by Robin Lovett
He hums, thinking. “Now that I know how much you like it, I’ll make you do it to all of them. Would you like that?”
A sick feeling percolates in my stomach. The urge to vomit is so eruptive, I slide off Gahnin onto the floor.
But I don’t take my eyes off Dargule; that would be a fatal mistake.
He lowers his voice like he’s whispering an intimate secret. “There are thirty prisoners aboard the Hades right now. How long do you think it would take you to fuck all of them?”
Sweat sprouts all over my body. I’m incapable of saying anything. If I open my mouth, the only thing that will come out is the contents of my stomach.
“Breathe,” Gahnin whispers to me. “I would never let him do that to you.”
It gives me small comfort. I know how Dargule’s mind works. He’s seen my attachment to Gahnin now. A fatal, stupid mistake. If Dargule threatened to set Gahnin aflame, which he would, I’d have no choice but to do anything he said.
Including have sex with every prisoner on that ship. And likely the crew as well.
But he’s not done. Dargule loves his mind torture, and once he sees he’s hit a mark, it encourages him. I reach inside myself, desperately searching for my mental defenses. I have to hide my reaction from him. Weakness will cost me everything.
“Tell me something, Assur,” he murmurs softly, like a lover to an intimate friend. “Which did you like better? Fucking him? Or hurting him?”
I gasp, and my breath gets stuck inside my lungs.
“Oh, my little torturer.” He lifts his fingers as though to touch me through the bars of the cage if he could. “Don’t try to deny it. You will always like inflicting pain first. You’re a sadist by nature. Pain is what you do best.”
He backs away and leaves, disappearing into the darkness.
I crawl to the edge of the cage.
And vomit.
Chapter Twenty
GAHNIN
My whole body vibrates with the need to sever every one of Dargule’s limbs. To crush his skull into a thousand pieces and feel his brain squish between my fingers like mud.
And I could do it. If not for this forsaken cage.
If not for the fact that Assura is the one who deserves the pleasure of killing him. I’ll settle for the rest of his crew.
Assura is on her hands and knees, her body wracked by dry heaves.
My heart feels sick to watch her. It physically hurts. I want to comfort her. Though I don’t know how or if she’ll let me. Or if there really is any comfort to be gotten except for escaping and getting revenge on that perversion of a monster in human form.
I take a deep breath. I can barely think about how magnificent it was to have her riding me, to feel her teeth and nails digging into me as hard as she could. It gave me a satisfaction that sex alone cannot supply. It made me fantasize about what it would be like to have her fangs in me—if she were Ssedez—which I never should’ve done.
But even the fantasies feel tainted now.
I wonder for how long Dargule was watching us. Did he just walk up and see us orgasm? Did he see our entire lovemaking? Has he been out there for hours in the dark listening to every word we say?
I cannot try to comfort Assura and risk him seeing. It would show more vulnerability in her, in me, in us.
It’s too dark to see beyond five feet away from the cage. The lights from the static bars do not go past that.
Dargule could still be watching, out behind the trees.
But I hear a clanging noise from the direction of the ship, and lights from inside are exposed as the plank is lowered. I watch Dargule walk inside, and the door closes behind him.
There are still guards watching us, but he will not see.
Assura sits back on her heels and wipes her mouth. Her hands shake, and her breathing is ragged. There’s a ravaged look on her face…ravaged by fear…
I go to her and wrap my arms around her. She’s stiff at first and almost protests. I cradle her cheek in my hand. “Let me help you,” I whisper.
Her eyes fall closed, and she softens in to me, letting me hold her. She rests her head on my shoulder, and her hands cling to my arms. Her chest is rising and falling too fast, her breaths still at panicked speed.
There’s a rightness to having her against me. Feeling her, holding her—it fills me. It eases the hole in my chest that I have been living with for too long. Like sunshine after the most frigid of winters or water after years of dry heat, she revitalizes me. A rejection of the feeling grips my stomach. I have not felt this since Tiortan died. And I’m feeling it for this human.
I let go of her, wanting the feeling to go away, and refocus on my dedication to revenge and to Tiortan, who I’m supposed to mourn for another century. I have to focus on our mission. “We’re going to get out of this.”
She turns her head side to side, more than a no, like a negation of herself. “It’s true,” she chokes.
“What’s true?”
She hides her face from me. It’s so strange. Assura does not hide; she does not show shame. I do not understand what could make her do that.
“What he said,” she murmurs so low, I almost do not hear.
Oh, she’s worried about the other thing he said. “Do not listen to him.”
“He’s right.”
Her words hit me like blaster fire. I think I know what she means. “It used to be your job for him, torturing prisoners?” My gut wrenches in disgust—making someone feel pain, except in self-defense, goes entirely against my indoctrinated warrior’s code.
She rests her arm on her knee and looks out at the forest. “I was good at it. Too good.”
I concentrate on my breathing, willing my voice to stay even. “You have regrets?” I have no idea what forms of torture she is versed in, but I am aware of some of the techniques the Ten Systems used during our war with them. If it’s anything like it used to be, she has done horrible things. A terrible chill travels across my skin.
“Regret,” she snarfs. “That’s one way to put it.”
“How would you put it?”
She turns vicious eyes on me. Her gaze is full of brutality, the kind I imagine she once used to force untenable amounts of pain on helpless beings. “I’m your enemy. Have you forgotten?”
“But you are not like him. You rejected him. You got away from him so that you didn’t have to torture people anymore.” None of what she is saying aligns with who I know she is. The woman I have come to respect would not have made people feel pain just because she enjoyed it. There’s more she is not revealing to me. My belief in her is not so easily diminished.
Her eyes widen with rage. “I’m worse!” She snaps it so loudly, it echoes around the forest.
“Assura,” I say gently. “Whatever you have done, nothing you can say will convince me you are worse than Dargule. I know you far better than that.” She was conscripted into the Ten Systems military. She would have had no choice but to comply with orders until she could escape.
“You haven’t asked me,” she hisses through her teeth.
“Asked you what?”
“How I knew to do those things to you. How I knew you would like the pain.”
I did ask, and she said…well, she never really answered whether she had sex with the Ssedez or…
Wait.
“You didn’t,” I whisper, not believing the logical conclusion. “That’s not possible.”
“It is. I did.” A slow, sadistic smile spreads over her face, as if to convince me she is evil. If I did not know her better, I would presume she is imitating Dargule. She must be pretending. I do not want to believe it.
My heart sludges to a murmur. What she’s implying… That’s not… I can’t… “How?”
She shows her teeth like in a snarl, her gaze icy cold. “Ask me.”
“Did you… Was he…” Oh gods, the full ramifications of what she’s saying are pelting me in the chest. “You had a Ssedez prisoner?”
“Had? Still do.�
� She points to the Hades. “Unless they’ve killed him in the six weeks I’ve been gone. After keeping him alive for a hundred years in a cell, I’d say that’s doubtful.”
I bolt to my feet and scream at her, “A hundred YEARS?”
Her eyes shift nervously. “That’s what the Ten Systems does.”
Fury like a branding iron burns across my skin. I go to the edge of the cage nearest the Hades and stare.
A hundred years…in a cell… “And you tortured him…”
“I did,” she whispers so softly, I almost can’t hear her.
I whirl back to her. “How fucked up are you?”
Her gaze drops to the floor. “Let me count the ways.” She pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them, as though she’s trying to be as small as she can make herself. The posture is one of guilt, of weakness, as I never would have believed her capable of.
I’m astounded and speechless.
“Fooled you, didn’t I?” she rasps like her voice has gone hoarse. “I’ve fooled myself. Thinking somehow I could make up for it. As though the crimes I’ve committed could ever be forgiven.”
She’s right. Torturing one of my brethren should be unforgivable. Torturing anyone is a criminal offense.
She looks up at me, her eyes in shadow and her expression indecipherable. “Still want me now?”
I can’t answer. Something between what she’s admitted and what Dargule has accused her of doesn’t add up to anything I have learned about this woman. There’s information missing. She’s not who she’s making herself out to be. She’s not telling me the full truth.
But the undeniable truth I do know:
I still want her.
My insides broil with the conflict of the hatred I feel for any human who would harm our kind and the desire I should never have had for her, which is as unquenchable as the need for air in my lungs.
I cannot sort it out enough to talk about it. I scrub a hand down my face. “We need to get some sleep if we’re going to survive the desidre fever when the sun comes up. Obviously it’s already taking effect.”
She grunts something noncommittal and curls into a fetal position with her back to me.
I stare at her, disbelieving. The warrior-woman Assura I have come to respect seems to have disappeared. I retreat to the far side of the cage.
Her bitter revelation is for the best. I should be grateful. It will stop my body’s forsaken urge to Attach to her, and I will continue mourning. She tortured one of my own kind. There is no circumstance, under any sun, where that should be forgivable.
Chapter Twenty-One
ASSURA
I sleep for as long as I can. Even after the sun comes up, I roll over and throw my hand over my eyes.
I don’t want to see Gahnin. I don’t want to look at him. I was right. I told him, and I’ve lost him. My covert attempts to help the prisoners survive, even as I was torturing them, don’t matter, so I don’t even try to defend myself by giving him that information. When I left with the rebellion, I abandoned them. I did not save them. They’re still trapped on the Hades being subjected to the kind of pain I tried to save them from.
A seed of hope—well, not quite hope but obligation—starts in my gut. Those prisoners—I have to free them. Now is my chance. It wouldn’t make amends for what I’ve done, but at least they’d be free.
It doesn’t change that I was taking out my sadistic urges on Gahnin, either. Dargule, as screwed up as he is, was right. I don’t know which I liked better—fucking Gahnin or digging my nails into him, biting him.
It terrifies me.
I left the Ten Systems to get away from that part of myself. I didn’t want to be this torturer anymore. Turns out it’s part of who I am, and I’ll always be what I most despise.
But just because I leave the job doesn’t mean I lose the instincts that made me so good at my work.
The hours pass, and the sun rises in the sky. Its rays seem to seep into my mind and blur my thoughts.
The burn begins. It starts as small flickers in my lungs then spreads through my veins. By the time the sun rages high in the sky, the heat isn’t just in my blood. It’s in my body, my cells, bursting within me, taking over every part of me.
Desire.
The desidre is here.
Guards and soldiers pass our cage, everyone watching us to see how we’ll react to the fever.
With the burn raging through my veins, I don’t care.
It starts as an ache between my legs. I ignore it for as long as I can. But it quickly turns to a throbbing, core-clenching need so deep within me, it’s like my cells are crying out to be fucked.
I remember from experience—if I don’t get myself off, it’ll only get worse.
I reach between my thighs and find I’m soaked through my suit. One press of my fingers, and I moan with the excruciating need, the tortuous pain that is this place.
I’m having flashbacks, remembering how bad it got, and I want to cry with how much I’m dreading this. I can give myself an orgasm, but still this pain will only get worse as the day goes on.
I open my eyes and find Gahnin staring at me.
He sits across from me, his gaze a mask of heat and need. His fangs are elongated past his lip, and the eroticism of it is almost obscene. I stroke my neck just imagining what his bite might do to me. I don’t know. But I’m dying to find out.
Then I see his hand. His fly open, he’s stroking in languorous pulls. I need that more. He’s hard and thick, a rigid column of gold flesh. My legs fall open, and I’m desperate to be filled, to have that inside me.
My fingers fumble with the buttons of the panel on my suit. I wrench it open and find my own flesh so swollen, my back bows on first contact with my skin. My fingers sink inside myself so easily, like slipping through cream.
And then I’m touching myself while I watch him fondle his cock, wishing like everything in every circle of heaven and hell that it was him instead of my hands sliding in and out of me.
But after last night, after what I told him, I’m doomed to suffer with my touch alone. He’s too revolted by me, what I’ve done and what I’m capable of, to come near me.
It will be just like last time, except this time it will be worse. There will be someone in front of me who I can’t touch the entire time.
I close my eyes.
I can’t look at him anymore. It hurts too much, remembering just how good it was between us. How blissful it would be to spend the day feeding the desidre with him. Hours of nothing but sex with him.
I could happily die after such a day.
But it won’t happen.
A climax builds within me, but I know it will not be enough. I try to make it last, because I know as soon as it’s over, I’ll just need to do it again.
My hands are pulled away. My thighs are spread by large firm hands, and…
“Ah!” The force of his thrust inside my body is an earthshattering entry.
But it feels so right. It’s what I needed. His cock…it moves in me like the center of my world. My body and every sensation spins around his fullness inside me. He moves in and out of me, driving, ever surging, as though pounding himself into me—not just his cock, but him.
His every thrust is a demand for me to feel his need. Like he wants me to be what he needs. Even though we both know I’m not.
I would do anything to be that person.
If I could erase everything I have ever done, all the traitorous baseless horrors I’ve committed, to be with him, I would. If I could change who I am, if I could remove the evil from inside me to be worthy of him, I would.
But none of those things are possible.
So I’ll settle for being the sex his body demands.
His pelvis slaps against my clit, he’s steel inside me, and I climax, my body clenching around him with all the heart-wrenching cravings inside me.
It’s almost like the desidre doesn’t create desire in me, it just releases every need I’ve denied
every day of my life.
The need to be accepted. The need to be loved. The need to be valued and treated with respect. The need to be forgiven…
When it’s just the sex, I can pretend that those things are possible. Him beating inside me, spurting and coming within me, pouring all the desire that lives inside him into me, he needs me, all of me.
But it’s not real.
It’s pretend, because it’s only the desidre fever that has him touching me at all.
I don’t care. I’ll take him any way I can get him.
He finishes, but he’s not finished.
He grasps me by the hair and pulls my face to his. He growls in a brutal clawing sound that’s more animal than Ssedez, “Are you done?”
“No,” I bite back. It’s true. “I will never have enough of you.”
His gaze is feral, saturated with the carnal need to fuck. “How much can you take?”
“Everything.” I want it all, and I pray he never stops. I challenge him. “I can take more than you can.”
The growl that vibrates from his chest is something wild. He twists my hair around his hand, and the sting of the pull is delicious.
I meet his stare, matching the carnal lust in his eyes with my own. “Give it all to me.”
His eyes drift to my neck. He pulls my head to the side and fingers the column of my throat. He licks the tips of his fangs, and I can see the venom dripping off the tips.
I pull on his head as hard as I can. “Do it.”
He shudders an inhale, and his eyes glaze over. Lightning fast, he strikes. His fangs slice into my throat, and I swear, I have died.
Exquisite ecstasy. Excruciating pleasure. It’s not even an orgasm so much as a flooding of my nerves with the kind of feeling I imagine would happen if all the evil in the universe would wash away. Purity of feeling and white-hot bliss.
It quakes through my body and shatters my senses.
He is a drug. His bite is a high, and I never want it to end.
There will be no coming back from this. I will be addicted to him forever, yet never to have him again after this is over. I don’t care. The thrill of having him now is worth the pain of losing him.