by C F Rabbiosi
A woman’s cries rise up and I move around until she’s in view. Naked and bleeding, she holds her knees to her chest and pleads, “Don’t do it again, I beg you!” Long black hair cascades down her shoulders and she whimpers as a man is thrown on top of her—the same one running through the trees earlier.
Many of the males who sat for breakfast with me a few hours ago must be present, but they’re so distorted through the energy field, I can’t make them out. Hearty, muffled laughs fill the room as knives clank to the ground beside them. The woman, eyes wild, lunges for the weapon, but the man only shakes his head and stands trembling before her.
“Zre tolgat,” says one of the males, and the woman slides the blade into the other human’s belly. He hits his knees as cheers ring out all around them. The huge males swarm in on her.
“No, please! I did you what you wanted!” she cries as one throws her onto her stomach. My heart lunges into my throat as he slathers his oversized cock with something creamy then jams it into her ass. “Not again,” she whispers on the edge of tears and grips the floor, the color leaching from her face. The others cheer him on as he pumps in and out, her body jolting forward with the impact. She grits her teeth as the male gives one final thrust and, shaking, grips her roughly into him. I watch, fascinated, as he knots deep within her.
Another male slides down beneath her and shoves his mouth between her legs. He licks and sucks on her sex, and yet another smack her backside and says, “Ovikam, ovikam!” She rolls her hips slightly against the tongue that works her on command, and I grow oddly aroused.
The first male pulls out, pearly liquid splattering to the ground, and the one using his mouth forces her up to her knees. He fists his cock in front of her face, twisting from the root all the way up to the tip.
Smack. His huge girth hits her cheek and she groans, touching the reddening spot. His crown breaches her lips, and everything grows silent within the force field. I cover my gasp as he pushes himself into her mouth, her jaw unnaturally wide and her teeth digging into his flesh. It can’t fit, I think over and over as the whites of her eyes turn red and she grunts, trying to breathe.
My fingers splay out toward the moving energy, and tiny shocks force them back again. They wouldn’t dare hurt Drakon’s pregnant daughter, and surely I can throw a big enough fit that they give up on torturing the woman in there? But what will this do to me if I pass through it? I step back and look for the entrance, but every wall appears solid and delivers a near painful shock when I touch it. Damn. I can’t risk my child’s life by passing through this force field. The one at home creates an opposite effect, an invisibility for whatever’s inside it, but this is different. “Hey!” I yell out, preparing for every head to turn my way. “Stop this or I’ll get Kassien!”
A horrible crack bites through the focused quiet as the unnaturally large cock disengages the woman’s jaw bones. Her face is ashen as she silently shrieks, her throat completely blocked. My chest crushes in with terror, and I run.
Every step away from that poor woman hurts because of what she’s enduring at their cruel hands, but it also relieves as I leave it behind. The image of him shoving himself down her throat until she suffocates makes the world around me haze, and I trip over a branch.
“Calypso!” Kassien’s familiar voice drifts on the breeze, and in a shaking panic I run toward it. His huge form comes toward me in the distance, and I careen into his arms.
“You found me,” I say and press my face into his chest.
“You went missing, and I followed your scent here.” He hesitantly touches the back of my head, and I die knowing he can’t stand to be close to me anymore. But it doesn’t matter.
“You have to come with me immediately,” I say and pull back.
“Let me take you home.” He grabs my hand and I yank it away.
“No! They’re going to kill someone!”
“You should not have come out here.” He takes my arm, and this time, there’s no getting away.
“You know about it, don’t you?” His gaze says yes, and I groan with disgust. “You have to stop them, Kassien. They’re killing her.”
He scoops me into his arms and takes off, a burst of wind blowing my hair back. “You cannot understand, but the place of pain is necessary.”
Anger stops me from forming a single word. He’s really defending this? I struggle until I slip from his arms. “You need to go back for her!” He regains his hold and continues with even more speed. “You’re just like them.”
He sets me down and kneels to my level. “Worse, probably. Never forget what I am, Calypso. It might save you one day.”
“That place is disgusting.” Anger quakes in my voice.
“That place is an illusion,” he says.
“An illusion?”
“It is a technology that allows for the aggressive parts of… us… to be worked.”
“But— What I saw wasn’t just violence. It was sexually destroying someone. Why would anyone want to do that?”
“It is not real.”
I’m relieved but still unsettled. I don’t want my son—or any of them, for that matter—to be so ghastly inside. The horrific images of the woman lying in agony with a broken jaw, hoping to die before they come for her again, disappear. He says she’s not real, but she sure looked real.
“You’re not like them,” I say, running my fingers over the soft hue of cobalt hair. He’s a breath away and grasps my arm so fiercely, it takes me back to a time where such a hold would have me thrown to the ground and my slit threatened to be worked through mercilessly. I wonder if he knows that it hurts, or that I like it. I’ve dreamed of his weight pressing me into the ground, his frenzied touch painful as he forces himself to control it.
“I am just like them,” he says. “At this moment I wish to betray everything I believe.”
The urge to kiss him burns on my lips, to make him feel me again like he did once, so tempting. I hurt for him to erase what Brekter’s hands have branded into my arms and what his hateful utterances have imprinted into my soul. Maybe being loved by the one I feel special to will somehow undo the damage.
His eyes close and he shivers. “You need to step back,” he says, his arms wrapping my waist, his knees firmly planted into the ground. “Because… I may not be strong enough.”
Those words. They wash over me and sate a thirst that has been drowning me in darkness. I want him. I want him so selfishly even as my best friend suffers with his child growing within. Kassien was mine first, and all of this has been forced upon us. I might hate myself, but what if I could make him mine right now? Is one moment worth a lifetime? What if this binds him to me to claim in the future when the time is right?
He looks up at me, the same longing devouring him, and I know it’s in his nature to take what he wants. Violently. I touch the hem of my dress and lift it slightly, every nerve in my body on fire, blood pounding.
His hand snaps around my thigh, holding the material in place. “It is too late now. You cannot run,” he says in a low growl. His voice rumbles down my spine, and my leg aches in his grip.
“I could. Do you want to chase me?”
Long tendrils sweep over the supernatural beauty of his face as the breeze picks up. “I would be upon you before you could blink, and only hungrier.”
“Then run I shall.” I land a kiss on him, and though it hurts to rip away, I use the shock to shove him off me.
I turn around smiling and take my first step to jaunt off deeper into the woods, but I stop. My feet won’t move an inch. Scarlet’s in the med bay, scared and in pain; how could I even think about romping through the woods with her husband? My grin fades, and I turn back around slowly.
“I understand,” he says, but his stance remains ready to attack.
I wanted to be selfish and give myself over to him completely, but I can’t. “Is Scarlet okay?” I ask as leaves crunch below our feet. We didn’t cross the physical line, and I’m grateful for that considering how
pregnant I am. Still, the intimacy rekindled between us has me exhilarated.
“She is for now.”
Dread grips me. “The pregnancy is already hard for her, isn’t it?”
“Gerakon is doing tests and trying to find ways to help her through.”
“Don’t let anything happen to her, Kassien, or I swear you’ll wake up dead one day.”
He chuckles, and it raises my spirits, like the sound of rain after a long summer. “I will do whatever I must to protect her.”
“You care about her, don’t you?” Say no, please say no.
“Yes.”
“Kass?” I touch my protruding belly. “If this had been your child, would you have kept me?” Dra endavetas ve dantenne, he used to say. But only part of this promise will ever be true. He will always protect me, but can no longer hold me. I can hear the rushing of blood in my ears as his silence goes on for what feels like forever.
“I am tempted,” he finally says, “to kill Brekter and everyone who opposes me to have you in my arms again. Every day.”
“He’s still in med bay, you know. It would be so easy.”
He lifts me into his arms again. “Ask me to do it and I will.”
The words find their way to the tip of my tongue, but I bite it, knowing I can’t risk everything we’ve achieved for my people. And what would happen to Kassien if he broke their laws? Well, more of their laws. But god, I want to. The thought of Brekter’s body seeking pleasure and taking everything from mine makes me want to die. “I hate him, and I don’t know what I’ll do when he heals.”
“I can get a hold of the flesh obliterator once more, I believe.” He beams down at me and I want to kiss his beautifully wicked grin.
“There’s no one for me but you.” I lay my head against him. I want to believe that somehow he’ll be mine again, but what would that mean for Scarlet? Lying with a Koridon such as Kassien with all his strength, kindness and royalty is one thing, but now she carries his child. What if she has fallen in love with him? What if they’ve slept together many times since their private mating ceremony?
21
Music from the banquet hall drifts up to the room at the end of the corridor as I braid Glenda’s light hair.
“Are you nervous about your marriage to Kraetorr?” I ask, then take the braid out and let the hair drop around her shoulders. She should look like herself for the wedding, not the Koridon idea of what is attractive. My mother has been working for weeks to make sure this ceremony would be a meeting in the middle between our different races, so sexy fall-in-the-face hair it is.She shakes her locks out and puckers her lips in front of the vanity mirror. “Calypso, no. I want him. I know it’s not rational ‘cus we barely know each other, and well, he’s an alien from a planet that died, but I dream about him being mine. Like, what it will feel like to let him finally have my—” She waves her hands around awkwardly toward her lap. “Me. To have me. I’ve never even kissed a boy before, so I don’t know why I want sex with him so badly.”
“I get it completely. These males do something to us, too.” Our chemicals mix and collide, creating something explosive.
“I can do this,” she whispers in the mirror, then her round baby blues flick up at my reflection. “I can do this, right? I mean, he’s so big.”
My expression remains neutral, but I am afraid for her. When she’s near, his skin glistens, his pupils dilate and his breathing becomes erratic. He’s already one of the biggest males I’ve seen, but when he grew in size to protect her, he was hellishly frightening. “You’ll be fine. I hate that such an intimate moment is supposed to be shared out in the open with everyone in some weird bonding ritual, but we’ve arranged for certain,” I clear my throat, “lotions to be used so you won’t be too uncomfortable.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of his huge penis,” she says. “He can’t be bigger than a baby, and our vaginas take that beating just fine.” She chuckles. “He wishes.”
A boisterous laugh slips out, and I cover my mouth. She’s absolutely right, they are huge, but oh so delicious. We’ve all snuck a romance novel back at the village, and it’s no secret that the hero of the story was always well endowed. “When I first saw the size of Kassien I was intimidated, for sure. But now…” I sink my teeth into my lower lip. “I crave it. It even excites me to think about it—”
“So how big is it exactly?” She puts her hands about six inches apart, and her mouth forms an O.
I shake my head, and she makes a space of twelve inches. I nod and then make a circle with my hands, showing her the girth.
“Oh stars, I’m dead.” She laughs nervously and tosses her head back. “I also wonder how we’re going to fit together. I guess Arek just opened Mary-Shelly’s legs and dived in.”
“Oh yes. He’ll find a way. He’s male, after all.”
I finish with the sparkle on Glenda’s skin which hides her paleness and rub rouge onto her lips. “I think that will do.”
She takes herself in at the full-length mirror, and I as I stand behind her, watching her timid expression transform into confidence, I can’t believe the beautiful woman she has become.
I rush to the bottom of the stairs and raise my hands, quieting the spirited crowd. “Announcing the lovely Glenda!” Glenda holds the violet sparkling gown above her ankles as she makes her way down. Announcing her arrival isn’t one of our traditions, but that’s how Victorian ladies were introduced to a party, and being that we don’t really know who we are, we’re making history as we go.
Kraetorr pushes through the mix of his kind and ours as Glenda makes it to the bottom stair and he takes her small hand. “You are beautiful,” he says, and I smile at his candor.
She touches the engraved silver armor over his chest, and his spine straightens. “We are doing this movement, where I step here and there with you stepping here and there, to music, your music, so I decided not to wear the ceremonial robe.”
“Do you mean to say that we will dance?” Glenda asks, leaning in with a smile from ear to ear.
“Yes. But also I thought my drikken may fall out.”
A moment of silence befalls us before she and I burst into laughter. Thinking about the big brute dancing around was already funny—
Mother puts her arm around my waist and I hug her tight, noticing the hanging lights over her shoulder that set the floor gleaming with aquamarine light. “It’s perfect, Momma. The party’s just amazing.” Goodnight sweetheart well it’s time to go… plays in the background, along with instruments I’ve never heard.
“Do you like the music, Caly?” Momma asks. “Isn’t it strange? I found the records buried in the attic of this place.” She steps back, and I realize I’ve never seen her like this before. Her long auburn hair pulls back into an ornate braid, and a silky gown hugs her curves, flowing down to the heels she wears.
“You’re stunning!” I say, forgetting the music. “There isn’t some other ceremony going on tonight I don’t know about, is there?”
“Of course not.” She smacks my shoulder playfully. I spot Drakon standing in the center with his arms crossed over his chest, looking perfect in black and gold dress clothes. Arek and Kjartonn stand beside him, looking much the same. Mary-Shelly stands over by Vaerynn, sipping on a glass of spirits, her abdomen still flat as the day she was born. She steals glances toward her mate as he speaks boisterously with his father.
Finn cuts through the crowd, not a hint of emotion threatening his features, and stands beside me. He sighs as he takes his little sister in, and the newfound beauty she glows with. He boils with the realization that the glow is partly because of love.
“Nice to see you dressed up,” Glenda says, noting he looks exactly the same as always.
His glare is stone cold. “This isn’t right, Glenda. He’s not even the same species as you. This is shit.”
Her satin lips shut abruptly, and Kraetorr moves in front of her.
“You’re right,” I say, “but Glenda wants this. So you have to
respect her decision.”
He cracks his knuckles. “She wants this. What a joke.”
“Wine!” says Mother as a servant moves toward us with a serving tray. We grab a glass of the red liquid, happy for the distraction, but Kraetorr remains locked on Finn.
“Finn, my brother,” says Glenda and weaves her arm in his. “I’ll be all right. Please, just be here today. Well, be here until the mating starts. Then please go.”
He pulls away. “If you hurt her,” he says to Kraetorr, “I’ll tear your throat out.”
“If I hurt her,” he growls, “I will tear my own throat out.”
“Well.” Finn steps up to him. “That’s something I’d look forward to.”
“Why don’t we dance?” I take Finn’s hand and lead him out to a clear spot on the black and white checkered floor.
“I don’t want to fucking dance,” he says, removing my arms from around his neck.
“Well, we’re going to anyway. Come on, we used to play all the time like this.” I place his hands on my waist and drape my arms back around his shoulders. “Dance with me.”
He reluctantly moves his feet, stiff and awkward as I lay my head against his chest. Earth angel, earth angel, please be mine. My darling dear, love you for all time… a beautiful song plays in the background as we sway.
“This place, these things,” his voice booms. “How can you even be pregnant by one?”
Kassien enters the room with a very pale Scarlet beside him. “I asked the same question once.” I say. “The universe creates beings like us on all kinds of water planets within good range of a sun. We’re similar enough, and our parts fit well enough. So it’s possible.”
“Apparently,” he snickers. “Doesn’t mean it’s right.”