by C F Rabbiosi
“Third born!” cries Drakon. “That word is banned and you know why! It is nothing but shit and lies. Now step aside, I have spoken!”
Kraetorr snatches a knife from the table and the blade glints toward his father. “Mark her then.” He flips the weapon skillfully in the air then kicks it soaring into the wall behind Brekter. “And we will see who lives through it.” Bulging, unnatural muscle ripples down his back, one after the other, then along his spine and spreads out to his limbs and torso, making him appear to double in size. Just like Mr. Hyde, I gasp. I’ve never seen a Koridon do this before, not even when I was torn from Kassien’s grip and abducted by Brekter. Drakon studies his son curiously, and I search for any signs that this is a normal occurrence, but he gives away nothing. Gerakon rises and draws close to the dangerous scene, no doubt medically fascinated. Kraetorr was huge before, but now—
Glenda’s fingers reach up to touch his heaving back.
“No,” he growls as her lips part. “You will not say you will allow it, because I will not.”
Drakon raises a hand. “Gerakon, what do you make of this?”
The student of science shakes his head. “Best we end the night.”
* * *
Brekter and Vaerynn escort us up the long, winding staircase. “Did you see that?” I ask them. “How is it possible?”
“Something has changed Kraetorr’s chemistry,” says Vaerynn. “You women are doing unnatural things to them.”
“But why just him? Many were threatened tonight, and even I’ve been—” I swallow the knot in my throat, thinking about the blood spray during the mating ceremony, the desperation as Kassien tore his own skin to get free from the device that held him suspended in air. He couldn’t get to me, and though it happened so quickly, I don’t remember any increase in size. If my heart could shrivel any more it would, just more proof that Kassien and I aren’t what I thought.
Gerakon tends the women’s burns and Vaerynn checks the chains on the beds. Brekter steps in front of me and I lose my balance, falling onto the bed. He immediately lands on top of me, his weight crushing, and brings his lips to mine. “How do you feel now that you know there is no escaping me?” His kiss burns. “You are mine now, even you cannot deny me any longer.”
Jane gasps as her wound is lathered in a cream and covered. They’re not offering to heal them with their little machines this time.
“Get off me,” I sneer. “There may be no child after all.” I threaten him, forcing him to remember the moment suspended in time where I held a knife to my belly to negotiate my villager’s lives. But I don’t mean it. I would never harm a helpless being growing inside my body. It may be a part of him, but it’s still a part of me as well.
He slams me against the pillow, and small white feathers fly about our faces. “Threaten my child again, and I will have you locked to the bed for all moments of the day.” He slaps my thigh then grips the stinging tissue. “I might prefer you that way, unable to fight me.”
I snap my teeth into his neck and coppery sweetness floods my tongue. He locks eyes with me and pulls back slowly, purposefully, his flesh tearing. His groan is laced with pleasure. “No, I was wrong. I like the fight in you.” He pulls me by the throat from the bed and addresses Vaerynn. “I would have a word with my mate in private.” I manage a quick shake of my head.
Vaerynn snaps a chain on my ankle. “I will not allow it. Let her sleep; she has had a hard day. For the child’s health, let her sleep.” He lets go and backs away, his smirk lighting up the intentions behind his eyes.
“What did that mean, when Kraetorr called Glenda his Drakarra?”
Vaerynn shrugs a shoulder. “It is an old fabled tale. When our race became slight, technology our only strength, we began breeding for strength, and sexual pleasure was also suppressed in our lines.”
“You were all small once?” I marvel.
She doesn’t answer. “Breeding was only for reproduction because passion gave way to poor choices such as following the heart, you might say. But it has been said that a few deviated from this path, centuries of suppression coming back with a vengeance, and a Koridon male would find himself overwhelmed by his heart. He called his soul mate Drakarra.”
“Obviously fiction,” I say, quirking a brow.
“Obviously.” She throws a sheet over me. “Now sleep.”
Drakarra. Such a word invokes that exact thought: soul mate. It’s an interesting concept, but I hope there isn’t just one true love for everyone. Because that would mean—
Barely tasting the numb peace of drifting off, my ankle restraint snaps open, and I jump awake. A shadowy head moves into my straining vision and teeth bite the nightdress off my thighs. I kick at the intruder, but he grabs my ankle and throws my legs apart, clanking the restraint around my wrist against the bed frame. I pull and struggle as a long tongue plays up my slit, and I cringe.
“I’m going to scream, Brekter.”
He laughs quietly and continues his soft, wet assault along my sweet spot. “I want you perfectly pliable to take my shaft inside you tonight. I love when you drip so wet I slide in despite the pressure of your tight walls.” My body becomes rigid, fighting off the sensation of his tonguing, but he knows how to work me physically. Desire spikes through my lower belly and I become slick despite my disgust. He must have a lot of secrets, his skillfulness with my body too lucky. Perhaps some of those that have been found in the woods broken and bloody have been part of his work.
Whimpers and tears fill the room upon hearing us, exhaustion, pain and fright so palpable, I have to get out of here. “Take me to another room,” I say and twist my pelvis to throw his perfect lashing of my clit off balance. “I can’t do this in here. With all of them.” They need to sleep now, not watch me succumb to the man that hurt them. I shudder as I run my fingers down his face and pull him to my lips. “I want to do something to you.” It kills me to think about the intimate things I’d done to Kassien to ease his sexual pain while we awaited my ovulation and mating ceremony, but if it gets me out of this room where my friends will be horrified, I can do it. And maybe there’s something out in the mansion to discover. If I could find a way to run, or something to pick my locks with while unattended at night—
“Your suffering is a pleasure for me,” he says. “I like your friends to watch us, hear us. It engorges my cock.”
I lick a trail up his neck and he gives in to a tremble that makes his skin scent something delicious. “I want to lick you from your sack to your tip. Take me somewhere.”
“Yes.” He straddles me and holds himself at the base, his ridged shaft touching my lips. “Do it. Lick me over and over, I want to feel your warm tongue.” He forces my face into it by the back of my neck, and I turn my head.
“Damn you, Brekter, not like this.”
“Open your mouth!” he says too loudly. “Open your mouth.” I keep my lips pursed as he slides his massive cock along my face. He slaps it into my cheek, and I force back a groan.
I sink my teeth into the side, the spongey steel hurting my jaw, and he pulls it away, smacking my face again. “Yes,” he breathes. “More.”
I lick over the angry spot I bit, and small drops of pearly liquid seep from his tip. “Take me out of here so you can ravage me like an animal.”
He groans his frustration and unlocks the restraint. “Cause any trouble, and I will beat you down. Understand?”
I nod, and he rushes me out. In front of the staircase he kisses me and I stifle my sadness. Wriggling out if his arms I say, “Let’s get this over with.” He yanks me down by my icy blue locks and shoves my face into him. The scent of his sack drifts into my nose and mouth, filling my blood with strange excitement. “You know I don’t want this,” I say, fighting my own urges to submit to a demon.
“You could take this cock down your throat without teeth, I think.” The head hits my closed mouth, and he forces it hard.
I make a disgusted sound and force my head away. “Your people don�
��t indulge in sex, they don’t do it for pleasure. Why do you? Why do you enjoy all the licking, and getting me to climax? Why do you get excited by forcing me beneath you?”
“You are well aware of what your scent does to me. I breathe you in with advanced receptors and my entire body is set aflame. My entire being shifts.” He pulls the nightdress off and throws me onto my back. “And I like owning you. Your body is so responsive, not like a Koridon female’s. You quiver and lock around me, your skin flushes, your breasts even beg to be stimulated by my tongue. Never ask me to stop myself from wanting you because control does not exist.”
“I don’t want to like what you do to me.” I toss my head to the side and bite my lip.
The head of his cock meets the aching need between my legs, and the pressure soothes a sigh out of me. He breaks through slowly, pushing, stretching, bliss…
Deeper.
“You belong to me,” he says, “and I will abuse this body meant for pleasure until there is nothing left of you.”
Nothing left of you, he said. Not of it. It’s not my body he will break, but everything that I am. And these Koridons know nothing of love and respect so they’ll let him. There are no laws protecting me, or any of us.
He penetrates deeper into my slit and his other hand plays with the suppleness of my breast before drawing the nipple into his mouth. His tongue shoots a current of blissful heat from the sensitive spot all the way down between my legs, where he slides in and out mercilessly, so large I need to scream and wrench my hips into him at the same time. “You pretend to want love,” he whispers, “but you lie. What you want is to be rutted mercilessly, not out of love but desperation.”
“You lie as well,” I say through gritted teeth. The erogenous spots on my nipples peak, the cool air kissing the wetness he left. “You say you want to destroy me, but you don’t. You want me to love you.”
“But you promise you never will.” The hall’s dark with only a candle flickering in a sconce on the wall, but I still see the shadow that crosses his face. He pushes me hard into the floor as he rips away and I cover up. I’m sure now that he’s hiding something. And he never sounds sad, except when he’s trying to trick me into trusting him, but right now, he’s comparing me to someone. He moves his back against the wall and rests an arm around his knees. “I was young when I came here. It was just after the war poisons had cleared and I was barely grown. In a new place and fighting to survive a world that was not made for me.”
“But that was—” The war, the end of the peak of my civilization, was over two hundred years ago. “How old are you?”
He bows his head. “Did Kassien keep that from you?”
I assumed they were all in their twenties and thirties with their smooth skin and lustrous hair. Tenak appears older and so does Drakon, but how much older are they really? Kassien had an intense demeanor and has wisdom far beyond my years, but I thought that was due to his warrior nature and the differences in our race.
“I am one hundred and fifty-one.”
I would be shocked, but I just had sex with a huge alien from another planet. So, I’m not even going to waste my time. “You know my people would consider our relationship an illegal perversion,” I say.
“Makes it more scorching I think,” he says with a quieted chuckle and wipes his brow. A noise downstairs makes me jump but he just shakes his head. “Servants. I am the only Koridon here, supposed to be watching over you. The others prefer the ship.”
So Vaerynn knew Brekter would have me tonight no matter what. Perhaps she can feel better about it if she’s not here. Of course, it doesn’t matter anymore. I feel like the more Brekter wears me down, the more I lose my humanity. Maybe my depraved side will win and I’ll one day love opening my legs for him. Inch by inch, blood for blood. Soul for soul.
“You were trying to tell me something earlier. I wish you’d continue.” Tell me your secrets, mad one. Maybe it will be your undoing.
His heated gaze flicks up. “So many years have passed since her. But she still haunts me, and I have never allowed myself to feel that way again.”
“You loved someone once?” I ask.
He pauses a moment, lost in thought. “There was warring in the area, and we were called to eradicate the uprising. My blood splashed the snow, and I was so cold.”
14
Brekter
Canada, 4 years after the world ended
He groaned as he reached toward the metal bear trap that bit like a shark into his calf.
He’d heard the men hiding somewhere out there in the trees and scented something else too. It was that scent that drew him away from his war party and into the bare-limbed forest where the trees touched the sky. He pulled the metal jaws open, snapping them in half before throwing them into a tree where pieces exploded everywhere. Clever trap for a Koridon, he thought, planning a very slow death for the humans when he found them.
Blood poured onto the sparkling snow, melting it away, and the cold clung to him with every sinking step. He wrapped leather around the gaping wounds but his foot dragged most annoyingly from the damage. The sun, whose rays should be warm, were a only a taunting lie, and began to dip behind the mountains.
His cry for help echoed through the trees, freezing night clinging to his skin, but no one came, all of them pushed out by the sudden drop of temperature. Blood loss and chill slowing his step, he held onto a tree’s thick trunk. Cold like this is unnatural, he thought, knowing his strong body was weak against such wintery climate. It was this moment that he realized that this could be the end.
Snow crunched underfoot and he snapped his head around to search the darkness. His pupils dilated, drawing in the faint moonlight. What came into focus was a large, fur-covered animal. He was in no shape to take on whatever that trap was intended for, but that would never stop him.
He drew his weapon and held it at the level of his head, but that’s when he froze. Letting his arm drift down, he was disarmed by a soft face inside the fur: full lips, large brown eyes and a scent that made him shake his head with dizziness. Or perhaps that was just the blood loss. He fell easily upon receiving the blow to his head.
The next hours were black, even when he tried opening his eyes, so he kept them closed and enjoyed the warmth that wrapped around him.
“Can you hear me?” A strange voice broke through his fevered dreaming, and he had no idea what she was saying in her human language.
He groaned and looked upon the enchanting fur-covered creature who had saved him. She was blurry, but those nearly-black irises were the clearest thing he’d seen in years. “Drakonis, trev duraden?” he asked, peering around at the stone walls that flickered with fire light. He tried to sit up, but his arms pulled tight, caught by the chains around his wrists. “Let me go,” he continued to speak, though she couldn’t understand, and yet she seemed to, by the slight smile that pulled at her lips.
“You’re my prisoner,” she said, and her fingers trailed along his bare chest, a ring gleaming, all the way down to the exposed thatch of sparse hair down low. Her electrifying touch brought that scent already thick in the air to life in his senses and he yanked at the chains like a wild man. “My father put those chains in the rock,” she spoke. “You won’t get free. They were meant for you.” She pulled a blade on him and touched the tip to his chest. “I shouldn’t have saved you.” The steel cut into him and he snarled. “But I didn’t really save you, did I?” She leaned down and dragged her tongue along the beading line of shining crimson between his pectorals and he shuddered, the blood rushing to his cock, the aching in his wounds and entire body lost to the sensation. Were all humans mad like this? He’d never done anything but kill them, even the dirty thin females, but not one of them ever looked like her. Or put an intoxicating pleasure inside his blood, making all rational thoughts nonexistent. Aven draga he cursed. Little animal. That was what she was. He hated her.
“Mmmm,” she breathed. “I’ve been alone here for so long, so forgive me if al
l I want to do is explore you. I mean, you’re nothing but a killer. A destroyer. Practically an animal really. I’ve been thinking about what I want to do to you for the last twenty-four hours while you slept. So why shouldn’t I torture you to entertain myself?” She stood up, and the blanket around her shoulders slipped to the ground. “I was never much for normal when there was real society around anyway. But being a crazy bitch made me survive you fucks. So here we are. And I’m so bored…”
“Ivital gorgen implicet,” he threatened, making her laugh. She bent down and pulled the furs off his waist.Her glimmering gaze made his blood rush, and he became sensitively aware of his muscular form, feeling attractive as he laid helpless before her. He thought for a moment he was in an alternate universe, one where Koridons and humans weren’t fighting. Maybe there was nothing out there in fact, just this cave, just this fantasy.
Madness.
“Oh my,” the woman said, running a finger down the inside of his shaft. “That’s, um—” She stifled a laugh then slid her palm down him again, this time taking a handful of his sack. He pulsed harder, never having experienced such a rush of desire, his mating ceremony still years off, and anyway, his females had never done this to him. With just her touch, he wanted to rip the chains from the walls and fill her to bursting, craved to feel her deeply and rub himself inside her darkest places. He could hear her screams as he possessed her, and it drove his cock harder.
“Well, that’s interesting.” The girl recoiled to stoke the fire and shook her head as though warding something off. “Your anatomy is similar to ours, but not quite the same.” She brought a cup to his lips. “Drink.”
“I am an enemy you do not want to keep here. I will find my way out and kill you, aven draga,” he said, inviting his anger to kill the arousal tormenting his groin.
She squinted at his nonsensical speech. “I’m sure you’re telling me how much you’d like it if I hopped on your giant dick, but the answer’s no, pig.”