by Elin Wyn
She fell back, and I caught her, one hand supporting her back, feeling every quiver run through her body as I kept licking, nibbling at her until she convulsed again.
I raised her back up until she sat at my waist, then pulled her to my chest, stroking the sensitive skin of her back as her shudders slowed.
Reaching around her thigh, I slid one finger between her folds from behind, piercing her heat, driving into her until she gasped again.
Tella’s pliable, melting body in my hands and mouth was perfection.
“Now, baby,” I purred, then dragged the head of my weeping cock against her soaked pussy. She moaned, deep and low, as I rocked my hips, working each ridge deeper inside her.
Still so tight, so hot.
“Are you alright?” I managed, even as all I wanted was to bottom out inside her, make her mad with desire as I claimed her.
“God, yes,” she murmured, then pushed herself up, knees holding her above me. The sight was too much.
I grabbed her hips, pulling her down further as she cried out, working my way deeper into her.
Tella straightened up and tipped her head back as I impaled her. As I lifted her up and down, I watched the hypnotic sway of her breasts beneath her shirt. With each thrust, my body ached, but nothing outweighed this delicious pleasure.
Nothing ever would.
“Is this how you imagined it when we stumbled out of the Crooked Swiggen?” she panted.
“Oh no,” I grinned as I buried myself inside her again. Almost to the hilt now. “I had something else in mind.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“That would ruin the surprise,” I teased. “But be assured that I planned on spending hours bringing you to every imaginable height of pleasure.” She let out a shuddering gasp as, with one final thrust, I drove into her, all the way to the hilt.
My hands at her hips kept her still as I pounded up into her, the feel of her heat surrounding me driving me wild, knocking aside any semblance of control I’d ever had.
Isolated in the forest, with the sentient plants driven away by the strange kodanos and no one to hear, Tella didn’t muffle her cries of pleasure. Listening to her gasps and feeling her reach that peak drove me over the edge and pushed me into my own climax.
With a floaty sigh, Tella leaned forward and collapsed against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her to me.
This, right here, right now, was all I’d ever wanted. We could stay like this forever.
Unfortunately, we were still on a mission.
When our breathing slowed, Tella slowly stood up and righted her clothing. I did the same.
“We should get back. I’m sure the others are worried about us.” I leaned in and planted a kiss on her forehead. But no sooner did I say that than my mouth slid lower, kissing her long sooty eyelashes before those eyes fluttered at me, and I captured her mouth with mine.
She moaned into my mouth and my willpower was tested then and there.
But she pulled away first. “Let’s go report in.” Her pink tongue swiped at her lips, and I nearly brought her to the ground, eager to taste her all over again. “And then let’s find a real bed, alright?”
Tella
Rokul and I returned to General Rouhr’s building looking like we’d been through hell, but neither of us could stop smiling.
At least that was the case until I brought up the doctor.
“You have to go see the doctor General Rouhr keeps on staff,” I insisted as I walked through the front door Rokul held open for me.
“I told you, I’m fine,” Rokul repeated. “Do you think I could’ve taken part in this morning’s activities if I wasn’t fine?”
“Yes, actually,” I laughed.
“Good, because you’re right.” Rokul threw an arm over my shoulder. “That kodanos could’ve ripped my arm off and I still would’ve wanted you.”
“Flattery won’t distract me from marching you to the doctor’s office,” I warned him.
“There’s no doctor on duty,” Rokul said breezily.
I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, there is. Her name is Evie Parr and Leena tells me she’s extremely talented when it comes to dealing with reluctant alien babies,” I prodded him.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t know about her,” Rokul muttered.
“Clearly,” I chucked. “Now, come on! I’ll never sleep again if I don’t know for a fact that the gas you inhaled won’t cause any lasting damage.” I pulled him through the building by the wrist.
“Fine, for your sake, I’ll go get checked out,” he sighed.
“I’m walking you to the door,” I insisted.
“Don’t you trust me?” I looked over my shoulder at Rokul. He had the audacity to look pouty.
“Only when my life’s at risk,” I replied. “I don’t trust you to take care of yourself when your life’s at risk.”
“I am both honored and insulted at the same time,” Rokul chuckled.
“I’m starting to understand how your brother feels,” I replied.
Rokul and I approached the medical office, which was only a few doors down from the lab. The medical office was empty, which I took as a good sign. However, I didn’t see Dr. Parr.
“Hello?” I called.
“Back here!” A light, chipper voice called from out of sight. I moved to the back of the suite and found a petite blonde woman with an easy smile.
“Hi,” she said brightly. “Rokul, I never thought I’d see you in here.”
“Don’t give me the credit. Tella dragged me here very much against my will.” Rokul fixed me with a look. I grinned up at him, feeling quite smug.
“Good job,” Dr. Parr gave me an approving nod. “He skipped his mandatory examination after the final battle with the Xathi and he’s been ducking me ever since.”
“Because I’m perfectly fine and I don’t need to waste your time,” Rokul explained.
“My time is wasted when I don’t have someone to help,” Dr. Parr smiled. She turned to me. “If you have work to do, you can leave. I’ll make sure he doesn’t make a break for it.” Something in me told me not to doubt Dr. Parr.
“Thank you,” I smiled at Dr. Parr. Before I left, I turned to Rokul. “Be good.”
“Aren’t I always?” He winked and I tried to hide my blush from the doctor as I left the medical office.
When I walked into the lab, Leena was asleep at her station. I gingerly poked her in the shoulder to wake her. Leena’s head shot up and she muttered something incoherent.
“You were asleep,” I explained as Leena looked at me in confusion.
“I skipped my morning coffee,” she shrugged. “Clearly, that was a bad idea.”
“Do you sleep here?” I asked her.
“No,” she replied. “Axtin came in early and I decided to go with him. I don’t like sitting in my apartment alone.”
“I see.” Leena blinked a few times before taking in my disheveled state.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t get laid last night,” she smirked.
This time, I didn’t try to hide anything. I grinned back.
“Finally!” Leena exclaimed. “But why do you have leaves and crap in your hair?”
“We might’ve been in the forest,” I chuckled.
“You got laid when you were supposed to be field testing my neutralizers?” Leena gasped.
“I tested the neutralizers first! Then I got laid.” Leena and I laughed for a moment before forcing us to get down to the serious work.
“How did the neutralizers work?” she asked.
“They didn’t,” I frowned. “None of them worked in the slightest.”
“That’s impossible,” Leena shook her head. “Every simulation said that those neutralizers would affect the target.”
“I thought the simulations were imprecise,” I recalled.
“They are, but they all indicated that any of the neutralizers would affect the target in some way,” Leena clarified.
/> “We tested them on an infested kodanos. They don’t naturally possess any ability to immobilize toxins in their body,” I explained. “They also don’t naturally secrete a sleeping gas, but that happened, too.”
“Do you think the vines from that creature neutralized the neutralizer?” Leena lifted her brows.
“It must’ve. A kodanos couldn’t have done it on its own,” I said. “Rokul and I have started calling the creature the Puppet Master.”
“That’s fantastic and all,” Leena nodded. “A new name doesn’t change the problem, though. We’re back to square one and General Rouhr’s going to pull the plug on this tomorrow.”
“Not completely.” I pulled the empty dart from my pack. “I bought this at the market in Rigkon the day Rokul was sent to fetch me.”
“What was in it?” Leena picked up the dart to examine the empty casing.
“A rare toxin. I’ve only come across it a handful of times. I don’t know how it ended up in Rigkon,” I explained.
“What’s it made from?” Leena asked.
“Narrisiri extract, according to the shopkeeper” I admitted. “This is the first time I’d purchased it. People have different names for it, too.”
“Maybe I can get a profile off of the casting,” Leena replied. She took apart the dart and swabbed the inside of the chamber where the toxin was kept. “You used it on the kodanos?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “It killed the kodanos quickly. The vines died shortly after.”
“At least it worked on the vines,” Leena replied.
“Yes, but I didn’t inject the vines directly,” I said. “Which may mean the Puppet Master doesn’t just physically take hold of its host. It seems to completely integrate itself into its host’s nervous and vascular systems, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it linked itself to its digestive system, too.”
“If you’re right, that’s going to make it hard to separate the vine from the host without harming the host,” Leena replied.
“Maybe you can reduce it the same way you did the pesticides,” I suggested.
“It depends on what this is,” Leena replied. “I’m running a general test just to get the profile of the toxin.” She placed the swap in a shallow dish filled with a gel-like liquid and placed it inside a chamber on one of her lab machines.
“In any other lab, that would take hours,” I commented. “How long does it take with alien tech?”
“About thirty seconds,” Leena grinned. “I could never work in a human only lab after this. I’ve been spoiled by innovation.”
The machine beeped, indicated the profiling test had been completed. Leena pressed a few buttons and transferred the information to her datapad. When she pulled up in the information, she frowned.
“There’s a lot of blank spots,” she said. “You were right when you said the toxin’s rare. The test didn’t pick up on half of its profile. I can run more in-depth tests, but that will take a little longer.”
“Let me see.” Leena handed the datapad to me and I examined the results of the test.
“Well, it looks plant-based, but with so many missing pieces, it’s hard to determine. May I borrow this?” I asked. Leena nodded. I took the datapad to my own station and cross-referenced with a detailed archive of plant profiles. I’d used this archive many times over the years, I’d even added to it myself.
“I’ve got a partial match,” I said.
“You don’t sound very excited,” Leena observed.
“It’s only a forty-three percent match,” I frowned. “It’s a flower that only grows in the rocky foothills near Glymna. I’ve worked with that flower before. It doesn’t have toxic properties.”
“It’s a starting point,” Leena replied. “I can try to replicate it with known toxins. Maybe it’s something as simple as a mix.”
“I’m not convinced the toxin in this dart came from that plant at all,” I replied. “There are a few key markers missing, markers that would’ve been identified if they were present in the sample.”
“You think it came from a different plant?” Leena asked.
“Possibly,” I said. “Or something else entirely. A forty-three percent match isn’t as good as it sounds. Fifty-seven percent of the profile comes from something unknown.”
“I’ll start running the genetic sequence test and the chemical profile,” Leena offered. “Hopefully that will give us more information. In the meantime, I can work on recreating the known components of the toxin. It won’t kill anything, but it’ll be a base to work from. Who knows? Maybe all I have to do is mix it with pesticide and it’ll work.”
“That would be great,” I smiled through a sudden wave of exhaustion. It wasn’t just the fact that I didn’t sleep last night. “Why can’t anything have a simple answer anymore? I feel like every time we make a breakthrough, we’re shoved three steps back.”
“That’s how I felt when I worked through the Xathi invasion,” Leena replied. “But we got through that and we’ll get through this. The process is going to be a pain in the ass, but we’ll get through it.”
Rokul
I wasn’t terribly happy with myself. The fact that I had been beaten by a tree rankled me.
Yes, it had done something that the kodanos had never done before, according to Tella, but I had still been beaten by a tree.
A tree!
And then I had to go to the doctor.
I made my way to Rouhr’s office for my report. Just as I entered and was about to be greeted by Tobias, the ground began to shake. Tobias let out a small shriek and ducked under his desk while I dropped my report.
The light streaming in through a nearby window was suddenly blocked by something large and green.
I rushed outside to see that a massive vine that was nearly as thick as I was snaked up the side of the building. The further up it got, the thicker it became. As it moved, the building shook and pieces of it crumbled off, forcing me out into the middle of the street in order to avoid being struck.
I looked around the city to see more vines climbing up more buildings. Windows shattered above me, showering me with tiny bits of glass. I shook myself clean and looked towards the lab. There was a vine climbing up it, as well.
TELLA!
I sprinted back towards the building, trying my best to maintain my balance as the ground shook and moved under me. I could hear screams and shouts emanating from the buildings near me, and from nearby parts of the city. There were several people hiding in doorways, their eyes filled with fear as they held on to one another.
A piece of building came crashing down into the street in front of me, dirt and debris pelting me as I hurdled it. A nearby shout caught my attention. A man had been pinned under a corner of a building that had fallen, and three men were around him. With a soft curse, I rushed over.
“What’s the matter?” I shouted.
“He’s pinned.” I took a quick look, found a good place for leverage, and placed my shoulder under a small ledge.
“When I push, you and you,” I pointed at two of the men standing there, “help me lift. While we lift, you,” I pointed to the last man, “pull him out.” At their nods, I took a deep breath and pushed up. The two men helped me lift the piece of building and the other pulled him out.
The man had passed out from pain and blood loss already. His leg looked terrible. “Get him to the infirmary as safely as you can! GO!”
I didn’t wait to see if they followed orders. The shaking was getting worse. I stumbled my way to the lab entrance. It was in the same building as Rouhr’s office, but the outside entrance was on the other side of the building.
I pushed through the door and raced to Tella’s lab. When I broke through the door, she rushed over to me from her hiding place in a doorway. “Rokul!”
“Tella. Are you okay?” I asked over the sound of a few beakers falling to the ground.
She nodded, then jumped as one of the interior windows shattered. “Yeah, for now. What’s happening?”
“Get under a table!” I shouted. We half dragged, half pushed one another under a nearby lab table as the shaking continued. I watched as a crack formed in a floor tile and drunkenly made its way across the floor, stopping a few inches from my hand.
The shaking went on for what felt like hours, but when all was said and done, it must have lasted only a few minutes. I pulled myself away from Tella’s embrace enough to chance a glance from under the table.
The lab was in shambles. Light fixtures hung from the ceiling, floor tiles were cracked or broken, one of the interior windows was shattered while the others were all cracked. The only thing that didn’t seem damaged was the table we had ducked under.
Tella looked frightened.
She never looked frightened.
Scro.
I grabbed her and kissed her hard, willing all of my comfort to her. All of my—
Then I regretfully broke it off. “We have to see how much damage the vines caused.”
Surprise registered not only on her face, but in her voice. “This wasn’t just an earthquake?”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh.” I had apparently picked up some of the human ways of answering. “This was done by vines. Let’s go.” I crawled from under the table and helped her to her feet. We slowly and carefully made our way outside.
Of all the things that I could have possibly imagined when I stepped outside the door, what I did see would never have entered my mind unless I had seen it. It had been a bright morning, the sun almost blinding in the clear sky. Now, sunshine came through in scattered lines, barely illuminating the city. We were inside of a dome.
The vines that had come out of the ground stretched high into the air, several hundred feet. The vine that had crawled its way up the general’s building went straight up, and up, and up until it connected with more vines.