Blood bubbled from the wound with each shallow breath he took. The denseness of the hardwood was a mercy. There were no other pieces to recover. All that remained were the scraps of his shirt. She plucked them away. Then, moving quickly, she smoothed the biocircuit gel over the ragged mess of his flesh, and sealed the wound with strips of computronic adhesive.
Errol sagged in the chair. He was conscious, but the distance in his gaze told Hadiza he wasn’t truly there with her. His massive body trembled. His skin felt cool to the touch. He was going into shock. His breath came in shallow, rapid gasps. Dilated veins stood out along his neck. His lips darkened to iron gray.
Tension pneumothorax. Just as she’d expected.
She picked up the utility knife and, with bloodied fingers, felt along his right flank, tracing the mid-axillary line, counting intercostal spaces until she landed on number four. Praying that his anatomy was similar enough to humans, she balanced the point of the knife against his skin, holding it just along the topside of the rib bone. His skin was much harder than human skin, she’d have to account for that. Gauging her strength against his size, she punched the narrow little blade into his body. He didn’t react—a bad sign.
She knew she’d found the pleural cavity when bloody little bubbles formed around the haft of the blade. She slid the knife out, and picked up the sanitized length of tubing. With nearly the same brute force as the knife, she pushed it into the opening.
She was rewarded with a soft gurgle of air from the tube.
She’d gotten it. She took the last two pieces of computronic adhesive and taped the tube into place. In an ideal world, the tube would have a one-way valve. But this wasn’t an ideal world. She didn’t have any idea what kind of world it was.
She listened to the slow crackle of air seeping from the tube. Gradually, the distended veins in his neck smoothed out. His breathing grew less frantic. His lips paled back to their natural silvery-gray.
Hadiza nicked off one more piece of tape and adhered it to the end of the tube so that only a sliver remained open. Hopefully, it would reduce the likelihood of air entering while the pressure inside his thorax forced air out. It was a far cry from a fully-equipped surgery center, but it was better than nothing.
With everything in place, she moved back around to the front, sliding between Errol’s knees. She leaned in close, probing gently at the tissue around the injury.
She couldn’t be totally certain, but there seemed to be only one broken rib. He’d avoided a flail segment—which would’ve moved human odds of survival in these circumstances from very slim, to non-existent. Now, the only concern was a hemothorax—blood filling the cavity created by the lung injury. She braced herself with one knee on the edge of his seat between his thighs, and gently laid her head against his chest, below the injury, listening.
She could hear his heartbeat. Steady. Even. His breath was a rhythmic whoosh, but she didn’t hear the telltale crackle of fluid. She was listening with her bare ear, rather than with a stethoscope, so she couldn’t be certain of anything, but it was encouraging.
When she drew back, Errol was watching her through heavy-lidded eyes. She laid the back of her hand to his brow, his chest, the inside of his wrist. He still felt a bit cool, but he was warming back up. She took the wrist of his uninjured arm and measured his pulse. It was slow—extremely slow—but steady. She suspected a creature of his size would naturally have a slow heart rate.
He didn’t speak. Neither did she. There was nothing good to say. He was, in all likelihood, still going to die. Despite all her training, her effort, those few strokes of luck, it still wasn’t going to be good enough.
She licked her lips, and a familiar taste filled her mouth.
She felt herself slipping again—a tug inside her chest that pulled her backwards in time. Whose blood was she tasting this time?
She saw them all.
Corporal Hendrix, Lieutenant Moua, Private Smith, Captain Ramirez, Sergeant Gibran. Glassy eyes and pale faces. Twenty-year-old kids whose names she’d never learned. Lovers and parents and siblings and children who’d never see home again—who’d spent their last moments in fear and pain.
“Hadiza.”
How many hands had she held all the way to the gates of death? How many souls had she watched pass through, helpless to pull them back?
“Rourra. Come back.”
She felt their hot blood and their clammy skin, heard their last, dying sobs—
“Hadiza!” He called her back on a rough bark.
She gasped, blinking her eyes open, looking into Errol’s worried face. “I—” Her gaze flashed around the ruined shuttle, her heart thundering in her chest. “How long…”
“Only a moment,” Errol rasped, his voice pulling her gaze back to his. “You were only gone for a moment.”
As the last remnants of the dissociative episode faded away, exhaustion swept through her—and something else. She licked her lips, tasting his blood again. “I think…” She swayed unsteadily, falling back against the instrument panel. “Oof. I think—” A gentle hum fizzed beneath her skin, scattering her thoughts. She felt slippery and loose and starved for touch. “I think your blood does the same thing as your saliva,” she finally managed to say.
He stiffened. “Get away from me,” he said roughly. “Run.”
Chapter Twelve
Hadiza pushed away from Errol, flinching as she backed into the crushed-down ceiling panel. His pupils dilated as he watched her.
“Don’t disturb the decompression tube,” she said muzzily. The drugging languor was stealing her thoughts, making her words thick and clumsy. “Your lung—the pleural cavity…” His body was so big. His skin would be so lovely and warm. What if she just crawled into his lap? She could press herself against the bare skin of that big, broad chest—her eyes fell on his taped-up wound.
He was injured. She’d make it worse. Hot, untenable desire warred with her medical instincts.
Get away from him.
No, let me feel him. Let me—
Without meaning to, she reached out, trailing a gentle touch along the curve of his bicep.
“Get away,” he snarled, a desperate edge in his voice. “It won’t be long before I get the strength back in my arm.”
Her fingertips curled into his skin—so hot, so hard. His flesh was like marble, but it yielded to her touch, and radiated the intense heat of a large, hot-blooded beast.
“Hadiza.” He said her name with a desperation that made her skin ripple with gooseflesh. “For your sake, leave.”
But she couldn’t.
Errol watched as the acuity in Hadiza’s eyes slipped into a glassy, lust-driven haze. Something primitive, something predatory, surged inside of him, blotting out the pain of his injury.
Hadiza’s lithe, warm body slid into his lap, her soft thighs spreading over his hips. His cock rose to instant attention, pressing urgently against his trousers, desperate to feel the inviting heat of her sex. His hips rolled up against her, sliding her core along the length of his erection. The pleasure of it tore a groan from deep in his chest. Faintly, he felt the ache of his injury, but it was buried beneath the feel of Hadiza pressed against him, her lush hips rolling against his. He thrust against her, tormenting them both with the hot friction impeded by the layers of their clothing.
Hadiza panted in soft little breaths. Her fingers curled against the skin of his chest. Eyes drifting shut, lips softly parted, she ground herself against the hard ridge of his cock. Her lip ring glinted against the lush swell of her lower lip, inviting him to taste.
He tried to lean towards her, but one arm was trapped by the crumpled bulkhead, the other nerveless and unresponsive. A frustrated growl rumbled in his chest.
Hadiza’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked up, meeting his gaze. Her hands slid up his chest. One slid over his taped injury, sending a bolt of pain through him. It was a sharp, clarifying pain—restoring his sense.
“No,” he said gruffly, leani
ng back.
Her hands circled behind his neck, and she pulled herself up on her knees, seeking his mouth. He turned his face away, held his breath. He couldn’t let the scent of her, the feel of her, overwhelm him. Even with his arms constrained, he could still fuck her. It would take only minor assistance on Hadiza’s end—assistance she seemed more than ready to offer. But hers wasn’t true acceptance—not when she wasn’t willing to accept a matebond.
“This is not you,” he rasped, trying to ignore the feel of her breasts pressed against his chest.
Her lips touched his throat, hot and wet, except for the cold little kiss of her lip ring. A delicious shiver ran down his spine.
“Hadiza—”
Her lips found the edge of his jaw.
“Listen, you’re not—”
Her weight shifted, and her elbow pressed down on his chest wound. Pain exploded through him like a lightning bolt. His vision whited out for an instant.
When he came back to himself, Hadiza was gone. He blinked, clearing his vision, panting hard. Where was she? What had he done to her?
There—she stood just in front of him, gripping the flight panel like it was a life raft in a stormy sea. She hauled in heavy, haggard breaths, her eyes squeezed shut.
“I’m sorry.” She let out a long, pained breath. “I’m sorry. I can’t—”
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, surging against his restraints again, snarling when he went nowhere.
She cracked out a thin, humorless laugh. “No, you masochist. I hurt you.” Her beautiful lips were pressed into a thin, hard line. Despite her fierce grip on the flight panel, her hands trembled. A pained sound escaped her. “And I’m going to do it again,” she whispered, agonized self-recrimination in her voice. “I can’t fight this.”
The sight of her struggling against her desire sent a hot pulse straight to his groin. The scent of her warm skin filled the air, and with it, the musk of her arousal.
Come back. The words rose up in his throat, rumbling as a speechless purr. A predatory satisfaction swelled through him, heating his blood, blotting out the pain of his injury. If he called her, she would obey. His toxin was singing through her veins. She was helpless to it. He only had to reach out and take.
He sat frozen between two opposing desires, paralyzed by the intensity of feeling that rushed through him. Desire overwhelmed his senses, but his abhorrence of it was nearly as strong. Want was a bottomless pit. It was a weakness that controlled its host. He was not weak. He would not be controlled.
And he would not take from Hadiza. He could not stand to see the betrayal in her eyes when the intoxication lifted, and she understood what he had done to her.
“Hadiza—”
“Don’t say my name,” she hissed, flinching back from him.
Another wave of unbearable lust washed over him as he realized that she liked the sound of her name in his mouth—liked it too much.
“Human,” he forced himself to say, his voice a harsh growl. “Get away from me. Crawl into the back of the shuttle. Barricade yourself in the lav. Hide.” Hide from me, Hadiza. Because if I get free, I don’t know which side of me will win this fight.
She couldn’t.
She tried to turn away, but then she looked into his face, and the hunger there reflected her own. Before she knew it, she was back in his lap, straddling his big thighs, running her hands over the uninjured portions of his chest.
It was different from the last time. This time, she was powerless to say no. Last time, Errol had been out of his head, and unconscious. But now he was very present, and he was saying her name in that deep, gravelly voice. And when she touched him, the strain and tension vanished from his face, and then there was only hunger. And she knew now that he wanted her too. That he wanted her touch, and wanted her body, and—there was some reason she shouldn’t do this. Something—but then his lips found hers, and he was kissing her with devouring passion, biting and sucking and licking at her mouth, scraping her with his fangs.
The toxin flooded her mind, raced through her blood until there was only Errol and the white hot, unbearable need to have him inside of her. She wanted him to devour her, fill her, claim her.
But he was trapped. One arm hung nervelessly, the other pinned by the damaged bulkhead. Frustrated need made her whimper as she ground her body down on his. Her skin was too hot, too tight on her own body. She peeled off layers of clothing until she was completely bare, every inch of her skin revealed to him. Errol’s gaze swept over her and he surged towards her, snarling when his trapped arm kept him pinned in his seat.
“Shhh,” Hadiza soothed, kissing his throat, his shoulder, the uninjured expanse of his chest. Her hands fumbled with the fastening of his trousers, ripping them open, pushing them down his hips. The same dark hair that grew on his chest and down his navel, spread between his thighs, framing the spectacular sight of his thick, bold cock. Like the rest of him, it gleamed like brushed nickel, but flushed darker than the rest of his skin. Hadiza grasped it in both hands, stunned once again by the size of it. She slid her thumbs over the smooth, gleaming crown, hypnotized by the tactile pleasure of his heat and hardness.
“So big,” she whispered.
Errol rocked his hips, thrusting into her grasp. “Take me inside you, rourra,” he panted.
She was helpless to do anything but obey. It was what she needed, more than anything in the world. She held his shaft and rose up on her knees, aligning the blunt head of his cock with her slick, swollen folds. She guided his crown along the seam of her body, back and forth. Agonized groans tore from his throat, and his hips bucked desperately, thrusting his cock over her clit. She jolted, crying out at the sharp bolt of pleasure.
“Let me in,” he growled. “Ach, rourra, take me into you.”
She grasped him again, guiding his cock to her entrance, tried to press the broad crown inside of her. The stretch to accept him was painful. She froze, clinging to him, gasping, struggling to take him.
“There you go,” Errol crooned. “That’s right, rourra. Let me inside. Sink down on me.”
“You’re too big,” she panted, stuck with just the tip of his cock lodged inside of her. “I can’t.”
“You can,” he growled. The words rumbled deep in his chest, a feral sound made worse by his injury. His arms were still trapped, but he managed to thrust his hips up, sinking another thick inch into her.
Hadiza cried out at the painful intrusion, simultaneously arching her back on a wave of hot pleasure. She sagged against Errol’s broad chest, overwhelmed by the twin sensations. While she lay pliant and limp against him, Errol thrust up again, spreading her flesh, gaining another savage inch. He grunted his satisfaction as she whimpered through a confusion of pleasure and pain. Gravity assisted him, and in between each brutal upward thrust of his hips, Hadiza stretched a little more, sank a little deeper. It hurt—but so good.
“Too big,” she moaned, squirming on his cock as he sank deeper inside her. “I can’t take you,” she cried again.
“You can. You are.” Errol thrust up again and again, digging into her.
She cried out with each burning, stretching, punishing thrust. Wetness flooded her core, helping her sink slickly down his thick, hard cock, until—with one last powerful thrust—he was fully seated inside of her. She felt him everywhere, hot and hard and brutally large.
“Impossible,” she panted. He was so deep inside of her. He was so thick, stretching her so wide, trapping her body against his.
“Good girl,” he groaned, hips rocking. She was so deeply impaled by him, that her entire body lifted and fell with each convulsive thrust. “Ach, rourra, ride me.”
She trembled and clung to him. She burned inside, her inner muscles still desperately stretching to accommodate the unprecedented invasion. Her legs shook, her body trembled. She hooked her ankles over his thighs, and tried to leverage herself up, but the grip of her pussy was too much. That thick, invading cock had her pinned in place, and she was too weak
with a dizzying mixture of ecstasy and agony to overcome it. She needed his strength, his power.
“Please,” she whimpered, struggling against him. “Please, Errol—”
With a savage snarl, he hauled on his trapped arm. In gradual, fitful surges, he managed to pull the limb free from the crushed bulkhead. Blood and bruising marked him from wrist to shoulder, but he was heedless of it, wrapping the arm around Hadiza’s waist and hauling her body upwards. She rose up the length of his cock, whimpering and panting as inch by thick inch slid from her. When she was perched on the tip of his cock, he pulled her down, filling her again in one brutal slam. She screamed. Pain twined with pleasure in an explosive sensation. A sharp, sudden orgasm ripped through her, making her shake and arch.
As she came, Errol lifted her, then wrenched her down again, thrusting up at the same time. Over and over, he rode her up and down the length of his cock, stretching her body until there was no more pain and only the hot, hungry need to have him thrusting into her, over and over, forever, forever. One orgasm rolled into another, and she was lost to the world, her consciousness narrowed to the joining of their bodies.
“Please,” she begged, raking her nails down his chest. She didn’t know what she was asking for. She just needed this. More of this. “Keep going,” she panted.
With his good arm, Errol lifted her from his cock entirely. She cried out at the sudden sensation of emptiness, of abandoned need. But then he was turning her around, bending her over the ship’s flight panel. She spread her palms against the cool, smooth surface, bracing herself. She sobbed in relief as she felt the press of his cock against her slick, swollen pussy. He shoved into her, his hips slamming into her ass, his heavy sac buffeting her clit.
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