She suddenly felt shy. “No,” she said, looking away from his eyes.
“Well then,” he told her, gracefully lowering her to the ground in one smooth motion, “I promise to not take it easy on you.”
She threw her head back and laughed as he buried his face between her legs. Her laughter soon turned to moans of pleasure as he began licking her wetness, deeply kissing her clitoris. She dug her nails into his shoulders as his thick finger rubbed then parted her vulva, joining his tongue in a dip inside her hot core.
“More,” she told him, hooking her hands under his armpits. She pulled him up so his face was level with hers. “More,” she repeated.
For the first time they kissed. Deep and hard. Their lips hungry, their tongues finding each other. He pulled her tight and she lost herself in his arms, in his mouth, in his scent… oh yes, please…
He grabbed her hips and she grabbed his cock, guiding it to her, rubbing it slowly over her pussy. “Do you want it?” she whispered, feeling the thickness of the head against her lips, “do you want to be inside me?”
“Yes,” he moaned, his cock twitching in her hand, “I want to fuck you.”
“Fuck me,” she offered, guiding him inside. “Fuck me.” She clawed his back as he filled her, his thick cock moving inside slowly. She could not speak. She could not breathe. She could only feel. It’s what I need. Unable to hold back, he thrust faster and harder until she came…and came…and came.
She was exhausted but her body was on fire. His pheromones were like a drug, and she found herself pulled back her back for another fix. She was on top now, riding him, arching her back and pumping herself up and down, up and down his shaft. She caressed her body as she fucked him, celebrating her breasts, her tummy, her hips, letting him fondle her and watch her work. She came again, tensing and then releasing herself all over him. A tiny noise escaped his throat. “Yes,” he whispered and she knew.
Its time. She built speed and tension, riding until he gripped her hips and snarled, “I’m coming…” and his body bucked, his muscles clenching. His legs spasmed as he moaned in pleasure.
Inside, Ester felt him pulse, she felt his penis throb. She came again, and together their bodies trembled in tiny convulsions. Can it really be like this? Ester wondered, her brain still blissed out from the powerful pull of his musk.
Under the influence of his scent and her satiation, she couldn’t help but wax poetic to herself, her mind conjuring images of endless days and nights of fucking and eating and sleeping and waking and fucking… we have nowhere else to be. We have nothing else to do.
It was true. They weren’t going anywhere.
She rolled over and cuddled deeper into his warm skin. “Do you think we can make it work here?” she asked dreamily.
He was thoughtful a moment, playing with her hair. “I think,” he told her, “that we can live long, somewhat happy lives.”
She sat up and looked at him. Her innocent question and his wistful reply were weighted with unintended truths. Make it work, not live. Somewhat happy, not endlessly joyful. The sadness in her eyes caught him by surprise.
“What?” he asked her. “What just happened?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just…” She didn’t want to talk anymore. She wanted to melt, to disappear into his arms and float away from the reality lurking beyond his muscular embrace. “I think we can be more than somewhat happy, if we try.”
He smiled and kissed her forehead, “Of course we can,” he reassured her. It wasn’t even a lie. He believed it and so did she.
Chapter 7
Time passed as it does. Days into weeks, weeks into months. They were happy enough in their solitude: sleeping, fucking, surviving.
Water was no problem once the reclamation and filtration system was running; food was never abundant but a ram-cat-bear a month was more than enough to supplement the protein fungus.
They began mapping the area, working off grids they created, drawing maps on cave walls. Ester maintained her certainty that their Stinger crashed on the other side of the southern mountain range. The wind predominantly blows south to north. We came in hot, the wind carried the chutes this way while the ship kept its trajectory that way. It was the logical place, but she didn’t like it.
The southern mountains were huge, snow-capped peaks jutting up to the never-ending cloudbank above. Her original estimate was a month to get up and over but the more they inspected the mountain range the longer her projections became. “Maybe a month to get up,” she told Rocky as they finished packing the last of their gear, “but those things look like they stretch back forever. We might be looking for that ship until we drop from old age.”
“I know,” he told her, fastening his pack, “and you know my opinion.”
Ester knew what he thought. Fuck the Stinger. Fuck the Earth Military Defense. Fuck the war. Stay here. Grow old. Live long, quiet lives together far from politics and fighting and murder.
She knew exactly what Ricky thought, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t.
“It’s my planet,” she said as she had so many times before, “my friends fighting and dying for it, my family. You know I can’t just abandon them. We don’t…” she couldn’t finish her sentence for the emotion blocking her throat.
Ester slid her pistol into the holster on her hip. She gave a long look to Rocky, finally saying, “We don’t deserve to sit the fight out. We may want to, but we can’t. Those monsters destroyed your home and now they’re trying to destroy mine. We can’t let other people die for us, not just so we can sleep in late and fuck all day. It’s not fair, is it?” He couldn’t answer and she didn’t make him.
She tied the long swath of fabric around her face and adjusted it over her nose and mouth. No dust, no cough. “You ready?” she asked.
Rocky nodded and slipped his own facemask over his nose and mouth. “Let’s do it, partner.”
There was only the slightest of hesitation while Ester looked around, giving their small cave one last look. It had been their home for half a year while they healed and prepared for their trip. And now…
They set off. South. No way to know for sure how long it would take or if they would ever be successful. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they try. What mattered was they were warriors and their fight was not over.
Ester took Rocky’s hand as they trudged through the driving winds and shifting sands. Together, she thought, squeezing his hand tight, certain of at least this one thing, or not at all.
THE END
Star Crossed
Sci-fi Romance
By: Linda Mathers
Chapter 1
It’s been nine years and 73 days since my life was uprooted, ripped apart at the seams. Nine years and 73 days since the first Axylan uprising, since Ayla IX took down the first cities with ray guns and bombs. She’s the leader of the fleet, the proverbial butterfly fluttering her wings. The one who started the chain reaction that has led to the enslavement of the human race. New York was the first to go, followed shortly by Washington. Now the Axylan reign reaches to the furthest parts of the planet—structures have gone up in Antarctica, Australia, Russia, and all over Europe. There’s no escape.
My existence now plays out in one of the hundreds of Human internment bunkers. Day-to-day life is a series of regimented motions, a strict schedule of sleeping, eating, working. There’s no relaxation or recreation for Humans anymore. The survivors of the attacks are housed in prison-like structures on the outskirts of all major cities, the unfortunate few condemned to playing out a historical cliché erecting statues of the new leaders—Ayla IX, Gorge IV and V—in the broiling heat of the wasteland. Those are the criminals, the earliest rebels, the ones who tried to fight back and failed. Instead of their lives ending with the sharp pain of a ray gun blast to the chest, their very essence is doomed to seep from their bones in the artificial heat of the hordes, dragging gargantuan stone blocks over sandy plains to erect large-scale replicas of the new leaders in
to position.
Giving up isn’t even an option. We have no weapons left, no rope with which to hang ourselves, no knives to slice open veins. Besides, inside the bunkers, it isn’t so bad. Although I’ve been separated from my family and friends, my identity stripped away and replaced with a four-digit tattoo; although my worldly possessions have been taken from me; although we eat the same murky sludge for breakfast, lunch and dinner; although I spend 12 hours a day slogging away at huge printing presses to produce propaganda for the aliens’ use—it isn’t so bad. Because for me, there is still hope.
Today in particular the hope is palpable. It’s approximately 1900 hours, and I’m finishing up work at the press, yanking another hundred or so glossy leaflets proclaiming Ayla IX’s immense power and wisdom in a range of cheesy slogans, to file them away before dinner. Beads of sweat roll down my forehead, collects on my brow, and my arms ache like crazy. And then there is the barrel of the ray gun jammed into the back of my neck every time I slow down.
I barely remember my old temp job, but I think it was relatively stress-free. In an office, a corporation in downtown New York. It is another life away, the idea of handing out mugs of coffee, taking calls, filling out spreadsheets. So far from this dingy printing press in an underground bunker. So far from being controlled by marble-skinned creatures sporting riot shields and guns, with biceps the size of my torso. The Tribe members are huge, the smallest members still hitting six-and-a-half feet tall. Their inner wrists conceal retractable claws, coated with a lethal poison. Each member bears a tattoo indicating their rank—roman numerals ranging from I to XX—on the back of their beefy neck. The guards here are of the second lowest rank or XIX, above only those on the home front, the ones who stay behind to keep the settlements running.
They hadn’t looked so threatening, at first. The Axyla Tribe landed weaponless, defenseless—or so we thought. Civil war destroyed their home planet, nuclear bombs blowing it out of their solar system. They weren’t the victors, they claimed, only the refugees, the sole survivors who had managed to get away before things got messy. We Humans felt sorry for them, welcomed them to Earth with open arms and homemade pie. There had been referendums, conferences, government broadcasts, and men on soapboxes screaming about the world’s imminent demise if we were to accept these “refugees”; but eventually their fleets looked so sad and so desperate that the world leaders decided “to hell with it,” and down they came.
It was peaceful and mutually beneficial, at first. They brought new resources, stocked up our depleted fossil fuels, and came up with new sources of energy, new technologies, and new medical treatments. They cured diseases we thought it impossible to. We gave them sanctuary. Humans lived longer, healthier lives with their influence. Everything was good…
In retrospect, however, their uprising was inevitable. They were more powerful than we were. What began as a peaceful integration, with settlements on the edges of human towns and cities, festered into an all-out war, aliens wrestling the Human race for control of the planet. They brought a reign of torture and terror worse than anything Earth had ever known.
It’s with that in mind that I slip from my cell this night. It’s not difficult to do, not with the overflowing prison population and a cellmate who sleeps like the dead. I check twice to make sure she’s actually sleeping, then sweep my long auburn hair into a simple ponytail at the nape of my neck. A glance in the mirror just confirms what I already know—the past few years have aged me way past me actual age of 27. I could maybe pass for 30 in the right light, but in the wrong light…
It’s depressing, this realization that everything I’ve ever worked for is reduced to the tattered clothes on my back, my haggard appearance. Amy Cross, this is your life! Dark circles ring my eyes, the shadows of my hollow cheekbones accentuating my deathly pale skin. I might have been pretty once, but that’s gone now, stolen by eight years of being imprisoned underground with no hint of sunlight other than whatever manages to leak in through our barred window. My lips rest in a thin, angry line, my hair lies limp against my sweaty forehead. I’m too skinny—it’s difficult to maintain a healthy weight on the prison diet—so the belt around my standard-issue grey jumpsuit is cinched twice around my slender waist. The only things that have retained their youth are my eyes—a phosphorescent jade, bright even in the dim light of the cell. My eyes betray the lingering hope that resides in stubborn abundance in my heart.
Getting out of the cell requires a simple trick of gum in the lock, practically invisible unless you know what you’re looking for. They don’t have enough guards to keep track of all the locks, and the system is so old—dating back to the early 21st century—that this hole in security fails to show up on the scanners.
I steal down the corridor quickly and silently, sticking to the shadows and watching out for any guard patrols. They’re easy to predict, usually. Every half hour, two of them traipse down our corridor, riot shields held up to beefy chests, guns tucked protectively up to their chins, ready to fire at the slightest sign of trouble. They tend to set their guns to stun mode, reluctant to purposely pick off their workers, but today just might be the day…
Thankfully, it isn’t far to the basement. A small alcove leads to a fire exit, then I jog down stone steps down to the lower levels. I make sure the door doesn’t clang shut and echo down the halls for the guards to hear. Even this slight rush of danger, the sensation of doing something that goes undetected, makes me feel as if I’m aiding the Human forces. Emerging in the basement itself—a cavernous room, empty save for a large wooden table in the center—brings such a feeling of euphoria and achievement that I have to pause to catch my breath.
The basement hasn’t been used in years. I doubt the Axylan guards have ever been down here. The machine I want lies behind a concealed door in the south wall, only accessible via a retinal-biometric scanner hidden behind a faux-stone panel. Taylor installed the panel system a couple years’ back. It is the only modern thing in the entire room. That is, other than the time-travel unit behind it. From what I could glean from the original building blueprints, the basement was originally intended for use as a break-room, back when the architects were drawing up just another run-of-the-mill maximum-security prison. They could never conceive it would be taken over by aliens who had no need for rest and recuperation.
Three of the others are already there, waiting for me. There’s Keith, a stout man in his late 40s, cheap reading glasses perched on the end of his nose while he studies a map spread out on the table. He doesn’t speak much, only to offer single word answers and rather startlingly practical plans of attack. Next is Briana, her long brown hair yanked up into a messy knot atop her head, concentration fixed over Keith’s shoulder, jabbing an insistent index finger to a point on the map. She’s much too young to be involved in such dangerous missions, but this is the end of the world as we know it, people! Age doesn’t stop her. She’s stealthy, uncannily able to track down a target in a crowd and take them down with clinical efficiency. I worry about her, sometimes, remembering a time when I was 17, only interested in driving around with my friends, blasting ignorantly loud music and sneaking vodka into house parties. What I’d give to preserve even a smidgen of that innocence, now…
Last is Taylor, our informal leader. He’s also the friendliest, a young 20-something with blonde curls falling into his eyes, a ready smile and a shoulder to cry on if and when it’s needed. He’s the one who first contacted me, one day in the mess hall, as I stared down into yet another bowl of barely distinguishable porridge. He’d planted a silent tap on my shoulder, shoved a crumpled napkin into my hand and left without a word. Later, I’d unfolded the napkin while lying in my bunk, squinting to read the words by the dim light: 12:45 patrol. East C122, south. HR.
A crude downward pointing arrow was scrawled on the bottom of the napkin. It had taken a couple of minutes of frowning to make out the scribbled words of code on the page, but eventually I’d taken the note to mean that after the post-midnigh
t guard patrols, I should head east down corridor 122 and then south. I had been invited to join their rebel effort. I hadn’t taken much convincing.
Our plan each night is a simple one: We take the machine back in time, and we weed out the alien settlements before they organize and take over. We’ve taken down a good few so far, with wave after wave of explosions. Fire is the only thing that will destroy the marble-skinned aliens, the only thing that can be counted on to kill them. The bombs we use were ironically stored away by the apocalyptic dooms-day preppers, the people others laughed at as being paranoid back before we even knew there was life outside our planet. We’ve hoarded enough of them in our hideout—a ramshackle shed a couple of miles from where the prison will one day lie—to take out at least 60 percent of the alien population on our continent. The problem is transport. We’re one of about a hundred of the same efforts in what was the United States, ex-military, ex-FBI, ex-CIA, all banded together to stop the attacks before they ever begin. The news channels nine years ago blamed the attacks on random “terrorist organizations”. So far we’ve managed to put a hurt on two settlements closest to the prison, but with only one truck between the five of us when we get back there, it’s impossible for us to split up and take different directions. There’s also the matter of timing—if we didn’t have to return to the present, we’d be able to cover more ground and make more progress. But the prototype time machines have a limit of 24 hours’ travel. If we don’t get back in that timeframe, we’ll be spontaneously self-destruct—it is how the universe balances itself when you break the laws of nature I figure. We have to allow another 48 hours for the machine to cool down, meaning thrice weekly journeys are all we can manage.
It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. If we can get their numbers down, we have a fighting chance at forming an uprising of our own in this time line. We could defeat the enemy forces once and for all. Even if it doesn’t happen in my lifetime, even if I’m six feet under by the time the human race is free again, it’ll be worth it.
Romance: Scifi Romance: Mated by the Alien (Abduction BWWM Paranormal Romance) (Interracial First Contact Space Romance) Page 6