by Loki Renard
The door opens, and I dive for cover.
Tarkan
“What the…”
Every locker in the med bay has been ripped open and the contents thrown all over the floor. The place looks as though it has been ransacked. I only left her for a few minutes. I have no idea how anything that wasn’t scythkin could cause so much damage in that time. Several of the cabinets have been yanked off their hinges. She must have put her entire weight on them - and then there are the medical supplies themselves, lying in puddles of shattered bottles, interacting with one another in ways that are certainly not healthy.
I turn the ventilation up to full and look for the girl. She is under the bed, a wild expression in her hunted eyes.
“It’s okay,” I say gently. “I brought you food.”
“I’m not eating your poison, alien,” she hisses. “Let me go.”
“I can’t do that,” I reply gently. “Why don’t you have something to eat and see if you feel better.”
“Why don’t you let me go!” Her voice rises with the recognizable pitches of panic.
“I bought food,” I repeat, feeling faintly stupid for having said something that obvious. I put a tray down on the ground and push it over to her. I can tell she will panic if I get too close to her. She’s like an animal, on edge, waiting for her chance to escape.
It is obvious that in spite of the care I am showing her, she doesn’t see me as a rescuer. She sees me as another captor. She kicks out with her foot, overturning the tray and adding eggs and bacon to the overall mess on the floor. She is surrounded by a chaos of her own making, and getting her out of that corner is not going to be easy without hurting her.
This is not going how I planned. I have long dreamed of having my own human - ever since Reaper found his mate. I have lain awake at night imagining what it would be like to find one. But what I’ve found is broken and feral and so afraid it consumes her.
I find myself second guessing my instincts. The right thing to do would probably be to let her come to me on her own, but I can’t let her sit here amid toxic medicines which are probably even now having a dangerous effect on her.
“Come here,” I say. “You’ve made a mess and it could make you sick.”
“No,” she refuses, baring her teeth to me in a blunt growl.
Ridiculous, that she should try to threaten me, but cornered animals are all the same, no matter the species, no matter the planet, no matter the time.
“If you don’t come out, I will have to get you out, and I know you don’t want me to grab you, so…”
“Touch me and I’ll scream.”
It takes me a second to work out what the threat is supposed to be there. Humans think that their loud mouth noises are frightening, but for a creature such as me, they are nothing but background noise. I was raised in the cries of my enemies, and her shrieking would not cause me any concern at all.
I go down on hands and knees and begin crawling toward her. She panics, as I suspected she would, and starts lashing out uselessly with her blunt, soft body. It is the work of a second to scoop her up, still cursing and struggling. As much as she hates being held, I feel the tension in her muscles instantly start to fade as I press her hard up against my body, retracting the dangerous blades so as not to cut her wriggling form.
The medical bay includes a decontamination chamber. I put her inside it, turn it on, and listen to her wail at the top of her lungs as if she is being murdered, holding the door shut so she doesn’t come bursting back out into the room.
“It won’t hurt you,” I call out. “It’s going to deactivate any filth on your skin, including clothing, and leave you nice and disinfected and safe.”
“DIE!” She screams back.
Being told to die is the first step in the scythkin mating ritual, though it is rarer among humans. Somehow, I don’t think she knows that.
42
I am furious that he grabbed me and shoved me in here, but what can I do? I am helpless against him, just as I was helpless against those who chained me.
The steam clears and the door opens and he is standing there in all his scythkin glory, looking down at me from his great height with an expression of displeasure. It didn’t even do anything. I still have most of my dirt on my legs and arms and chest, though not so much between them for some reason.
“Do not break things,” he says. “If you do, I’ll be forced to punish you.”
“Of course,” I hiss. “You’ll be forced to punish me. Because you’re sick and you’re holding me captive and you want to inflict your will on me.”
“No,” he says quite calmly. “Because you’re going to seriously hurt yourself, and I don’t want that.”
I feel a thrill inside as his burning gaze runs up and down my body. Does he want me too? What would a creature like him even do with a woman like me? Every part of him is sharp and hard. I am sure he would tear me to pieces if he inflicted his lust on me.
“I don’t mind a bad girl,” he purrs. “But bad girls end up sore and sorry.”
Unseen parts of me clench in response. Bad girl. Those two words have some uncanny power.
“I’m not bad,” I say, not sounding like I believe it myself.
He reaches out, a claw underneath my chin making me tip my head back to meet his fierce gaze. “Oh I think you are,” he drawls with a reckless, sharp smile. “I think you can be a very, very bad girl.”
Those same parts clench again. I feel a rush of something like fear, but so much hotter flashing through me - and then I feel faint and quivery all over. I can’t orient myself to this new reality I’ve been rescued into. I don’t believe in heroes, and I don’t believe in being saved. But I guess some captors can be better than others.
He reaches down between my thighs, not touching my sex, but using the space between my legs to pick me up. I am balanced on the fulcrum of his hand, and I can’t help the moan which escapes me as I feel my clit grind against the big wide heel of his palm.
Tarkan’s throaty chuckle tells me he knows what effect he is having on me. He shifts me around, pressing my back against his abdomen, wrapping his hand around my waist and holding me up by the crotch. He carries me from the trashed medical bay into another room, every voluntary movement of my hips making my sex rub on his hand.
“You may climax if you want,” he says. “It might make you feel better, destructive little thing.”
I bite back a moan as he squeezes lightly and puts me down on my knees on a soft bed, keeping me in place in that same position, but letting his fingers drift along my slit. I grunt and bump my hips back, wanting to feel more pleasure, greedy for good sensations.
“That’s right,” he croons gently. “Let me feel that wet little slit. Oh good girl, you are such a good girl showing me how wet you can get.”
His encouragement is lewd, and now the tip of one of his fingers finds my clit and I let out a yowl of surprise followed by a bucking motion of my hips as pure heat shoots through me and makes my nervous system sing with sudden delight.
He’s still going… strumming that wet little bud, keeping my writhing body in place with one massive clawed hand lightly encircling my neck as I jolt my hips forward and back and side to side with uncoordinated fucking motions, screaming and cursing at the top of my lungs, begging for more, gasping for breath.
Multiple peaks have been strummed out of my dirty sex by the time he lets me fall forward onto the bed.
“What the…” I gasp, rolling sideways, drawing my legs up, feeling the pulsing still going on between my thighs. “What did you do to me?”
“I made you orgasm,” he says. "There's no better way to release endorphins in the human female.”
I do feel better, but following the orgasm is a torrent of far less pleasant emotions. I don’t know how to process the extreme good with the extreme bad. I don't know how to feel good. I am hot with shame and drenched with desire and I just want to flee…
“If you tear this room up, we ha
ve a cage,” he says, unaware of the chaos going on inside me. “I don’t want to put you in it, but I will if you…”
He doesn’t have a chance to finish his sentence before I rush for the airlock and start yanking at it as hard as I can. I sense escape just inches past the portal. If I can open it…
“That’s not going to open,” he says, reaching over me to pry my fingers off the door. “We are in deep space, and if it did, your lungs would be sucked out through your nose.”
“Let me go!”
“No,” he says, firmly and gruffly. “You're not going anywhere but the containment zone. I’ve tried to be nice to you, but you keep…”
Again he trails off as I try to dip through his legs. There has to be a way off this ship. Maybe a shuttle. Or an escape pod. Or maybe they left a window open. These are not entirely rational thoughts, but I am not in an entirely rational frame of mind.
“Okay,” he says, swinging me up off my feet yet again. “You’re going into containment, and you’re going to think about calming down and letting me help you while you're in there.”
He puts me down on what looks like a bed, but I hear a SCHWOOP sound which heralds a smooth barrier sliding up around me and forming a perfect impenetrable seal. My hands press against the translucent material and I scream curses, as many as I can remember, but nobody is listening. Tarkan is gone, leaving me to my panic and my impotent rage.
I sit back, breathing heavily, telling myself to stop panicking. If he wanted to hurt me, I’d be hurt by now. I’ve done more than enough to piss him off, and he’s putting up with me. I have no idea why. Scythkin aren’t known for patience or kindness. They’re also not known for rescuing human women.
A minute or two goes by and he is back with more food.
“Now actually eat this this time,” he says. “I know you’re hungry.”
He pushes the food through the barrier somehow. I don’t know quite how it works. I don’t know how anything works here. I want to resist, but it smells so good my mouth starts to water and my stomach to growl and my body demands that I feed it. Slowly, I start to eat, cautiously tasting the food which is comprised of strange flavors I don’t recognize, but which somehow seem familiar in some way.
“This is so good,” I say softly, seconds before I do my best to shove as much of it into my face as possible before it is taken away. If this is a trap, it is a trap I’m going to keep in my stomach.
Tarkan
She eats like I eat, with a ravenous aggression which shows no mercy. I didn’t bother making human food for her again. The last attempt is still smeared all over the medical bay floor. Together we demolish four full Scythkin ration packs, which are barely edible to most human palates, but I imagine she has not been given the chance to be fussy.
By the end of the meal she is visibly, uncomfortably full, but she does not want to stop eating. I feel a rush of rage as I realize that is because she does not know where or when her next meal is coming from. She has been so horribly, viciously maltreated it is written in her every thought and action.
“What’s your name?”
“42.”
“I’m not calling you by a number. One is bad enough.”
“Hey!” A voice in the distance squeals. One is obviously listening in. This is a small ship, just large enough for two Scythkin warriors, certainly not large enough for both of us and our human mates. Women like to spread out and claim territory with an efficiency which rivals the Scythkin Empire. I have found strands of One’s hair in places hair should never be.
“That’s the last thing I was called,” she says, ignoring One’s outburst. “Before that, I was called…”
What falls from her lips is a series of incredible curse words and vile phrases, none of which approximates a name.
“I’m going to call you Sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart? That’s not a name.”
“It’s what you are.”
“It’s what you are,” she growls, as if that is an insult.
“Well, thank you.”
I reach out for her, wanting to push some of her hair out of her eyes. Everything about this little human inspires my affection and protection. She cannot escape the bubble she is captured in, but I can reach in and out of it as I please.
“Don’t touch me!” She hisses the words angrily and I pull back from her, giving her some space.
“I touched you just before and you liked it.”
“That was then. This is now,” she growls.
She’s sweating, little beads of liquid forming on her brow. I know it’s not too hot in here. We have the temperature set to the optimal human temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. She should be neither hot nor cold. But she is shivering, and sweating, which indicates that she is both. Stress is making her internal systems go absolutely haywire, to use a human expression. I think she would be better sedated.
It takes a second for me to retrieve what I need from the synthesizer located near the door. A small dose of sedative, administered via injection should calm her down and make her transition from captive more easily.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to give you something to make you feel better.”
“You’re not going to fucking come near me,” she curses. “Get away, you monster!”
Ouch. And here I was thinking that brief moment of sexual connection meant something. I guess it didn’t. It was too much. Too soon. Now she’s disgusted by me, and probably by herself.
I know I don’t look like her ideal mate. Human females like tall, dark and handsome, but not tall, armored and horned. Reaper’s mate looked past his true appearance with little difficulty, but this one hates anything alien. I don’t suppose I can blame her. Scythkin aren’t typically regarded as handsome. We’re more designed to put the fear of whatever they consider to be god into our enemies. That’s why we usually hide our true forms whenever we appear in public places. Mass hysteria is inconvenient.
“You’re just like them!” She says when she spies the needle in my hand. “You want to jab me and stick me and do horrible awful things to me whenever I don’t do what you want. I won’t let you! You’ll have to kill me!”
“I’m just trying to help you calm down before you make yourself sick.”
“Well, don’t.”
I shrug and return the dose to the synthesizer. “Fine.”
42
I let out a breath, surprised that he actually listened to me. He returns to sit in front of my enclosure, just looking at me with that interest which makes me feel hot and prickly all over.
“What’s that other girl doing here? The one that ran away from me?”
“She’s my broodmate’s female mate,” he says.
“Romantic, mate?”
“Yes.”
“How is that supposed to work? You’re not human. We can’t mate with you. Can we?”
“Do you want to talk to One?” He avoids the question.
“I don’t think so.”
I don’t want to talk to anyone. I saw the way she looked at me. She was horrified by me. She is pretty and I am a mess. I don’t want anyone to look at me. I don’t want…
“Breathe,” he reminds me. “Tell me where you came from, how those aliens had you in captivity.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where you came from?”
I shake my head. “I think they messed with my brain. I think they can wipe memories whenever they want to. I don’t know where I came from. I just know that they had me.”
“Do you think you were taken from Earth?”
He says that word as if it is supposed to mean something to me. It doesn’t. “I don’t know.”
“Are there other humans?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never saw anyone…”
“I DON’T KNOW! I yell the words at him, furious that he doesn’t seem to understand the basic concept of not knowing. I emphasize the words with a flailing
gesture of my arms.
“What are those markings on the inside of your arm?”
I look down at the pattern of dots that has been placed inside my upper arm. “I don’t know.”
“Looks like a star map,” he says.
“Don’t know.”
“You can say something besides don’t know.”
“Not sure.”
He lets out a snorting laugh. “May I see the inside of your arm? I won’t move. I’ll just sit here, you can come and show me.”
I guess that would be okay. His behavior is so different from what I am used to, I think I am too confused to be afraid of him. If he wanted to hurt me, he would hurt me. But I have become so accustomed to staying clear of others, and to being aggressive whenever they get close. It was the only way to stop my captors from incessantly touching me.
“Here…” I say, opening my arm up to show him.
He stays very still and stares at the pattern on the inside of my arm.
“I think that is a star map. It could be a clue.”
“A clue to what?”
“To where you came from. We could go back there. See what happened to you.”
I don’t know if I like that idea.
“If this is a mark on me, then it’s probably a mark they put on me. It’s probably like a classification number, or something they thought made me look more human. That’s the other thing. You don’t even know that I’m human. I don’t even know if I’m human. I don’t know!” I’m starting to panic. I can feel the tightness wrapping itself around me, making it impossible to function.
“Calm yourself,” he says, uttering the only two words to have never calmed anyone ever since the beginning of time. “Do you want a bath?”
“Why would I want a bath?”
“Baths calm humans,” he says simply. “We have bathing facilities, a ceramic tub in which water is contained. You immerse yourself and use soapy compounds to loosen debris from your skin…”