very powerful president of the Americas had convinced the United Nations to attack and eliminate our alliance. The ships at all the capitols were bombed, but they didn’t know our space crafts were powered by a type of nuclear fusion that set off explosions a thousand times more powerful than your most destructive of nuclear weapons.”

  My mouth drops open. Kassien got so angry when I said his people had attacked and killed mine. Closing my eyes, I allow the truth and the cries of each tragic soul lost so senselessly to course sorrow through me. Tearfully, I say, “So only far reaching places, places that were lucky, survived.”