by Robin Lovett
Time stops; my awareness ends. Everything blurs, and I can remember nothing but feeling.
He releases his bite, and I get on my knees in front of him, his cock in my mouth. I cling to it with my lips and tongue and teeth. I suck him until I’m feeding and choking on his come. Filling myself totally with him.
He shoves me to my hands and knees and speeds into me so hard from behind, I fear my bones will shatter with the sheer force and pleasure of it.
He leans over me, his chest molding to my back, and he bites me in the back of the neck. His hips bucking against my ass, his venom pours into my vein at the same rate he pumps into me.
I am overcome and thoroughly taken. He rules my body. I am the source and vessel for his desire. But it’s not just desire. It’s more.
It’s him. He gives me everything he is and more. He bites me again and again. His venom fills me, transforms me, and makes my orgasms go on and on. I’m fucked every way I can be. His fingers and tongue in every crevice and hidden place. It’s hours. The sun is far down in the sky when I get a moment’s rest. I lie replete and sated.
Something I didn’t think was possible in the throes of the desidre, but it’s as though his venom takes the edge off. Like what his fangs give me is the best sort of topuy. Easing the fever and satisfying the ache at the same time.
I feel different, and when I lift my hand in front of my face…I look different, too.
My skin glitters in the sun’s gold rays. It’s pretty. It reminds me of his skin. It looks stronger, too, tougher.
Oh gods, that would be amazing. To have the armored quality of his skin. I let the fantasy run wild, imagining myself no longer vulnerable to a blade or a blaster. Imagining what that would mean in battle and how much fiercer and unstoppable an opponent I would be.
I glance over at Gahnin, who I expect to be sleeping with exhaustion. No. He’s staring wide-mouthed at me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
His eyes try and fail to stay on my face. His gaze keeps traveling down my body.
I chuckle, disbelieving, but I suppose, unsurprised, that he still wants more.
I sit up and run my hands down my naked breasts, my suit discarded somewhere long ago. “I’m ready for more, if you are.”
He gulps hard and still can’t take his eyes off my body. “Assura, I… You… Shit.” He covers his face with his hands. “Gods, what have I done?”
Not understanding what he’s upset about, I glance down at myself.
And gasp.
I am gold. Everywhere. It wasn’t just the sun. My skin appears, for all the eye can see…Ssedez. He bit me so many times that I…
“Did your venom do thisss?” I jerk at the sound of my own words. I just hissed. Like a damn snake.
I lift my fingers to my mouth and feel my tongue—feel the twin tips, the thin dexterity of it. A surge of elation slips up my spine, wondering what else about me has changed. Wondering if maybe, just maybe…
I scratch myself. Nothing happens. No marks of any kind.
I do it again harder, and again, even harder. So hard that with my normal skin there would be at least red lines, even gouges or drawn blood.
Nothing. It doesn’t even hurt. It almost feels…good.
Gahnin scrambles over and pulls my arm away. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Do you understand what this means?” I can’t suppress my delighted smile. “Do you think I’m as strong as you now?”
His eyes widen in shock. “I, uh, do not know. Possibly.”
I look around for anything that might have a sharp point. Something I could use to try to cut myself.
He leans to my ear and whispers, “There’s a small knife hidden in the sole of my boot.” He grabs it from the corner where it was thrown hours ago and uses our bodies to hide the weapon the guards never found.
He slips out the barest tip of the blade and holds my hand over it.
I press my hand down on it, to see if it can stab me. Nothing, no penetration. I bite my tongue to keep my sounds of excitement to myself.
I try to slice my wrist with it. Nothing. I try it harder and harder. It scratches, a slight white mark appears.
Gahnin whispers in my ear, “Pretend for a moment there’s a blaster shoved in your back. You’re inches away from being killed, and you have to use every ounce of your strength to save yourself.”
I think the thoughts and let a trickle of fear through me. I don’t want to die. I’ll do anything to save myself.
My skin stays the same.
“Was something supposed to happen?” I ask.
His brows twist in confusion. “Maybe try thinking of needing to protect yourself and the person you love most.”
That’s easier. I think of Jenie. But it doesn’t work. The white scratch is still there.
I try something else. I have an urge to think of someone else. I imagine Dargule pointing his electromagnetic shock device at Gahnin and when he knocked Gahnin unconscious yesterday.
And how much I would’ve given anything to jump in front of him and take the blow instead. If it hadn’t been more likely to kill me than Gahnin.
A change starts on my skin. It thickens, and a tiny diamond pattern sprouts among the gold. “Ha!”
“Try it now,” he whispers and there’s a smile in his voice.
I try to slice my skin with the knife now. It doesn’t even make a dent. “Wow.”
He shoves the knife back in his boot and leans back. “You are excited? You are not angry?”
“Why would I be angry?” I say, my glee irrepressible. “I’m impervious now. Think what that means? I’ll never be ssstabbed again!”
A flash of horror crosses his face, and he reaches for my mouth.
But it’s not to kiss me. “Open,” he demands, pulling open my lips with his fingers.
I do. He fingers my changed tongue then lifts my upper lip to check my teeth. Which don’t feel any different.
He lets go of me with a sigh of relief. “No fangs.” But his tone is mixed, as though he can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
“Oh.” It disappoints me. I can’t return his bite and give him the same pleasure as he does me.
He sobers a bit. “I’m told by my commander it wears off in time and is not permanent, at first.”
Another surge of disappointment. “Maybe I’ll just have to make you bite me enough times so it is.”
His eyes grow darker, and his fangs start to lower again.
I drag my hand up his arm and across his molded, chiseled chest. “We could start now.”
A loud explosion, followed by dozens of shouts—in the direction of the Origin. Followed by the bright, flashing pings of laser shots being fired by dozens of blasters at once.
“An attack?” I stand and walk toward the edge of the cage.
The guards shout and point, moving toward the sound as well.
“Do you think your rebel friends left the safety of the Fellamana enclosure?” Gahnin asks.
“It’s possible. I can’t imagine Jenie just sitting like a duck for long when what’s left of the Origin is vulnerable to Dargule’s destruction at any moment.”
“Or leaving you vulnerable to Dargule.”
I shake my head. “She trusts me better than that. She knows I’m too good for him to conquer.”
“Maybe you should believe it, too.”
A blush, which likely won’t show beneath my new gold armored skin, flushes over my cheeks. He’s right.
“Your blade,” I whisper. “Why didn’t we try that yesterday to deflect the bars of the cage?”
“Because I didn’t want to give away that I still had it when the guards were watching.”
“They’re not watching now. They’re too distracted by the battle.” It’s the perfect time to get the better of them.
“Get dressed,” he says.
“I don’t need clothes anymore.” I’m too proud of my new Ssedez qualities. I don’t want to hide them inside a
body suit.
“In case it wears off. You’ll need them to protect your skin.”
“Fine.”
We put our clothes back on in silence, and he reaches toward the electro bars with his knife.
“Wait.” I put a hand on his arm. “What if it melts the blade?”
“It might. But I doubt it. This knife is reinforced against heat, made to deflect fire the way the Ssedez natural armor cannot.”
“Clever.”
He chuckles and inserts the blade into one of the bars.
It works, cutting off the static. The source emanates from the top of the cage, not from the floor, so as he stands and raises the blade, it creates a hole, tall enough for me to step through.
But not wide enough for him to fit. His shoulders and chest are too broad.
“I’ll steal a bigger knife from one of the guards and get you out,” I say, then sneak through the bars onto the dirt before he can propose a different plan.
I step out, and my ears immediately clear. My eyes fill with the distant trees around us. I shiver and shake off the static that’s been a constant around my body since we were trapped in that cage. The guards are too distracted, and the noise of the battle is too loud to hear my footsteps on the ground.
I sneak up behind them, jab the first one in the vulnerable knee joint in the armor. He groans and sinks to his other knee. I steal his blaster, stun him, then aim for the other two.
My laser hits them both on the first shot in the gap between their helmets and the neck of their armor. All three are down and will be unconscious for hours.
I steal the knife from one of their belts and dash back to Gahnin. It’s long enough to block out three of the cage bars.
All in less than a minute.
“Impressive.” He steps from the cage and shakes away the feeling of static. “But you forgot.” He pokes my skin, where it indents with his touch.
I forgot to will my natural armor out. “Damn.”
“It’ll become instinctive.”
He rushes to the pile of our cached weapons, the ones we surrendered yesterday. But shots from blasters hit on all sides of us.
We turn, and Gahnin shouts, “Assura, your armor!”
I hold my breath and will myself to think about saving him. In my pause, a laser hits me in the forearm, and I feel…a little tingle. And that’s it.
I guess I did it.
“No time to celebrate,” Gahnin shouts, and tosses me my weapons belt.
But none of it matters.
Dargule walks out of the trees behind the soldiers retreating to the Hades. He raises his arm and shoots us with the shock gun in his hand. A web of static wraps around my body, and the pain is excruciating. I scream, and I hear Gahnin do the same beside me.
The burn searing through my skin is nothing like the taunt of the desidre. This feels like I’m getting third-degree burns from head to toe.
I can’t take it.
I feel my consciousness slipping.
Then, darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
GAHNIN
The blast of an explosion rattles the surface beneath my ear. I raise my head to see Assura, lying on her side, her arms wrapped around herself, as though in pain.
A Ten Systems soldier stands over her, shaking her shoulder.
“Assura,” the soldier says, trying to wake her. The voice is scratchy with a voice scrambler, but the person’s posture, despite the shellskin armor, is curved over Assura in a caring way, with their back to me.
I look around and see walls of graphite gray made of some sort of metal. A loud hum starts to vibrate through the walls and crescendos. It’s the sound of a starship rocketing from a planet’s atmosphere into the vast void of space.
I grit my teeth as the sound grows louder, almost too loud to bear, then abruptly stops as we’re released from the planet’s gravity.
I’m a prisoner aboard the Hades.
But by the looks of this soldier attempting to wake Assura, we have an ally.
Assura’s eyes drift open, and the soldier lets out a heavy sigh. Assura glances at the soldier’s identification markings on her shoulder, and her expression brightens.
“Lennina,” she breathes, her voice gasping.
There are wounds crisscrossing my skin from where the weapon burned me. I’m not used to wounds. I have rarely suffered them in my life. The pain is unusual and disconcerting.
I do not see any on Assura. I wonder if her Fellamana suit protected her better, or if the burns are beneath the suit.
The soldier unhooks her helmet and removes it. Her hair is short, cut at a sharp angle to match her jawline. But her expression is soft as she looks at Assura. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
Assura tries for a smile but winces, still in pain. She’s obviously worse off than me. Which makes sense. She may have my armor now, but she doesn’t have the full Ssedez fortitude. Yet.
I have the urge to give it to her. As much as I have doomed myself even further by biting her, leading myself one more step on the path to a lifelong Attachment to her, I cannot stop the desire to do it again.
To complete her transition. I knew it was possible. My commander, Oten, did it with his new mate, but in the throes of the desidre, I could not think past the desire to bite her. The compulsion was too strong, even stronger than my reluctance to violate the sacred rite of the venom that is supposed to be reserved for the mated.
It’s done. She’s happy about it, so I refuse to feel guilt or regret. No matter how much misery it may cause me in the near future.
“I have only a moment.” Lennina glances out the clear front wall of our prison cell. “Dargule has called a meeting of the entire crew in the main hangar. In thirty minutes—”
“Everyone will be there?” Assura tries to lift her head in excitement, but she does not have the energy to sit up.
“Guards will be minimal. His egomaniacal tendencies are on a rampage more than usual now he’s got you back.”
“But there will still be guards on the bridge and security in every corridor, right? And the doctors in the medic wing—”
“No. That’s what I’m saying. Dargule wants everyone to hear about his triumph and make sure we all know the rebellion is dead. He’s insane. The bridge will be on autopilot. It’s the perfect opportunity.” She pulls something from her weapons belt and puts it in Assura’s palm. “This will help you escape.” A loud beep sounds in the corridor. “I’m sorry I can’t help more.”
She lifts her helmet to put it on.
“Thank you,” Assura says.
Lennina shakes her head. “I should’ve believed in you and the rebellion. I should’ve left with you on the Origin. I’ve regretted it every day since.”
“But if you had, you wouldn’t be here to help us.”
Lennina’s lips curve in an almost smile. “The Freedom to Discover,” she murmurs with religious sincerity.
“The Value of Life,” Assura echoes her.
Like a slogan. Like a rebellious call to arms.
It must be the rebel code, the opposite of the Ten Systems credo to conquer and dominate every species and new world they find. Chills race down my spine, and I recognize for the first time what I did not before.
The Hades is but one ship in a thousand or more in the Ten Systems military fleet. Their might reaches all the known galaxies. And these women dared to rebel, Assura and her fellow crewmembers dared to escape—and succeeded.
The strength and skill, the sheer grit of will that would take…
I am awed for the first time, as I should’ve been from the beginning.
I understand better now what my commander Oten has been trying to convince me and what I did not fully believe: these women deserve our help. They should receive every ounce of assistance we can spare them.
Lennina snaps on her helmet and leaves, latching our cell door behind her.
Assura lifts what the other woman put in her hand. “Oh gods.” Her face
lights like she’s just found a savior.
I move next to her, lying on the floor. “What is it?”
“I think…” She searches the device that has a tiny electronic screen and is no bigger than—
“Is that one of the shock guns that Dargule had?” I suck in an excited breath.
“I think so.”
I take off one of my boots to test the shock gun on it. She drags herself over to the wall and sits up with it supporting her.
She presses one of the buttons and points it at my boot.
“Wait,” I say and touch her hand.
“What?”
“Are there cameras in this cell?”
She looks immediately at the corners. “Two. There and there.” She points at small holes in the ceiling that I never would have guessed contained lenses. “It’s unlikely anyone is watching now, with the meeting Dargule called.”
“But just in case.” I put my boot back on.
“True.” She lays her head back against the metal wall, and her breathing is too fast.
“We’re going to get out of this.”
She gives me a pained look. “I don’t know how. I’m useless. How are you healed already?”
“The Ssedez DNA learns. That’s how we get our impervious qualities. My system remembers the first time Dargule zapped me with that thing. Eventually, I will likely become immune to it.”
“No shit.” She looks at me with wonder then glances at the ceiling. “That would explain a lot of things.”
“What things?”
She gives me a side-eye. “You don’t want to hear about the techniques I used on your fellow Ssedez.”
I grit my teeth. “No.” I did not need that reminder, either.
She sighs but changes the subject. “When the final meeting alarm sounds, you’re going to have to escape to the bridge and seize control of the ship. There’s a way from there to put the hangar on permanent lockdown, so none of the crew will be able to get out.”
I glance at her neck. “There’s a possible solution to your problem.”
Her lips part, and her gaze goes to my mouth. “What?”
My heart pounds against my sternum, my pulse thundering in my ears. Biting her while I was in the throes of the desidre was… sacrilege but excusable. I was out of my mind with delirium, so I will not fault myself for it.