by Merel Pierce
“I have never been a slave,” he growled. “I have only been waiting to find you.”
Her hips were pumping at him, a rousing dance against his pelvis, asking for what he would not give until he heard the words.
“Please!”
He brushed her hair from her face. “Say.”
She made a strangled sound of denial and tried to take what she wanted from him, but she could not.
“I am not a stud to service your needs, woman. I am the male who claims you.” A single palm over her ass kept her in place while his other went to her neck, holding her head so she could look into his eyes and see him. Know him.
“Say ‘I belong to Druku. No other will touch me. No other will see me.’”
Chapter Four
Niddie
She met the green and gold eyes of the alien alpha. They were large eyes with no lashes or brows, irises composed of rings of bright color focused intently on her. Inhuman, wrong, the face she looked at was outside of her understanding.
She’d never seen anything like him. He wasn’t reptilian like the Ikavu, shaggy like the Moorova, or insectoid. He wasn’t scaled or armored. He was earth, stone, and forest brought to life and shaped into a man.
His bottom teeth were so big they jutted out of his mouth, curling up over his full top lip toward his flattened nose. The teeth inside his mouth were pointed, all of them sharp and dangerous, bestial and untamed. He had high, sharp cheek bones and a broad forehead. From his scalp, thick cables of something—not hair, but hair-like—sprouted and dangled past his shoulders. When he’d been shaking Zeke, his mane had risen like a ruff, the ends spiky, making him even bigger than he already was.
He was the biggest male she had ever seen, and he had her lying on top of the muscled plank of his body. He was bumps and ridges under gray suede spotted with brown and black, struck through with tattoos and brands, and she couldn’t stop touching him, tasting him, wanting him inside her.
She needed this male to touch her and fill her, ease the inexplicable burn and itch that swept through her veins from the drug Zeke had forced on her. Want consumed her, yet he wanted her to say things, pledge things that required thinking. But Niddie couldn’t think past the thick cock caressing her from the top of her slit to her entrance. She needed that inside, not out where it only teased. Inside where it could fill her up and pour that marvelous balm of his into her.
Some part of her brain was screaming at her. Alphas were in the room, alphas who could hurt her, take from her, control her. Even on her knees, pleading for help, that voice still screamed. If she did this, there would be no turning back. This male didn’t just want to use her; this male wanted everything.
He kneaded her bottom, stroking her back entrance with his thumb while the scalding heat of his cock tormented her front. Her naked breasts, nipples hard and aware, pressed against the carved shape of his chest. Her nerve endings were on fire; everything this male did made her burn hotter.
His growl reverberated through her body. How? She didn’t know, and it only made her more desperate.
“Say,” he said again.
“I belong to Druku,” she recited. “No other will touch me. No other will see me.”
And finally, blessedly, he pressed his strangely shaped cock into her channel.
It wasn’t as blunt as his fingers. The tip had a conical, almost pointed cap that had moved and spread open under her tongue, almost like a parasol. The length of it had ridges that fit between her fingers, and the widest ridge at the base had swelled against her fingers when she squeezed it.
His anatomy had confused her, but the taste of him had captivated her. She’d taken as much of him as she could into her mouth, sucking to get his sweet, wood and wild musk flavor. His essence had hit her system with a punch, causing her first orgasm. Now he was going to put it in her womb, fill her up with the glory of it.
Her slick—unwanted, disgustingly wet—had leaked out of her all over him, and his precum had dripped all over her. Pressed together, they were a slippery, sliding mess, which made it easier for him to move her, control her. Hands on her hips, he moved her down while his hips bucked up.
Niddie screamed. She screamed like she was being born all over again, his scalding heat boring into her in radiant pulses. Shaped to pierce her, he was nonetheless bigger and thicker around than his fingers.
As he pumped, he began to spurt jets of cum, her tissues impossibly responsive. In some kind of chemical reaction, as if the stuff contained more than just protein-based sperm, it danced inside of her, making her womb contract and squeeze.
The contractions stole her breath, silenced her screams, and left her arching and open-mouthed.
Every move of his hips forced his cock deeper until it was battering her cervix. It hurt. It didn’t belong there.
She gasped, trying to tell him, and found herself being repositioned. He moved her like she weighed nothing, pushed her back, sat her up, lifted her, and pulled her down. Her cries were more pain than pleasure.
“Look at me, woman,” he demanded. The gold in his eyes had gone molten. “Do you see me? Do you see who takes you? Who conquers you?”
How could she speak filled up with a battering ram, her breasts throbbing with the force of his thrusting?
“Say my name. Say it!”
“Druku. You are Druku. I belong to Druku. I will see no other.” She spit the words out, head falling to the side to show him her vulnerable neck, lost to him.
Arching her back, she gripped the arm that came up to touch her nipple and pull at it, and screamed again as something inside of her changed, expanded, and opened. She kept screaming—a wild, free, raw sound—as Druku chased that opening and filled it. Filled her.
Oh, this male was in her now. She felt him crawling up under her ribs toward her heart, his semen spilling directly into her womb because he’d somehow breached her cervix. His cock expanded in a way that hurt so bad, yet satisfied her, answering all her desires and locking them together.
His hips barely moved now, but his cock didn’t stop. It rippled inside of Niddie, making her womb clench back, replacing the pain with shimmering delight. A waterfall rush of it climbed up her spine and down, pooling in her hips and behind her pubic bone, only to build again.
Tied inside her, the male moved her legs into a new position. She slapped at his hands, wanting to stay still. No move—can’t move, she tried to tell him, but he was sitting up, wrapping his arms around her.
The movement pulled at her and she squealed in protest, but he was fast, putting her where he wanted her, licking at her ear and over the tears in her eyes. He was still inside her, his cock alive and filling her completely. His cum flooded her womb while she shook around him, sealed to him, captive to ecstasy.
“Niddie belongs to Druku—wife, mate, lover, friend. I take you. Claim you. War bride,” he told her in a growl that made her whimper.
She wanted to deny it, knew she should say something as his mouth went to her neck, laving her with kisses and small bites. He spoke against her skin, guttural words in what must have been his native language. Dangerous words.
He was in her. How would she ever get him out?
It felt amazing to be wrapped up in him. He was huge. Her legs were split wide to accommodate his waist. His thick muscled thighs cradled her, his arms supporting her. He smoothed one of his hands over her back from her neck to her bottom, touching, savoring her skin. The other found her breast and was testing it, playing with it, fingers rubbing her distended nipple.
Cherished. Wanted. This was like nothing she’d expected.
His cock wasn’t normal. It continued to ripple as he spurted, and she continued to spasm in gasping, unyielding pleasure.
“Niddie is mine,” he told her. “Say it.” The beastly alien thumbed her nipple, pulling it.
As if the nerves there were directly connected to her core, she arched with yet another orgasm. “I’m yours!” she screamed, then kept screaming as he bit her n
eck, sinking into her veins the way that drug had.
She was an omega. A bite meant an irrevocable bond. It meant marriage. It meant forever.
What had he done? What had this slave done to her?
She felt him now—felt his deep, growly satisfaction. He rushed into her and filled her in a frenzy of alpha possession. He owned her.
Completed her.
The rush of shock and confusion hit Niddie in waves, even as she realized something in her body had changed. That burning want—the demanding itch of it that had driven her to her knees and made her want to taste alpha cum so bad she’d beg for it—it had left her. The drug had run its course. It was out of her system now. Gone as quick and cold as it had entered her.
Like a pair of glasses that altered the shape and color of the world, her false desire was gone, leaving her with a bare, ugly reality. The slave’s pulsing, too-large cock throbbed inside of her, his fresh bite on her shoulder, bleeding.
She dropped her head on his chest. “What have you done?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Taken my woman.”
“No. No. You have raped and marked the heir of House Trenneth. They will kill us both.”
“No rape.” He palmed the back of her head, tugging it back hard. She met demanding eyes. “I do not rape. Niddie crawled to Druku on her hands and knees and begged to be taken. Niddie took the claim. Orki do not rape.”
She felt fearful tears burning her eyes. Had to deny him. Had to deny this. This would never be acceptable. “The drug. He gave me something. I never wanted this. I never wanted any male. I’ve been banished to the country to think about my choices, not to turn ass-up for an alien alpha. You don’t understand anything. They will kill me or make a slave of me too. My mother will turn her back on me. And she’s coming here.”
Niddie’s voice began to rise in panic. She looked down at their connected bodies, trying to get her feet under herself and pull away.
He pushed her forward, and she felt that pinch of his teeth a second time. It was like a spinal inhibitor; she went limp, his purr filling the room in the wake of her silence.
The sight of their entwined bodies, stomach to stomach, filled her vision. She was filled up with alpha cock, bitten, claimed. It wasn’t what she’d wanted, but it was what she had.
His jaws loosened and gentled. He kissed her shoulder and up her neck to her ear. Niddie released a breathy sigh. She should have been doing something more rational, but his bite had released a rush of happy chemicals. With her unique omega pituitary gland triggered by his semen, knot, and pheromones, he’d reduced her to a puddle of acquiescent goo, and she could barely sit up. His alpha purr added to the combination, tricking her body and soothing her mind. It was as bad as the drug Zeke had shot into her neck.
This part had always terrified Niddie more than the sex and the knotting. She had seen how omegas went from normal, composed human women to weak-willed and mindless in response to alpha noises and alpha cock. She had seen them do things, agree to things that no sane woman would agree to. They’d been dominated. Taken over. Helpless to resist.
A drug had initiated this, but as she cuddled close to the heat of this strange male, she didn’t want to leave. The old Niddie in the back of her head yelled in outrage. Unfortunately, she’d been recreated, a new self, born into the world and connected to this man. And new Niddie felt safer and more content than she had in her entire life.
New Niddie couldn’t care about rational, because this beast of a slave was going to take care of everything. New Niddie just wanted to crawl inside of him and take a little nap before getting to know him better.
He kissed at her neck, behind her ear, and over her closed eyes. His gentle touches made her squirm and shiver. With seductive intent he kissed all over her face, sweet and reverent, first on one side, then the other. He kissed her forehead, nose, chin, the corner of her mouth, and back down her neck until Niddie squirmed for a different reason.
Why didn’t he kiss her mouth? Why didn’t he want to taste her? Give her one of those deep, alpha kisses of ownership?
He teased her with kisses until his cock could move again. She gasped when she felt the odd shape at the top close. It brushed against her on the inside with a sensation that defied both pain and pleasure.
“How long until your dam arrives?” he asked, holding her to him he rocked forward, then back, suddenly standing and then setting her down on the divan.
A wet, soggy mess with her legs still spread wide, strained muscles confused, and mind befuddled because everything he had pumped into her was now pouring out of her, Niddie felt so empty she wanted to cry. She looked down at herself at the marks from his fingertips that were going to bruise under the tattered remains of her clothing. She had a belt on and a few pieces of torn cloth, and she couldn’t remember how she got this way.
“Little lamb.” He lifted her face. “How long until your dam arrives?”
“My dam?”
“Your mother.”
“Oh. I messaged her. Told her that the foreman, that opportunist Zeke, was planning something. She didn’t answer. But I know she will come. Send help. Probably. Maybe. At least to oversee the assets of the farm. She loves the horses.” She scanned the room, pausing at Zeke’s twisted form. “She will blame this all on me. The dead slaves. Zeke. Everything is my fault because I’m not a proper child.”
Bending himself in half, he kissed her eyebrow. “No,” he said. “No one blames my mate. No one sees her unless I say. Unless it is safe.”
Her eyebrows lowered in what Niddie knew must be another baffled expression. What was he talking about? Could he see that she had no idea? He kissed them both, making a noise deep in his chest that sounded like amusement. “My little lamb will know the lion who claims her.”
Seated on her uncle’s antique, brocade divan, leaking all over the thing, she looked up at this alien lion who’d claimed her. He looked more like a living mountain than those big cats from the picture vids. Aside from his not-hair, which did look mane-like, he was the furthest thing from photos of Terran lions she had ever seen. He was a giant—a naked, gray, spotted giant, with tusks and muscles and a wet, dripping cock standing between his legs, the immense ball sac of a stallion in its prime swaying behind it.
He was also covered in slash marks, brands, and tattoos. There were bright red ones on his pectoral muscles and the meat of his deltoids—not typical slave tattoos. “DMW” was emblazoned in common print, along with a blocky brand that read “Terminate” and had been inked over, as well as “Do Not Sell.” The messages were repeated in several languages on his arms, along with a numeric code, and in addition to all that, an Ikavu danger signal dominated his left pectoral.
Niddie recognized the symbol as the same notice stamped on the merchant containers that came in and out of House Trenneth and made up the bulk of their wealth. Her House trafficked in weapons as the human-alien go-between. That symbol meant more than danger; it meant “highly deadly.” The Ikavu used it on their city-destroyer explosives.
She gaped at him as she took in the sight. How was this creature here in her uncle’s sitting room, alive?
“What are you?”
He spoke in that language of his, a grouping of guttural vowels together with her name. “I am Druku, the orki who has claimed you. I will be the husband, mate-friend, of Niddie.”
That wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for. Her nickname sounded silly within his serious pronouncement. He’d bitten her, and already she could feel the threads of their bond, the neuro-chemical reaction of his saliva mixing with her blood. Her insides felt the lack of him; her vagina pulsing in unexpected, disturbing ways. As much as his bite had marked her, she wondered what in the world his seed was doing. Should she be able to feel it like this?
Trying to regain her composure, Niddie forced her legs closed. Oh, that hurt. She messed with the belt at her waist. The scraps of cloth left clinging to it made her sneer. She must look a wreck. She certainly felt tha
t way.