Alien Conquest

by Tracy St. John

  “I wouldn’t ask you to. Per­haps the threat alone will be enough.” Tra­nis spoke to Hamil­ton in Eng­lish again. “I will let you think about our next ses­sion, Gen­eral. When I come back, I ex­pect some an­swers. I will not deny Li­don his plea­sures if you aren’t more forth­com­ing.”

  With re­lief, Li­don took his hands off Hamil­ton and fol­lowed Tra­nis out of the cell. He clenched his fists and felt the need to get to a wash basin. The sooner, the bet­ter.

  Chap­ter 10

  De­gorsk led Cas­sidy by the hand into the spy­ship’s crew din­ing room. The walls and ceil­ing emit­ted soft light. The il­lu­mi­na­tion showed a few small groups seated on thick floor cush­ions around low ta­bles. Only three of the twenty ta­bles were oc­cu­pied.

  The groups were spaced far apart, but the scene was the same at each. Three Kalquo­rian men fed a hud­dled Earther fe­male with their fin­gers. Low voices coaxed and praised the women, who were all clad in the same type of white sleeve­less un­der­dress that Cas­sidy wore. She rec­og­nized her fel­low cap­tives at once. Gen­tle Tina, the red­head as­pi­rant she’d watched suc­cumb to temp­ta­tion in her cell. Mary An­der­son, who’d ar­gued with her as she’d warned ev­ery­one to hide. Sis­ter Kather­ine, Cas­sidy’s men­tor who’d prayed as the aliens took her pris­oner. They glanced at her as De­gorsk ush­ered her to a ta­ble in a cor­ner, then quickly dropped their eyes. Ev­ery face was a study of quiet shame. With­out speak­ing a word, the other women told Cas­sidy she’d not been the only one to sur­ren­der to sin. It was no sur­prise to her the oth­ers had fallen to temp­ta­tion. Af­ter all they were all women, shar­ing the same evil ten­den­cies that plagued their gen­der.

  Still, see­ing Sis­ter Kather­ine qui­etly ac­cept­ing small morsels of food from the fin­gers of the men crowded around her star­tled Cas­sidy. The young as­pi­rant wouldn’t have ex­pected vi­o­lent op­po­si­tion from the kind nun who al­ways spoke in hushed, peace­ful tones, but she thought Kather­ine would at least of­fer quiet re­sis­tance. It shocked Cas­sidy to watch her men­tor sub­mis­sively take ev­ery bite of­fered her. Kather­ine did not pull away from the big dark hands stroking her arms, hair, and back.

  “Sit here.” De­gorsk tugged Cas­sidy down to a seat­ing cush­ion at a ta­ble as far away from the oth­ers as pos­si­ble. Once they were set­tled, he rapped his knuck­les on the ta­ble top.

  Al­most im­me­di­ately, two Kalquo­ri­ans hur­ried in from a brightly lit door­way across the room. They car­ried huge trays of food that they set on the ta­ble. The men bowed and dis­ap­peared as fast as they’d shown up.

  “This is nice isn’t it? It’s good to get out of our quar­ters for a lit­tle while.” De­gorsk smiled brightly at Cas­sidy, his lean face so jar­ringly hand­some she had to look away.

  How dare such a beast seem at­trac­tive, she thought, fight­ing a wave of de­sire. The Kalquo­rian dev­ils ex­ploited her ev­ery weak­ness, and she was grow­ing tired of fight­ing them off. What was the point? She’d al­ready damned her­self, hadn’t she?

  Plus there was the prom­ise of a bet­ter life on Kalquor, one Cas­sidy couldn’t pos­si­bly con­tem­plate on Earth. Books and sci­ence and math … even a tu­tor, Tra­nis had promised. Cas­sidy craved such an op­por­tu­nity like a miner craved gold. It was all she could ever dream of.

  Ac­cept­ing such a gift meant be­ing a traitor to her own kind, how­ever. How could she do so with an easy con­science? How could she not when ev­ery fiber of her be­ing screamed for it?

  God, I’m so con­fused. Isn’t there some way I can have the life I want with­out hurt­ing my own peo­ple?

  “What would you like to try first?” De­gorsk prod­ded, and Cas­sidy looked at the trays of food be­fore her. De­li­cious scents as­saulted her, and her stom­ach growled.

  “I don’t want any of it,” she lied.

  “You are go­ing to eat, Cas­sidy.” The Imdiko’s voice was still gen­tle, but his eyes had gone hard.

  “No.” She re­fused to give in so eas­ily.

  De­gorsk grasped her chin, mak­ing her look him in the face. His tone re­mained kind. Lov­ing, even. “You will eat or I will lay you on this ta­ble and have sex with you un­til you cli­max. Ev­ery­one here will see you give into your de­sires. They will see how much you en­joy what you keep in­sist­ing is a sin.”

  Cas­sidy stared at him. Would he re­ally do such a ter­ri­ble thing? Right in front of an au­di­ence?

  De­gorsk leaned back slightly to show her the bulge of his erec­tion. “Though I de­spise mak­ing such threats, my body is more than will­ing to over­come my heart’s ob­jec­tions. Earther Mataras have tried hunger strikes on us be­fore, and my su­pe­ri­ors have told me how to han­dle the mat­ter.”

  “By hav­ing sex?” Cas­sidy couldn’t keep the whim­per out of her voice … or stop the shiver of ner­vous want that coursed down her spine.

  “By what­ever means I think will get you to give up such a course of ac­tion. Hav­ing oth­ers know you like love­mak­ing is the one thing I have to bar­gain with. You are too strong to yield for any other rea­son.”

  “I can go for days with­out food. Prob­a­bly weeks,” Cas­sidy scowled. She stroked a soft fold of her belly. “I’m in no dan­ger of star­va­tion, in case you haven’t no­ticed.”

  “Maybe not, but try­ing to get your way by re­sist­ing food is not a prece­dent I’m go­ing to al­low you to set. I am not let­ting you harm your­self by not eat­ing. Your blood sugar is low and you need sus­te­nance, my lit­tle love. If I have to, I’ll fuck you into shame­ful or­gasms in front of your en­tire con­vent un­til you agree to eat.”

  The Imdiko’s jaw was set. He looked up­set to be say­ing such things, but Cas­sidy could tell he meant ev­ery word. De­gorsk wasn’t play­ing games with her.

  Cas­sidy jerked her head free of his grasp. She pointed at a small pile of what looked like golden chunks of meat. “That.”

  “Oh, you’ll en­joy this. It’s the meat of an avian from Kalquor.”

  De­gorsk looked re­lieved. He be­came per­fectly agree­able as he plucked a morsel with his fin­gers and pressed it to her lips. It was as if he’d never ut­tered the vi­cious threat to make her cli­max in front of the oth­ers.

  Cas­sidy ac­cepted the food with­out fur­ther re­sis­tance. She kept her eyes down­cast to avoid the other women’s should they be watch­ing.

  She for­got all about the rest of the room once she got a taste of what De­gorsk had fed her. The food in her mouth was melt­ingly ten­der and sweet, prompt­ing her to glance up at the Imdiko with sur­prise. “This is meat? It’s like a pas­try.” Boy, had she missed sweets since her cap­ture.

  “I knew you’d like it.” Look­ing de­lighted, he fed her an­other piece and se­lected what looked like a fiery red lump of rock for him­self. “You don’t want this grul. It’s much too spicy for Earth­ers. There’s not enough wa­ter on board the ship to cool your mouth off if you were to try it.”

  De­gorsk chewed the grul with ob­vi­ous en­joy­ment. Cas­sidy won­dered if he’d warned her just to keep it all to him­self. Or maybe he em­ployed re­verse psy­chol­ogy to get her to con­tinue to eat.

  Her stom­ach growled lustily, find­ing the small bit of pas­try-bird she’d eaten more a tease than sa­ti­at­ing. Cas­sidy sud­denly felt starved. De­gorsk wouldn’t have to play any psy­cho­log­i­cal games to get her to eat. She started to reach for the rock-like grul.

  A scream split the air. Cas­sidy jerked and stared as Mary flailed against her group of Kalquo­ri­ans, sob­bing as if her heart might break. Two of the men with her held her still, mur­mur­ing com­fort while the third sank long, thin fangs in her throat. His face re­mained buried against her neck un­til she qui­eted and her eyes slid closed.

  “It’s all right, my Matara. She’s fine now. I know those men and they’re tak­ing good care of h
er,” De­gorsk soothed. He fed Cas­sidy a minty sprig of green­ery.

  Cas­sidy chewed with­out pay­ing much at­ten­tion to what she ate. She was too busy watch­ing Mary’s clan carry the other as­pi­rant out. Cas­sidy was sur­prised to see not an­gry em­bar­rass­ment on the three men’s faces, but in­dul­gent smiles. It was as if they tended a tem­per­a­men­tal but well-loved child. The man who hefted Mary in his arms kissed her fore­head be­fore they swept out of the room.

  Cas­sidy rounded on De­gorsk. She pre­tended she hadn’t seen com­pas­sion on the faces of Mary’s clan. She made her­self fo­cus on her fel­low as­pi­rant’s tears in­stead. “She’s not fine. You tor­ture us with your wicked lusts. You shouldn’t make us do sin­ful acts.”

  “You were made for plea­sure, sweet­ling. Your god de­signed you to en­joy mak­ing babes. How can it be a sin?” De­gorsk con­tin­ued to feed her.

  Cas­sidy ate, hunger over­rid­ing re­sis­tance. She knew bet­ter than to ar­gue with De­gorsk on the sub­ject of sin. The alien bas­tard had an an­swer for ev­ery­thing. The worst part was he sounded so damned rea­son­able and his points made sense. It drove her crazy.

  When she re­mained silent, he tried a dif­fer­ent tact. “Did your mother en­joy sex?”

  Dis­gust mo­men­tar­ily stole Cas­sidy’s ap­petite. “She was a Jezebel. She gave her­self to a man right in front of me. She begged him to have sex­ual re­la­tions, know­ing if I didn’t re­port her, I’d be ev­ery bit as guilty as her!”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “My grand­fa­ther said she was al­ways evil. He knew what she was the mo­ment my fa­ther brought her home for his bless­ing, which the gen­eral re­fused to give.”

  “Yet they still man­aged to be mar­ried.”

  “They eloped. That woman drove ev­ery thought of moral­ity out of Daddy’s head. He re­fused to an­nul the mar­riage no mat­ter what.”

  “That must have made Gen­eral Hamil­ton an­gry.”

  Cas­sidy nod­ded. “My grand­fa­ther told Daddy he would have him posted in the ar­eas most prone to up­ris­ings, where sol­diers died by the dozens ev­ery day. Even­tu­ally, it hap­pened.”

  “Your fa­ther must have sin­cerely loved your mother to defy Gen­eral Hamil­ton.”

  Cas­sidy thought about that. “He did. Daddy called her his ‘for­ever love’. They seemed very happy while he was alive.”

  De­gorsk of­fered her more of the sweet golden meat, and she ac­cepted it. “How ex­actly did your fa­ther die?”

  “There was an up­ris­ing on the Asian con­ti­nent. Two in­sur­gent groups called the Sikhs and Hin­dus had banded to­gether to fight the gov­ern­ment. My grand­fa­ther ar­ranged for Daddy’s di­vi­sion to go in to put the re­bel­lion down. I was young when it hap­pened. It took a long time to un­der­stand my fa­ther wouldn’t be com­ing home like he had be­fore.”

  De­gorsk stroked her hair. The com­fort­ing touch felt good. I’m evil to like this, Cas­sidy thought, but she didn’t re­sist. She was a lost soul by now any­way. She was no bet­ter than her mother.

  “I’m sorry for your losses, pre­cious girl.” The Imdiko leaned over to press warm lips to her cheek. She sup­pressed a shiver at the gen­tle ca­ress. “What was your mother’s fate?”

  “She was con­victed for her crime of in­cit­ing lust and sent to the work camp where she died.” Cas­sidy looked up at De­gorsk, un­able to deny the de­sire his near­ness sparked. “You’ve made me like her.”

  “I’m try­ing to show you how beau­ti­ful and good you are.”

  “If I was good, I wouldn’t like what we do.”

  There, she’d ad­mit­ted her en­joy­ment of the sins De­gorsk and the oth­ers had forced on her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know it al­ready. Cas­sidy’s ea­ger re­sponses to all they’d done had in­formed him of her wicked­ness time and time again.

  Be­fore he could press Cas­sidy with more ques­tions she didn’t want to an­swer she asked, “Where is my grand­fa­ther, De­gorsk?”

  His easy ex­pres­sion re­mained open. “In a de­ten­tion cell. We’ve ques­tioned him but he hasn’t been harmed.”

  She stud­ied his face, find­ing no sub­terfuge or guilt. Did his kind feel shame for what they were? If he lied to her, would she even de­tect it? “Does he know what I’ve done with your clan?”

  “We haven’t told him. We know how im­por­tant his ap­proval is for your state of mind. He would judge you harshly even though you’ve re­sisted as best you can.”

  The gen­tle ac­knowl­edge­ment of her at­tempts to defy their lusts soft­ened Cas­sidy to De­gorsk more than all his false as­sur­ances of her con­tin­ued de­cency. She couldn’t fathom why it meant so much. Yet it did. The lit­tle re­sis­tance she had left di­min­ished even more at his un­der­stand­ing.

  Cas­sidy sud­denly re­al­ized that bar­ring a mir­a­cle res­cue, it was in­evitable she would sur­ren­der to Clan Tra­nis. She would be theirs for the rest of her life. She would be their mate, their child­bearer, their Matara. She couldn’t con­tinue to hold out, not when re­turn­ing to Earth meant ex­e­cu­tion, a fate she could not re­sign her­self to. And es­pe­cially not when her body thrilled at the clan’s ev­ery touch. Not when her heart lifted at the men’s ev­ery kind word.

  I don’t re­ally want to be saved any­more. The thought of re­turn­ing to Earth, even with­out be­ing con­demned for her crimes, put suf­fo­cat­ing dread in Cas­sidy’s heart. To be mar­ried to her grand­fa­ther’s el­derly friend? To be fated to a life of quiet obe­di­ence with no school­ing, no ca­reer, no life-af­firm­ing work be­fore her? To never be touched by Tra­nis, Li­don, or De­gorsk again? No. No. A thou­sand times, no.

  She was damned for sure. She had noth­ing left to fight for. To Cas­sidy’s weary shock, she felt im­mea­sur­able re­lief in giv­ing up the bat­tle for her soul.

  * * * *

  Cas­sidy sub­mit­ted to Tra­nis’ bite on her in­ner thigh with­out a whim­per. She wasn’t sure why he thought it nec­es­sary to in­tox­i­cate her. She’d of­fered no re­sis­tance when he’d started kiss­ing and ca­ress­ing mo­ments ago.

  As eu­pho­ria coursed through her veins, she wasn’t sorry he’d done it how­ever. The in­tox­i­cant erased her guilt. While the venom held sway, she wouldn’t suf­fer over the lust her sin­ful body sub­jected her to. Now she wouldn’t mind that Tra­nis’ touch made her wet and aching for his mag­nif­i­cent body. His bite freed her from all re­spon­si­bil­ity for her de­sires.

  His fangs with­drew. He lapped the beads of blood from the punc­tures with long, lan­guorous strokes of his rough tongue. Cas­sidy re­laxed into the wash of in­tox­i­cant, her sex spas­ming to have Tra­nis’ face so close to it. She moaned as he licked higher on her thigh, com­ing closer to where his mouth would feel best.

  Sit­ting naked at the com­puter sta­tion, de­ci­pher­ing codes as he waited for his turn with her, Li­don chuck­led. “Tra­nis has a very tal­ented tongue, doesn’t he, pet?”

  Cas­sidy won­dered how the Nobek would know some­thing like that? He spoke as if he’d been on the re­ceiv­ing end of such plea­sure from his clan­mate. Per­haps the ru­mors of Kalquo­ri­ans’ bi­sex­u­al­ity were true. Maybe Li­don and Tra­nis were lovers. As the Dramok crept closer to her cen­ter, his tongue leav­ing a wet trail, Cas­sidy found she didn’t care.

  Tra­nis’ mouth closed over her core. Cas­sidy sighed with deep plea­sure, lov­ing how his tongue parted the trem­bling petals of flesh to lap hun­grily at her flow­ing juices. His palms reached to cover her breasts, mold­ing the sup­ple flesh. She put her hands over his, en­joy­ing his strength.

  His mouth worked her won­der­fully. Lips, tongue, and teeth brought heat lick­ing through her womb, elic­it­ing groans as she climbed to the pin­na­cle of plea­sure. Her first cli­max was gen­tle sweet­ness, lap­ping in soft waves th
rough her loins.

  When she qui­eted, Tra­nis moved up her body, his mouth lead­ing the way. He kissed a slow path up her belly to her breasts where he paused to suckle each hard nip­ple. Then he con­tin­ued his jour­ney, leav­ing a wet trail that led over the hol­low and up the col­umn of her throat. As he rounded the hill of her chin, Cas­sidy parted her lips to in­vite his tongue.

  Tra­nis in­vaded her mouth, sex, and anus all at once. His cocks forged deep in­side, fol­low­ing the yield­ing path that wel­comed him. Fresh de­sire ig­nited Cas­sidy’s senses at the de­li­cious in­va­sion. She clutched the mus­cled alien to her, arms and legs wrap­ping around him. Her wel­com­ing em­brace ex­cited him, and he rut­ted hard against her, mak­ing their groins thud to­gether in a wild tat­too.

  She ac­cepted his rough use, her body open­ing to him, de­mand­ing him. The ache of Tra­nis’ pow­er­ful love­mak­ing mixed in a heady po­tion with the ex­cru­ci­at­ing plea­sure of his sex rub­bing the sen­si­tive part of her womb. Her cries were muf­fled by his mouth still press­ing an un­re­lent­ing kiss to her lips.

  Cli­max broke over Cas­sidy, a hot and heav­ing wave that left her jerk­ing and claw­ing at Tra­nis’ broad back. Still he rode her, his thrusts grow­ing more pow­er­ful still. He growled deep in his throat, and she screamed as fresh con­vul­sions clutched his sex, try­ing to milk the sweet liq­uid from his loins. Her sheath pulled, en­treat­ing him to fill her with his plea­sure.

  At last Tra­nis gave in, rear­ing back and sur­ren­der­ing his seed to her with a deaf­en­ing roar. Cas­sidy writhed be­neath him, feel­ing his flesh pulse hugely within her. He came for a long time, his body rigid over hers.

  Fi­nally he re­laxed, rolling over to lie spent and gasp­ing be­side her. He pulled her close, draw­ing her into the warmth of his body. She snug­gled against him.

  As their breath­ing qui­eted, the rapid-fire taps of Li­don’s fin­gers on his com­puter claimed Cas­sidy’s at­ten­tion. She craned her neck to look at the Nobek over Tra­nis’ shoul­der.