We had arrived.
Chapter Eleven
We’d only spent about an hour in the car, but as I climbed out, I felt as though I’d been cramped up in the seat for hours. Every muscle was tight, tension bunched in my neck and shoulders.
Agent Calicun strode on ahead. “This way, please.”
He used another fingerprint scanner to open a door leading onto a white-walled corridor. We reached a reception area, a woman sitting behind the desk. She clearly knew the agent, and nodded and smiled, her gaze flicking briefly, nervously even, to us as we followed.
We passed several rooms with large glass windows, the interiors only partially hidden by half-open vertical blinds. Men and women in white coats worked at benches holding test tubes and Bunsen burners, huge electron microscopes, computers, and other items of equipment I couldn’t name. I had no idea what the people in white coats were doing behind the glass, but they gave the impression of being busy and important.
We kept walking, passing a number of other identical rooms until we reached a set of elevator doors.
“The Trad is being kept down in the lowest level,” Calicun told us.
He used his thumb to work the scanner that opened the elevator doors, and we all stepped inside. I glanced up at Aleandro beside me, and he gave me what I guessed was supposed to be a reassuring smile. The expression appeared forced, however, and didn’t reach his eyes. Somehow, this made me feel better. It was good to know I wasn’t the only one anxious about coming face to face with an aggressive alien race. Mike pressed in on my other side, his jaw rigid, and Casey was behind me. I was happy they wanted to protect me, but at the same time I wanted the people who worked here to judge me on my own merit, not just because I was a woman—something that had suddenly become not only rare but also a precious commodity.
The doors opened, and we followed Calicun out. He took us through another set of doors barred by electric locks. Security was certainly high here, though I figured that was to be expected.
My pulse rate picked up as we got closer to where several people, both male and female, in white coats stood facing each other in the corridor. They were deep in conversation but noticed our approach and fell quiet.
“Agent Calicun,” one of the older female scientists fixed her sights on our companion. “I assume this is the team from the Las Vegas Observatory.”
Calicun nodded. “That’s right.”
He introduced each of us and then gestured to the woman in the white coat. “This is Julia Bishop, one of the lead scientists trying to find out more about the Trads.”
We each shook hands.
“Thanks for coming,” Julia said. “This is our Trad.”
We’d came to a halt in front of a holding cell. The wall we looked onto was another glass panel, but I had the feeling the person inside couldn’t see through it from his side. He was most likely only greeted with his own image. He sat on a cot, facing away from us, so I was only able to see the back of a head of dark hair and a set of broad shoulders and a lean back. Twin dimples marked the base of his spine, and below was the curve of a beautifully rounded, peachy ass.
The Trad.
As though he had sensed us standing there, he got to his feet and slowly turned around.
I sucked in a breath, feeling like I’d been punched in the chest.
Horrifyingly familiar dark-brown eyes stared back at me from behind the solid Perspex screen.
Dean Lambert was completely naked, and I couldn’t help my heart racing at the sight of him. God, he was beautiful, neither too muscular, nor too skinny. His abs were sculpted, his pectorals perfect squares. He was a work of art.
The guys had recognized him, too.
Mike balled his fists. “That fucking asshole.”
Mike had never liked Dean, and it proved to be on good grounds. At least now he had a definite reason to hate the other man. I’d thought he was just being jealous at first, but he’d proven himself a decent judge of character—better than me, it would seem.
The memory of the time I’d spent in the store closet flashed into my head, and incredibly a tingling rush of heat spread between my thighs. He wasn’t human. I had to remember that. He was a Trad, and if I’d gone much further with him, if we hadn’t been interrupted by the arrival of the civilians, I would have been taken as well as Tara. What would I be doing now if I had? Would I be some baby-making machine? Did the Trads each have their own woman, or were females so rare on Tradrych that the women were just being passed around?
Dean’s hugely erect cock jutted out from a thatch of dark curls, and I swallowed, hard. Jesus Christ, that thing was huge—almost as thick as my wrist. I was sure it was even bigger than when we’d been together. It would have felt incredible thrusting inside me. If all the Trads were built that way, it was no wonder women were throwing themselves at them. Of course, those same women didn’t know that by having sex with them, they’d also be getting a one-way ticket to a planet filled with alien rapists.
As I stared, Dean reached to his cock and circled his fist around its girth. I didn’t know if he could even see me through the window, but I felt as though he knew I was there. A slow smile quirked one corner of his lips as he ran his hand from the perfectly domed tip, down to the thick root and back up again. Even from this distance, I could see the fat veins snaking up his length. My pussy clenched at the sight, my nipples growing hard beneath my shirt.
“Is he cooperating?” I managed to ask, though I hadn’t yet torn my gaze off Dean, if that was even his name.
“As much as we can expect,” the scientist said.
I forced my gaze away from the beautiful, sexy spectacle of the Trad. “What have we learned so far?”
“Their DNA is identical to ours.”
My mouth gaped. “But that’s impossible.”
She shrugged. “Impossible for us, maybe, but apparently not for them. We believe their ability to mimic us goes down to a cellular level.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Of course, there’s one area that we’ve struggled to get a sample of.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Oh?”
Julia’s cheeks pinked up. “Yes. Blood, saliva, skin, urine, even feces are simple enough to get hold of, but convincing him to give us a sperm sample hasn’t been so easy.”
Realization dawned. “Oh, I see.”
Mike’s expression hardened, his jaw tightening. “Knock the son of a bitch unconscious and cut his fucking balls off. That should be enough to get a sample.”
The scientist cleared her throat. “Unfortunately, there are other things we need to learn, such as speed of ejaculation, and if there are any unusual...processes that happen when climax takes place. The more we can learn the better when it comes to fighting these aliens, and mutilating them will be a very last resort.”
“So, you need him to orgasm?” I asked.
“Yes. Ideally with some equipment around him so we can record what happens.”
“I see.”
Casey was staring at me. “No, Camille. That is way above your call of duty.”
I hated that he’d read what I was thinking. “It’s for the cause, Casey. And it isn’t as though I haven’t touched him before. I mean, obviously it’s different now, because I know what he is, but I can handle it.”
Aleandro looked between me, Casey, and Mike, his brow furrowed. “No, tell me you’re not offering to do what I think you are.”
“It’ll just be a little masturbation,” I tried to reassure him. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m going to get emotionally involved in it. It’s just an act to get what we need.”
Mike stepped in. “What if he tries more? What if you get started, and he forces you down and rapes you? Then we’ll lose you forever.”
I thought of how Dean had caught my wrist in the store cupboard, how he’d tried to prevent me from leaving, but I shook my head. “Nothing will happen to me. You’ll be right there, watching. If anything looks like it’s going wrong, you can jump in and help.”
Aleandro shook his head. “Fucking hell, Camille. You want us to watch you jack him off?”
“Stop thinking of this like a man,” I snapped, my tone harsher than I’d intended. “I’m not doing it for my pleasure, or even his. It’s an act that needs doing so we can understand more about how the Trads work.”
Mike fisted his hand into his hair. “I don’t like it either, Camille. I’m going to want to tear the guy’s cock off just seeing you holding it.”
Aleandro gritted his teeth. “Me, too. I can’t do it.”
I rounded on them. “So you’re going to put me at risk, rather than protect me, to save your goddamned pride? I thought more of you than that, Aleandro. I thought more of all of you.”
“We’re not saying we wouldn’t protect you,” Mike said, “only that we’d rather you weren’t the one to have to do it.”
“I’ve got history with him. He and I have already been physical together, though obviously not all the way. It’s easier on me than if we get some other, poor, unsuspecting woman in here to do it. Something like this might traumatize another woman. I’m stronger than that.”
“Camille, you watched your best friend being taken by one of these bastards. You don’t always have to be the strong one, you know?”
“It’s because of what happened to Tara that I’m even more determined to do everything and anything I can to stop it happening to any more women.” It wasn’t a big deal, I was telling myself. Just a hand on skin, that was all. It wasn’t as though I was going to have sex with him, and it wasn’t as though I hadn’t already touched him that way—hell, I’d done even more.
Julia turned to me. “We’ll need to get a few things set up, but if you’re sure you’re willing to do this, we’ll get started right away.”
I sucked in a breath and nodded. “Sure. Let’s get it over and done with.”
I sensed the stares of the men, but I wasn’t going to let them change my mind. I’d sworn that I was going to do everything within my power to help us defeat the Trads, and this was simply one of those things.
The scientist put her wrist to her mouth and spoke into her implanted data chip. “They won’t be long,” she said, turning back to me.
It was going to be weird doing this with an audience. Hell, it was going to be weird full stop. I had no idea what to expect. Would Dean—if that was even his name—respond to me?
“Can he see through the glass?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No, it’s one-way.”
“So he has no idea I’m here?”
“No, he has no way of knowing.”
I pressed my lips together and stared through the glass. Dean still sported his huge erection, his hand casually moving up and down its length, as though he had no intention of reaching the finishing point and was simply passing the time. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew I was there, however. The scientist said he didn’t, but they didn’t yet understand the abilities of the Trads—they’d said so themselves. Maybe they had abilities we hadn’t even considered yet?
Movement came from farther down the corridor. More scientists rolled metal carts filled with equipment—computer monitors, test-tubes, pipettes—and came to a halt outside the holding cell.
“Here.” One of them handed me a set of rubber gloves.
I glanced down at them in my hand. “What are they for?”
He frowned. “You’re not going to want to come into skin-to-skin contact with him. You don’t know what diseases these creatures might be carrying.”
I looked around at all the people and equipment, and the set of extremely unsexy gloves. “This isn’t going to work,” I said with a sigh.
“Good,” Mike jumped in. “That means we can forget all about it.”
“No, I mean I’m not going to be able to make him do what we need when we’re surrounded by people and equipment and if I’m wearing these things.” I dangled the gloves from the tips of my fingers. I directed the question to the scientist who’d given them to me. “Would you be able to orgasm under those circumstances?”
He flushed bright red and stuttered. “Uh, well, I’m not sure...”
“I mean, maybe if you had a glove or rubber fetish, but otherwise I doubt it.” His blush deepened at my words.
“The cameras are fine,” I continued. “People being outside of the Perspex screen are fine, and maybe even some of those electrodes and computers might be okay, but nothing more invasive than that.”
Julia twisted her lips. “That seems risky.”
“I’ve come across this Trad and touched him before. Nothing bad happened. I’m confident he’s safe.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and she shrugged. “Okay. Your choice.”
One of the other scientists unlocked the room with the fingerprint pad outside the door, and several of them—Julia included—hustled into the space. They didn’t speak to Dean as they set up the equipment around him. I thought he might fight them, but instead he stood, placid, as they attached electrodes to his temples and pulse points.
Why wasn’t he yanking them off again? Had he simply given up, or did he know more than we did?
I glanced to where Casey, Mike, and Aleandro waited. They each wore matching expressions, and I knew they weren’t happy with this. But I wasn’t going to allow them to control my actions because they were jealous or thought I was too weak to handle it. If I was one of the guys, they wouldn’t have said a word.
“Everything will be fine,” I told them.
I didn’t know why I felt the need to reassure them when I was the one about to go into a room and be intimate with a known Trad. Sometimes I thought that men might have testicles, but women were really the ones with the balls.
Julia popped her head out of the door. “He’s ready for you.”
My heart thrummed like a trapped bird in my chest, and I swallowed hard to keep hold of my nerves. During the whole time the scientists had been fussing around him, Dean hadn’t lost his erection.
“Here.” She pressed a glass jar into my hand. “We need a sperm sample in there, if you can get it.”
“Right.”
This was going to be weird, no doubt about it. My hand trembled, and I felt lightheaded with nerves. But I forced my legs to move, and as the other scientists left to observe from behind the glass, I stepped into the room with the alien from Tradrych I only knew as Dean Lambert.
“Hello, Camille. It’s good to see you again.”
He didn’t appear to be even remotely surprised to see me, especially considering we were both now on the other side of the country. Had someone told him I’d been brought here, perhaps when he was being transported? The other thing he didn’t appear to be was in any way embarrassed about his current state of undress. He didn’t even fold his arms over his chest or angle his erection away from me. He just stood there, his cock jutting out into the space between us, seemingly unaware he was naked.
Or perhaps he simply didn’t care.
“I can’t say the same for you,” I replied curtly. “I assume the scientists explained what’s about to happen?”
“You need a sample from me—one they haven’t yet been able to take.”
“That’s right.”
A slow smile crossed his handsome face. “And you’re going to be the one who gets it from me.”
I remained calm, refused to let him see how he affected me. “If I can, yes.”
“I thought the normal human mating rituals involved dinner and a movie,” he said, teasing. He tilted his head to one side. “In fact, I’m sure I promised you such a date when we first met.”
“You know that’s never going to happen.”
This was one of the creatures who’d taken Tara, I had to remember that. But I couldn’t stop myself reacting physically to him, my pussy pulsing at the sight of that long, thick cock, and my nipples painfully tight against the inside of my shirt. My lips tingled, and the hairs on my skin prickled and stood to attention. I had no doubt that the the
ories surrounding the pheromones the Trads gave off were correct. I was aroused, and it had nothing to do with the fact I was planning on masturbating him until he ejaculated. In my head, that was a sterile and emotionless act, and yet my body was preparing itself to be ravaged. I was glad to know the others were outside, ready to jump in if anything looked like it was going astray. I imagined how easy it would be for Dean to simply yank down my pants, and spin me around, and penetrate me from behind.
I shook the thought from my head but caught the knowing twinkle in his brown eyes. He knew exactly what effect he was having on me, and I hadn’t even touched him yet.
I cleared my throat. “Let’s get this over and done with, shall we?”
He gave a slow smile. “I hope your hands are warm.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
I stepped forward, focusing my gaze on his cock, but hugely conscious of his proximity. The air between us sparked with tension. He released his hold on his dick, and it bobbed between us. I held the small glass jar in my left hand, knowing I needed to masturbate him with my right, and try to get the sample into the jar. I didn’t want all of this to be for nothing. My breathing grew shallow, and I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his girth. His skin was hot and silky soft, with an iron hardness beneath. He felt just like any other man.
I ran my hand up and down his length, trying not to think about how the others were watching. I didn’t know how that made me feel—half guilty, and half turned on, though those damned pheromones might have been playing a part in that. Or perhaps I was just an exhibitionist and had never realized it before.
Dean smoldered down at me as I masturbated him. “I liked it when you sucked me the last time we were together, Camille. Do you remember that? Your pretty little mouth was wrapped around my dick, so hot and wet.”
Her Resistance: Planet Athion Series (Darkest Skies Book 2) Page 10