by Seth Eden
Of course she did.
But.
"Come here." If he objected to her telling him what to do then he could figure out how to respond without her input. He'd woken her from a confused sleep and ow she was awake, at least one of them should get something out of it.
She held her hand out and he came toward her as if commanded. He took her biceps rather than her hand, but she thought that was normal for him. If it wasn't what they did on his planet, then it was only because he was used to guiding prisoners, not accompanying someone willing.
In the bathroom she turned the shower to hot, tempering it only to find a heat level she could bear before turning to help him out of his clothes. This seemed normal to him, the servant helping him divest his garments, and he allowed it without comment. She followed suit, not that it took long to drop the tiny silken nothing to the floor. She picked it up and hung it before he could insist. She hated lingerie and longed for her sweats. The sweats she did have were limited in use to only a few hours a day when she was supposed to be improving her mind reading works of literature she could entertain the Vampyren with.
Very often she slept instead. The vamps could entertain themselves.
Now she took his hand, her eyes going at once to the beauty and bounty of his naked body. His cock stirred under her watchful gaze and she allowed herself a smile at that as she took his hand and led him into the shower.
"Is this an Earth custom?"
The water was already flowing red off of him, and some parts she could see the blood had dried and would require some scrubbing.
"Showering or showering together?" He could mean either. She had no idea how they cleaned themselves. Perhaps they licked themselves from head to toe like cats.
… now there was an image.
Only as the image went on, it was her he was licking.
A second heartbeat started up inside her again, echoing at pints of her wrists and throat and belly, but primarily beating in the space between her legs where she wanted him.
He hadn't answered her yet when she took the grapefruit-scented body wash and warmed the gel in the streams of water. The shower was luxurious, with double heads from each side of the shower, a ridiculous high end thing to be featured in a desert hotel, but she loved the sensation and with Alek in the shower, she didn't have to be wet and cold while she lathered the gel in her hands and began to stroke it onto his back.
For just an instant he froze, holding every muscle still, and she wondered if she'd guessed hideously wrong.
But then his muscles relaxed by degrees and his head dropped forward, his hand going up to brace his body against the tile of the shower, as if her strength were enough to push him around.
"Never mind," he said, his voice thick. "I believe I understand the allure."
Mindy laughed deep in her throat and concentrated on what she was doing. She could feel the tension in his body running before her touch, as if she shooed an animal from place to place. His neck was tight until she worked on it, reaching up to stroke the corded muscle under this thick black hair. Tonight he was very nearly as bearded a the other Vampyren, the usual stubble forming more of a whole. It made his gold eyes look darker, his lips more sensual.
But for now she had his back to her and she ran her hands over the muscles of his shoulders, letting the heat of her hands and the heat of the water relax him as she stroked and scrubbed and washed and released even the most stubborn dried blood. Down a bit then, to the center of his back, her fingertips following a traceries of scars. With any other lover she'd ask, but with him –
He wasn't her lover.
She straightened up and tried to get her head back in the game. Soaping. Stroking. Loving the feel of his satiny skin and the contrast of scar tissue. Her hands went down to the slope of lower back, stroked over the high, round ass, dipping her fingers between his legs to wash there and finding his balls drawing up as if her touch excited him.
It excited her. She was wetter than the shower alone could make her. Her breath had begun to come fast and unevenly. She fondled him, loving the feeling of his balls in her hand, stroking and feeling his cock jolt away from her, hardening. Still he held himself rigid in the same pose, head down, trusting her, for some reason, trusting himself to her ministrations.
She gentled him around, using care she shouldn't waste on a killer. His eyes were open and he watched her face. Mindy looked away from him. His mouth was coated in blood and she felt her stomach rise again.
She'd see to that later. For now, she concentrated on shoulders again, on the impressive pecs that were running with blood. He must have been naked or nearly so when he hunted and she found the image of him running naked erotic even as she found the hunt repellant.
Humans weren't supposed to have to deal with this.
The Vampyren weren't supposed to be on Earth.
They weren't supposed to exist.
She stroked her hands lower, washing his eight pack, stroking the gel over him, laving it on thickly, laughing in her throat at the thought of the botanicals being used n this rugged warrior.
He didn't respond to her soft sounds. He just stood, the hot water pounding onto him and the spray of her shower head hitting him. His black hair was plastered to his head, to his neck.
Then she reached down and took his cock in her hands and his eyes opened, he started to move away from her, and she knew she'd crossed another line, like touching herself would have been, maybe the female never took the lead like this.
She couldn't make herself care. She wanted to touch him, to run her hands up and down the thick, hard length of him, to feel a more tender side than she had when he had fucked her mouth or upended her over the sofa and pressed himself hard inside her.
After a second the tension went out of his upper body. He leaned into her, this arms now going to the tiled wall of the shower on one side and the glass door on the other. he was holding himself upright, affected by her touch, his erection bouncing in her hands.
"You're beautiful," she said wonderingly. How could she feel this after what he'd done? But it felt like she could compare him to a lion that had killed and eaten prey.
"Beauty is for women." His voice was stern. He was telling her a fact.
She looked up, impudent and unafraid. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's an Earth saying."
He snorted. "I know the saying."
She nodded a little cocking her head to consider him. "Well, and I'm the beholder here. I find you beautiful. Your body, your face." She glanced down at what she held in her hands but didn't say it. That might be taking things a little too far.
Without arguing, he said only, "We learned that beauty was feminine and masculine was handsome. Is that wrong?" But there was a tiredness in his voice.
"It's not wrong. You're handsome. You're beautiful. A mountain can be beautiful and still be strong and rugged. It's not an insult, Alek."
He raised his head and met her eyes.
"I find you attractive. Sexually compelling. If you want proof, then touch me." She shivered and waited and saw his thought processes. He was clearly exhausted. Whatever night or the hunt or a combination did, it had worn the warrior out.
But he reached forward without breaking eye contact and slipped his fingers between her legs, making her gasp at the heat of his hand, at the force of his touch. Nothing was ever gentle with the Vampyren. She thought she might miss gentle, and yet she ground against his hand.
"Vampyren women do not initiate." It came out a growl.
"Then they're missing out," she said, hesitating when she almost said, Then they're stupid. "You're not on Vampyren anymore if you haven't noticed and if all you wanted was the same old thing, then why come here?"
Just for a second he met her gaze and there was laughter she could identify as such in his eyes. "Never let the females hear you call them the same old thing. They'll rip your throat out in an instant and claim that forgiveness was easier to ask for than permission. I believe that'
s an Earth saying also."
She blinked. "I'll keep it in mind. Are you going somewhere with that?" Because he was still stroking between her legs and it was becoming increasingly hard to stand.
In response, he reached for her, lifted her effortlessly and pulled her to him, impaling her on his huge cock. Mindy cried out as he filled her, beginning to pump pinto her.
Her legs locked behind his back. Her arms locked around his neck. She buried her face there at juncture of neck and shoulder because the water was hitting her in the face, a fine, hot spray, but when she heard him gasp, she realized it had felt like something else.
Acceptance, maybe.
Pleasure.
He wasn't wrong.
And neither was she: It wasn't gentle. He was fierce and fearsome and fast. He pounded into her and held her steady, unable to take the pressure off any part of her, but her clit was stimulated against him somehow and she didn't care to try and figure out how. His hands molded themselves to her ass, holding her up, holding her open that he could more freely slam into her.
Until they came within seconds of each other and Mindy screamed.
And Alek laughed.
Apparently, she thought, the Vampyren could laugh. She hadn't been wrong about that.
It was actually a beautiful sound.
Or handsome.
And then she felt the world turn itself upside down and wrong side out and the was gone for a little while.
When she woke, she was alone. And sore.
And smiling.
12
He shouldn't have gone back again the next day to see the girl. She was, after all, nothing to him. The night before had been pure impulse.
Impulse was fine. Doing things because he wanted to do them. That was part of the way of being true to himself. Being the warrior he was.
Going back the next day felt like he needed something.
He did not need a human female.
She had just come back from the work she did, something she'd requested, working with the leaders. He'd have understood the request if she was vampire but she was human.
He assumed she was searching for her friend.
It bothered him to know he'd tell her if he knew anything at all about the other girl.
It bothered him that he'd been looking.
And that he'd found nothing.
It bothered him that she knew things and that she told him.
And that he listened.
It bothered him that the leaders hadn't seen fit to tell any of the militia units what they knew.
The Lucian were on Earth.
And they were beginning to mass for attack.
13
Serving the Vampyren military commanders wasn't that much different than serving businessmen back when she'd been a waitress, long before she and Candy had decided to join up with Accelerate and learned that the money was great even if the annoyance factor was higher.
Mindy had a theory that the bureaucratic mentality was the same throughout the Universe. The fact that less than a year earlier no one had known there were other races in the Universe made no difference: There were insufferable blowhards in every race.
There was also a need for coffee. Best guess, it didn't exist on whatever their planet was, because the Vampyren acted like newly minted alcoholics, kind of violently vying to be the next to get their cups under her coffee pot.
The fact that a coffee maker that was refreshed frequently and self serve would make more sense didn't occur to them. They were Vampyren. Women were supposed to serve them.
So was everyone who wasn't Vampyren and a good many who were on down the hierarchy.
As a whole, she didn't like them much.
But suggesting they change over to a self-serve coffee maker would be a terrible idea. First because it would make whoever she suggested it to fly into a rage. That went without saying.
Second, because she was learning stuff. The first few days after Candy was taken and she'd asked for the job of serving, they didn't particularly treat her with kid gloves. They just treated her as someone who it was their right to have caring for them at the same time she was the reason they couldn't speak freely, even in their own tongue, and apparently they resented that. It was an interesting mix of things.
After a couple weeks, as October took hold more firmly out in the world beyond the hotel, they got used to her.
And then they forgot her.
She shared her information with Shauna, but no one else, and only after Shauna had watched Cindie Gee walking away once and volunteered without prompting, "Whatever you do, don't trust her. She's not playing for our team."
Even though Mindy had known exactly who she was talking about she'd learned around her and peered down the hall as if making certain who Cindie was. The girl had chestnut hair that looked like it came out of a box marked Chestnut and a blue streak in the front that was fading so every day she seemed to be aging faster than she should. Her roots weren't showing, though – daily trips to the spa saw to that.
"Whose team is she playing for?" she'd wondered and when Shauna said, "Hers," decided she might be able to trust the Southern belle.
She missed Candy more every day.
She especially missed her today. Because the conference room was a hub of violent talk and more violent action. Where the bureaucratic mentality fell apart was that the males arguing were still Vampyren. They were armed, they were enormous, they were dangerous and they shouted a lot.
They were shouting when she entered and they were still shouting when she eventually left.
She'd have been shouting too.
The Lucian were coming. No one answered direct questions for the harem girls but what they'd pieced together was that the Lucian were as close to werewolves of Earth mythology as to make no difference. As huge as the Vampyren, they were animalistic, deadly, fast, hairy and always, always sexually aroused. The Vampyren, had lost women to them and that sounded tricky because Vampyren women were nothing to mess with.
The Lucian could mate with their own kind, so there were a lot fuller breeds than the Vampyren who increased their numbers by having children with humans and then treating them as mostly Vampyren – unless they didn't. The more violent and dangerous the child, the more the father assumed his spark had been what took hold.
The Lucian, apparently, just fucked. A lot. And their women caught pregnant. A lot. Now they were coining, the male warriors of their kind.
Now, she thought the males in the meeting were pretty sure the Lucian were already here.
On Earth.
What that meant for the Vampyren was there were battles coming up and the soldiers would be marching and training and having access to the harem to blow off steam (at least she thought that was what they'd said, it was half in Vampyren and she understood only some words of that) and what it meant for the humans was –
Death.
Lucian didn't colonize. They overtook. They overthrew. They killed, slaughtered and ate their way through planets unless there was something desirable about the planet.
Earth might be something they wanted. If only because the Vampyren where here and they wanted it.
Or it might not.
Either way, she thought she was one of the few humans in the world who had this information and she burned with fear as she hurried back to her room.
Tell Shauna?
Tell a non-existent Candy for the purpose of talking it through by herself? She still talked to Candy. But she and Candy had never faced anything like this.
Find Alek?
But the call came for her to go right back to the meeting before she'd gotten very far. They needed a server for the dinner portion and the usual girl had taken ill or pregnant or been drained, the coach telling her to go didn't know and didn't care.
Neither did Mindy.
She just wanted whatever information she could gather.
"Northwest by the airport. Not all of them. But it is going to be – "
"Twenty-five men and the machines, we need to send backup – "
"You're wrong, the Lucian would never accept – "
"Send one of the harem, they can't resist, they'd lose face – "
"Girl have to volunteer --?"
"Who gives a – " and there the speaker, one of the coarser and heavily bearded, heavily muscled Vampyren used their equivalent of fuck.
Of course they didn't care. The girl would be a human, or a fallen from grace Vampyren female, and the trip was one-way. Suicide. She'd go in with the vampire equivalent of a wire and get information.
Whoever she was, she'd go in as a spy.
She shivered and tried to turn invisible as she served.
"You! Girl!"
Mindy jerked her head around. What she'd wanted was a head's up, an idea what was coming their way, because no one in the Vampyren camp was going to worry about warning the harem before an attack by the planet killer Lucians.
What she hadn't wanted was –
"Her. She works. Send her. She's good at serving and you know she's been fucked."
Fuck you, Mindy thought, schooling her face to look bland.
It had been five months since the invaders came to Earth, and two since she'd been brought here. She was toned, buff, stronger, thinner, and her hair and nails were more perfect than even Accentuate! had demanded.
That was supposed to make her desirable to the vampires whether she wanted it or not.
It wasn't supposed to make her werewolf bait.
It was all she could do not to run.
"Decide on that later," one of the males said. He was taller than the others, imposing as Pan but it wasn't Pan. These were the rulers, minor royalty who ran the militia.
They were the ones deciding her fate.
In the next second, it wasn't just hers.
"Send her? She's Alek's whore."
"Who?" another voice asked, sounding pettier than unknowing.
"Pan's brother."
"Why would I accede to his wishes?"
"He's a commander."
"And I'm his lord and master."
"But the girl – "