And then I was through. The darkness parted like a curtain before me, and the wind dropped away to a roaring thunder behind me. Caught off guard by the sudden lack of pressure, I tripped and fell heavily, crashing to the ice with my face first. For a moment, I just lay there, breathing hard, bewildered and amazed that I was still alive. Then, the stomp of heavy footsteps drew my attention, and I scrambled to my feet, remembering the warrior and her icy suit of armor. Sure enough, she emerged from the storm wall, in a more dignified manner than my stumble and spread-eagled fall. She was not unscathed. Her helm was missing, and despite her poise I watched her put a hand to her side where a half-meter shard of ordinary ice had found a crease between two of her dark armor plates and pierced her. The jagged shard gleamed bright blue and slick with what I presumed to be her blood. Several of the plates of her armor showed bright white cracks, and they seemed to leak light into the unnaturally still air. The same white-green one as the lightning crashed inside the whirling storm wall. She leveled her spear at me. Her hands were steady despite her wounds. I raised my arms in a defensive posture, feeling utterly inadequate. My weapons training had lasted a little bit more than a week with a rifle, and a few days with a pistol. I had been in street fights before, but the most I knew of armed combat was which end of the knife to stick in- and I didn’t have a knife. That was it. Not even a week on an alien moon, and I was going to die by a spear. I wondered how many other Formers had died this way on their worlds. How many others met natives we didn’t think existed- didn’t think could exist, and how many were slain by weapons that had gone out of vogue on Earth more than two-thousand years ago? The warrior woman, even though she was visibly breathing hard cause of the pain, took a firm step forward with her spear pointing perfectly at the level of my throat.
A sensation rippled up my spine as if someone was reading over my shoulder. My hair on the back of my neck, would have stood on end if they hadn't been surgically burned away, long ago, with the rest of my hair.. Gently, intimately, Barbas whispered in my ear. "Relax, Joanna, I've got this." And then my body moved- I moved- in ways I had never moved before. My hands straightened, like blades, followed commands I wasn’t sending - commands I had never sent. My whole body was moving, taking a stance I didn’t know, perched on one leg, the other crooked before me, ready and poised. My arms were raised in front of me, held slightly forward, posing both a defense and a threat simultaneously. One of them, the one extended further, beckoned to the ice-bound warrior with an insolent little wave of the fingers.
She rushed to me, driving a straight thrust to my throat, but I was already moving. I was twisting, still on one leg, to avoid the strike by the width of one of my fingers. Then the leg I had raised before me, lashed out and up with terrible force while my armor’s enhanced strength synced perfectly with the movement. My steel toe met my foe’s left elbow perfectly, precisely, with exact calculated force. The plate of icy armor there shattered into glowing shards. I felt the limb break and bend the wrong way with a crunching sensation that was both satisfying and revolting at the same time. The warrior screamed, the sound passed even through my suit’s audial buffers. As her lips parted, I was shocked to see a mouth full of carnivore teeth, fanged like the jaws of a bear. She tried to leap away from me, slashing backhand with her spear in her good hand’s grip, but my body, acting utterly without consulting me, turned in a smooth arc. With both of my feet planted, I seized the haft of the spear mid-strike before it was more than halfway toward my face. My abdominal muscles flexed, my hips twisted, and I ripped the spear out of the warrior’s weakened grip, grasping it firmly with both of my hands. The cold in the weapon was like nothing I had ever experienced. The threat of frostbite seemed to strike right from the moment I got it in my hands. My body ignored it and continued with the motion despite the pain that crawled. I brought the haft of the spear down against my armored thigh, and broke it in half. I threw both halves of the weapon aside, while the armored palms of my hands were gusting steam from where they had touched it. The warrior woman staggered backwards, with a look of panic in her eyes.
Barbas’ voice sounded in my ears. “Joanna, you may wish to close your eyes for this,” he said, gently. My right hand raised before me, stretched out to the strange, warrior woman. A gun formed in my grip, rapidly assembled by the Fabricator’s nanites from the stores of metal I had buried in the ice. It was the exact same modern revolver that Barbas had made for me the day that I had met him in my dreams. The same revolver that had been in my grip, on Earth, so long ago, and had sank into my grasp with a reassuring weight. My finger tightened and my arm flicked the aim of the weapon into line with the warrior’s head. The hammer twitched and began to move. I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a distant CRACK, and the gun bucked in my hand. When I opened my eyes, the warrior woman lay crumpled on the ground. Her strange, black armor was already cracking and disappearing into a haze of sublimating ice, shrouding her corpse in a shimmering burial shroud of refreezing vapor. I staggered and backed away from her. I moved towards the great Storm Engine we had erected, and found a small, boxy shelter waiting for me at its base. The door opened and I stumbled inside, putting my back against the wall and sinking to the floor.
Even if I hadn’t been the one doing all those things, I had just killed someone. Someone who was trying to kill you, said a little voice in my thoughts. And she’s not the first person you’ve killed. Remember the Law of the Jungle. Even in this frozen hell, it still applies. It wasn't Barbas. Those were my own thoughts, coming out of my memories, wearing the voice of someone long dead. Someone I had tried to forget. Someone I had watched die. The exhaustion of the last sixteen hours of work started to hit. I felt pain and deep muscle ache everywhere. My body felt energized but sore and empty of strength, all at once. Something behind my eyes seized me by the brain stem, dragging me down into sleep. My eyes slammed shut while the sound of the revolver echoed in my ears. It was as if every shot was a nail put on a coffin lid. One nail for each remembered shot. Bang. Bang. Darkness.
…
I opened my eyes to the by-now familiar environment of the cabin by the lake, lying on my back in the wide bed. I was wearing jeans and a peach-hued buttoned blouse. I felt long curly hair on my shoulders like the ones I had before. Before I lost them in the Former preparations. They were fanned out around me in a cascade of midnight tresses. I smiled at the feeling of having hair again, and I ran my fingers through the tumbling curls. My hair had never been this perfect, like warm silk, but this was my dream world, and right now, it seemed more real than the icy, violent hell that I had just left. I could smell the summer heat in the humid air, the thick scent of warm forest drifting in through the open window over the dresser. The curtains fluttering to the babbling tune of the birds out there, the lapping of the lake on the shore, the incessant creaking melody of the cicadas. I lay there, comfortable in my skin and the light clothing, relaxed in the sounds and scents of a lazy summer afternoon, enjoying the cloud-soft expanse of the mattress beneath me. I didn’t drift off to sleep so much as I lay in a trance of relaxation for once, only stirred to the sound of Barbas coming through the back door of the cottage.
I propped myself up on one elbow as he came around the corner from the hall and appeared in the bedroom door. He was truly a beautiful man, literally a creature of my dreams; wearing a pair of work trousers and a sweaty t-shirt with the logo of some band I didn’t recognize, fading across his chest. He stripped off the leather work gloves head been wearing, and threw them into a laundry basket in the corner. He crossed to the dresser to find a towel with to wipe his sweaty face. The motion spiked up his russet hair, making him look even wilder.
“‘Bas,” I teased. “Did you get yourself all dirtied up just for me?”
Barbas smirked. “Not entirely.” He eyed me where I lay on the bed, with his eyes lingering on the neck of my blouse. I remembered then that not all of the buttons had been done, and I was undoubtedly giving him a pretty decent view. He cleared his thro
at and gestured toward the laundry basket with a tilt of his head. “I was working in the garden while you rested. I figured you needed some time to yourself. Today was a very long and hard day.”
I frowned, tilting my head to one side, curious. “Isn’t the garden imaginary? Why would you need to work on it at all? Shouldn’t the flowers just grow when you want them too?” I gestured to the sweaty towel in his hand. “And shouldn’t you be able to just decide that the sun doesn’t bother you? You made all this, after all.”
Barbas wiped his face again, threw the towel after the gloves, hitting the wicker laundry basket not-quite squarely, so that part of the sweaty cloth hung over the side. He shrugged. “Sure, I made this place at first, but it’s your dream world. The sun is hot because you know the sun should be hot. Flowers grow the way they grow because that’s what they’re supposed to do. If you punched the wall of the cabin, you’d probably break your hand. The wine in the kitchen is sweet, but not too sweet, and the bed is quite comfortable.” He gestured about him in an arc. “Reality is subjective, Joanna. It’s what you make of it. And this?” He knocked lightly on the walls of the cabin. “This is where I live. It’s as real to me as that frozen shithole out there is to you.”
“So this place exists even when I’m awake?”
“Of course,” Barbas answered, sitting down on the edge of the bed, unlacing his boots. “And how, for that matter, do you know that you’re asleep now, and awake there on Chalice? What if this is real, and that frozen hell is the dream?”
I grinned and threw a pillow at him. He dodged with the barest of movements. “Quit trying to give me a headache, ‘Bas.” He smiled and kicked off the left boot, then started to unlace the other. I cocked my head the other way and asked, “Is it nice here? When I’m awake, I mean? Does it look the same without my needs and desires making it this way?” I gestured to the cabin around me. “After all, this is my relaxing dream, my ‘R and R’. What does your dream look like?”
Barbas gave me a crooked smile. “My dream looks a lot like this. A nice garden, a sunny day, a beautiful woman in my bed.”
“Your bed,” I responded, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure it’s my bed. After all, I’m the one lying on it right now.”
Barbas kicked off the other boot and then turned, rolling onto his belly and slithering towards me. He moved smooth and predatory, like a prowling cat. “Yes, you are,” he said, his voice low, amused, practically a purr. “But this is my dream, like I said, and that makes this bed mine.”
“And me?” I whispered as he crept forward, ceasing his progress only once he was leaning over me. His arms braced on either side of my head like oaken pillars. “If this is your dream, what does that make me?”
Barbas bent and kissed me softly, on the lips, and I felt my heart skip a beat in my chest. I could feel a gathering cluster of sparks kindling to life somewhere between my legs. Little lines of glowing excitement began to wriggle up along the nerves in my belly. He began to plant a line of kisses on me, first on my lips, then the edge of my jaw, the side of my neck, my throat, downward, ever downward in a line that left my skin tingling. With one hand he casually tore open my blouse, exposing the white lace bra beneath, and he continued the line of kisses, lingering a little at the edges of the lace. My nipples were hard, and each one of his kisses on the slope of my breasts, sent out little ripples of electric sensation. The pulses of pleasure cascading out to meet the growing fire coming to life down before. My breath was coming faster and faster, my chest rising and falling sharply with each gasp, each sigh.
Barbas drew the line of kisses down over my ribs and along my abdomen, and knowing where he was going didn’t make the anticipation any less torturous. Each kiss brought me closer to the wet heart of the growing fire in me, making this torture absolutely delightful. He deftly opened the buttons of my jeans with one hand, opening them one at a time, while steadily descending with kisses in a slow agonizing rhythm. His free hand crawled its way lazily up along my side, and I moaned as he slipped his hand inside one cup of my bra and circled my nipple with his gentle fingertip The very edge of his fingernail dragged a little coil of glowing pleasure out of me and sent it rippling away with the sensation he was coaxing from my breast. My jeans began to slip down my hips as he tugged them away with one hand. I wriggled in his grip, as he set me free of the suddenly restrictive pants. He pushed them all the way to my ankles and I kicked them off my bare feet.
I could feel his warm breath on me; I knew what was coming, and still the sudden spike of sensation as his tongue flicked out to taste me, wiped my mind clear like a beach before the slow, steady advance of the rising tide. My lips parted of their own accord, and the next stroke of his tongue dragged a long, low moan out of me. My hips rocked hard against the bed, and each lapping pulse of Barbas’ tongue sent another vibration up along my spine, arching my back up away from the bed. Barbas’ other hand joined his first one teasing my nipples for a moment and then both of them traveled down to grip my hips as he put his tongue ever deeper inside me. I felt the waves of a growing vibration tide coming on ever stronger. I gripped my own breasts, needing to grab something before I was swept away completely by the crashing waves of pleasure rolling over my body.
Barbas was relentless. He didn’t speed up to match the urgent circles I made with my hips, but he didn’t slow down either. He continued his merciless torture on my body with his lustful, expert mouth, and I seemed to hover on the edge for eternity, holding on before the unstoppable rising wave of ecstasy. I came all of a sudden, in an abrupt rush, feeling the orgasm blasting through my whole body and wracking me with uncontrollable spasms of pleasure. I cried out, arching my back and grasping the bed sheets in tight fists. My toes curled and my legs tightened against Barbas’ shoulders, while my heels dag into his back. “More, ‘Bas,” I moaned. “More…”
Barbas lifted his face off me and ran his arm across his wet mouth while he smiled wickedly. “Then take it,” he purred.
I growled, low in my throat, and seized him by his forearms. I pulled him up and over me and then twisted and rolled over so that I came up on top of him. I pushed him down onto the bed and straddled him. I sank down onto the warm hardness of his manhood, gasping and arching again while he slid inside me. I began to rock my hips while I pressed my hands against his chest. Each motion a fresh twist of pleasure, a new flare of sensation, not better, not worse, but completely different from the feeling of his mouth on me. It was amazing, the feeling of him inside me, the feeling of riding the strength of his body. I rocked faster and faster, the fire inside me growing again higher and higher. His hands slid up my back and unhooked my bra, slid it free along my arms, and I threw the lacy thing away from me. It was only getting in the way. We hadn't done this before- the time hadn't been right, until now. Sure, we had spent some time kissing and fooling around, but this was another level entirely. And the wait was absolutely worth it. Now was the right time and my God it was exactly what I needed.
Barbas gripped my back and pulled me forward to lean over him with my breasts just above his face. He stretched his neck and lifted his chin. He closed his lips over my nipple, running his tongue around it in a circle, barely scoring the sensitive skin of my breast with his teeth. Already riding high on the aftershocks of the first orgasm, I climaxed again, abruptly and with little warning. This one even stronger inside me. Unable to control my voice inform the sudden orgasm, I screamed, high and loud, over and over, as each pulse clenched me tighter around him in a frenetic rhythm. In that moment I must have pushed him over the edge, because he groaned and tensed, gripping my waist and throwing back his head, shooting his hot sperm deep inside me. He held the tension for a moment and his body bowed. Then all at once he relaxed, letting out a great sigh of relief. My hips continued their rocking for a few, reflexive thrusts, and then I managed to lift myself off of him, letting out a last moan as he left my body. I couldn’t hold myself up anymore, and I tumbled down to the tangled sheets to curl beside
him, my whole body tingling with afterglow.
Barbas snaked one arm out to my back and hips, and dragged me close to curl against him. My head rest in the hollow of his broad shoulder and my hair splayed across him. We lay there for a moment, panting and happy. Barbas turned his head to kiss me on the forehead and said. “To answer your question, my angel, if this is my dream, then that means that you are mine.” I chuckled a little and sighed. I closed my eyes and relaxed against his strength and warmth. Maybe it was alright to be his, even if it was only in my dreams. Maybe this was real, and Chalice was the dream. Maybe that was alright too. I drifted away on tides of lazy pleasure and simply enjoyed feeling good. It had been a very long time since I had been really happy. As the sweet oblivion of true sleep drew ever closer, I thought I heard someone speaking. In a voice unfathomably vast, and deep as thunder. I tried to work out what it was saying, but just as I grasped the edge of those words, I fell asleep.
...
Chapter Four: The Face of a God
Volistad
A day spent in the prison pit was not physically trying- not particularly at least. The pit was large enough for me to lie down comfortably, and the floor had been lined with pelts and hides, making it easy to sleep. The walls of the pit were sheer and smooth, shaped from stone by Deepseeker's magick, and the string of amulets hung at its mouth and out of my reach, kept the air warm by. I was in no danger of physical extremis in my prison, but the boredom was probably going to drive me crazy. I stared at the walls, I slept and I did as many exercises as I could manage. I had identified all of the pelts in the layer of furs on the floor of the pit, first by species, then by gender, and then by the method of death. I was so very bored. By the end of the first day, I was sure that Vassa would have them leave me down there indefinitely- if he thought about it at all.
Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5) Page 5