by Tammy Walsh
“Go away,” she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed, so close to her I could almost feel her heart beating.
“Come on,” I said. “We can’t let something like this keep us down. We can think of a new way to get out of here. You’re the engineer. I bet you’ve got lots of ideas.”
“We’re never getting out of here,” she said. “Never.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “We can. We just need to believe in ourselves.”
Where was the endless hope she harbored last night? Where was the desire to rage against the Changelings and beat them at their own game?
Disappeared, like the hole in the wall.
I was wrong about her body not moving. There was one part of her—other than her eyelids when she blinked—that did.
The index finger on her right hand tapped at the bedsheet in a repetitive pattern over and over again.
“You keep doing that,” I said, nodding to her fingers. “Is it some sort of game you play?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not a game.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s something my teachers showed us once. It’s a signal system. A way to communicate without the enemy knowing what you’re doing.”
I sensed talking about it was something that might help her get out of the funk she was in.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Go on,” I said. “Tell me. How does it work? Or is it too complicated to understand?”
“It’s called tap code. It’s not complicated. It’s very simple.”
“So show it to me.”
She lay there a moment. Then she placed her hand on my leg.
I was beginning to enjoy this communication system already.
“The English alphabet consists of twenty-six letters,” Maddy said. “C and K are doubled up to create one letter. That leaves twenty-five letters. Then we divide up each set of five letters into a horizontal row, one on top of the other. That makes five rows. To identify each letter we give two taps. The first tap refers to the row and the second number to the column. So, one tap followed by a pause, then another tap, means A. Two taps followed by a pause, then three taps, means H. The letter X is used to break up sentences.”
“Cool,” I said. “Computer. Create a new language file. Title: tap code.”
Now I could tap code fluently the way she could.
“You know, we could never have anything like that with the Titian language,” I said. “It’s too complicated. Why did your teacher show it to you?”
“It was done as part of my engineering course,” Maddy said. “In case we were working on a building that collapsed in on us and some people were sent to come and dig us out.”
“Did that ever happen to you?”
“No. I’m a very good engineer.”
“I bet.”
I looked her over again with newfound respect. She wasn’t only beautiful. She had brains too.
“So what were you tapping earlier?” I said.
She tapped her finger on my leg.
“S. O. S?” I said. “Sos? What does that mean?”
“People think it stands for Save Our Souls or Save Our Ship but it doesn’t. It actually doesn’t mean anything, except for someone to come save you.”
“Huh,” I said. “That’s interesting.”
“No, it’s not. But thanks for pretending.”
For the first time that day, she smiled up at me. Even upset and depressed as she was, she was a marvel to look at.
Then a serious look came to her eye. She pushed herself up onto her elbows. She leaned forward and was about to press her lips to mine but she hesitated. She kissed me on the cheek instead.
“What was that for?” I said.
“For being nice to me,” she said. “I know I… overreacted a little earlier. It was just a setback. That’s all.”
But it wasn’t just a setback. It was a major blow. After all, if everything got reset every day, what realistic chance did you have of escaping?
Then she looked at me again. I’ve never had a girl look at me that way before. It sent a shiver through me, right to the very tips of my toes.
She leaned forward, mindless of the nightgown that hung open. I could get a real eyeful if I wanted.
But I didn’t. I mean, I did, but I was so enveloped in her eyes that everything else was a welcome distraction.
She came so close to my lips that I could taste her.
“Wait,” I said. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this. You’re not feeling yourself.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said. “This is me. And I need this. Please.”
Please.
I couldn’t turn her down.
I doubted any Titan could.
We kissed.
It was an explosion that erupted across every sense I had. My fingers tingled and the world blazed in loud and sharp colors. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest. I could feel hers too, the vibrations working through the fibers of the blanket spread beneath us.
And the bed.
She pressed a hand to my stomach and felt how hard my muscles were. Then slipped down it to touch me the way I wished she had this morning.
She gripped me through my pants and squeezed tight. She even began jerking me off.
I cupped her through her top and felt the soft swell of her breasts filling my hands. I felt the hard nub of her nipples between my fingers. I pinched them gently and then more firmly.
Her eyes met mine. There was that fire I thought she’d lost. But she’d never lost it. It’d just taken a backseat, that’s all.
She opened her nightgown and shrugged it off. Then she removed her bra and panties.
She sat there naked, her breasts hanging swollen, pressed between her arms on either side. Her hips were wide and her waist narrow.
And always I came back to that look in her eye. That hungry look. She was looking at me and only me. There was no one else in the world. And no one else was watching.
If she only knew the truth…
She was out of the starting blocks first and kissed me hard, pressing me back. She was a little thing but she used her balance to knock me off-kilter and swept my arm out from under me.
I laughed as I rolled back. She pressed herself on top of me. She felt so warm and smooth on top.
“You should stop laughing,” she said. “This is a serious business.”
I grinned at her as she straddled me. Looking up at her, I saw her in all her glory. So hot, she took my breath away.
I grabbed her. Though she put up some resistance, I rolled her onto her back. I bent down to kiss her on the lips but she snapped at me with her teeth—and not playfully either. Full-blown snapped at me.
I feigned going right to kiss her on the cheek. She turned to bite me, and I caught her on the lips instead. I pulled back in case she snapped at me, but it appeared I’d gained entry to her lips. I kissed her hard and our tongues fought for supremacy.
This wasn’t making love.
This was a battle.
She tore my t-shirt off and racked my back with her nails. It was a good thing I healed fast. But it still hurt.
I caught her wrists and slammed them down on the mattress.
The fire between us was hot. I couldn’t wait to claim her as my own.
“You like it rough?” I said.
“I like it any way you want to give it to me,” she said.
She couldn’t have turned me on more if she tried.
“Is that so?” I said.
“Mm-hm.”
I reached down between her legs and felt she was already sopping wet. I slipped my shorts down. My cock made a heavy thud noise when it struck her abdomen.
I liked when her eyes widened at my size. Then she dragged her eyes up my torso, to my face. There was no sign of fear in that expression. Only expectation.
She rubbed her breasts between her hands.
I couldn’t believe how hot sh
e was.
Then she slid her hands down to my cock and wrapped them both around me.
“Come on in, big boy,” she said. “The weather’s fine.”
She placed me at her slit but I had to be the one to exert the force to enter her.
So I did.
She spread her legs a little wider to cater to me. She turned her head to one side. She gasped, her eyes closed. I entered her slowly, slowly, slowly…
Her head turned to one side, her brow dimpled with a frown. Pain, I thought.
Just a little more…
She was so tight I felt her clench around me.
And that was it. I was in.
I filled her completely.
Then I began to rock back and forth, building up the pace. She raised her hips to meet me with every sensuous thrust.
She was everything I saw. Everything I wanted.
I was greedy and always wanted more.
I pressed my weight against her and ground in deep, tearing a scream from her as I moved at half speed.
She smacked me on the ass.
“More,” she said. “Give me more.”
I never thought she could take more.
I dished out more punishment, ramming her hard. Her breasts bounced as I dove in deep, taking every last inch of her.
“Yes!” she screamed. “Oh, God…”
She clawed at my back and pulled me in deeper.
She panted as she pushed herself up onto her elbows. She worked her hips and drove herself onto me. Then she wiggled her hips back and forth, driving me further still.
I grasped her by the hips and rolled over, bringing her up on top of me. She moved well and didn’t stop bouncing. She balanced her arms on my shoulders and held on tight. She rode me like an arjath.
She was already caked with sweat. It glistened and rolled down her body. She took herself to another orgasm. Her legs shuddered as she squealed. I felt her pussy squeeze ever tighter around me.
We sat there a moment, me deep inside her, our sweat mingling and become one. It was a soft, tender moment. We shared a soft kiss.
But we weren’t done yet.
I lifted her and flipped her over, placing her ass up in the air with a pillow underneath. I fucked her from behind. Even she struggled to maintain her calm as I used the mattress’s spring to drive into her one vicious thrust after another.
She screamed her loudest yet, her hands clawing at the blanket, as I pummeled her mercilessly.
I placed my hands on her shoulders to gain some leverage and rode her harder.
Was I being too rough with her? Did she want it gentler?
She placed a hand on mine and moved my fingers over to her neck. She wanted me to choke her.
She was driving me crazy!
I wrapped one hand around her throat and squeezed—not hard. Just enough for her to rasp slightly.
“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “Yes!”
She tossed her hair back and I gripped a fistful of it. I ground out a few more deep thrusts but I knew I couldn’t last much longer.
I nibbled on her ear as the final few pumps drew me closer to orgasm.
We panted with exhaustion and flopped down on the bed. After learning how she liked her sex, I was surprised when she cuddled up close to me. I was delighted and wrapped her in my arms.
“That was awesome,” she said. “Just what I needed.”
“I think I’m going to need it every day with you,” I said.
She chuckled and arched her neck to kiss me on the lips.
WE WILL FIND A WAY OUT OF HERE, she tapped the message on my arm.
“And if we don’t,” she said, “incredible sex for the rest of our lives doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Amen to that,” I said. “Amen to that.”
We made love again less than thirty minutes later. We collapsed on the mattress and gasped for oxygen. It was like a drug. We just couldn’t get enough of each other.
“You’re a bad girl,” I said, kissing her on top of the head.
“And you’re a bad boy,” I said.
She reached under the blankets and tickled my balls. My cock, predictably, hardened.
I sighed.
“You’re the girl of my dreams,” I said.
“Then shut your eyes and keep on dreaming,” she said. “You might get lucky and enjoy round three later.”
I grinned at her.
“I’d like that,” I said.
“I bet you would.”
The lights flickered off and came back on. Only now, they were a dull red and flashed in concentric circles from our position on the bed to the wall on the other side of the room.
Maddy sat up and pressed the blanket to her chest.
This was new.
“What is it?” she said.
I glanced in the direction of the opposite wall. I thought I saw something there but it was hard to make out. It was…
An open door.
The blood drained from my face.
“What?” Maddy said, peering at the darkness illuminated only by the flashing red lights. “What is it?”
Then she must have seen it with her own eyes.
The blood drained from her face too.
Neither of us could believe what we were seeing.
The wall had been perfectly smooth before. We should know, we’d dug a hole into it and this morning, it was wiped clean.
It’d been a blank wall.
Now there it was.
Gaping like an open wound was a door.
And it was open.
“Is that… a door?” Maddy said.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
“What’s it doing here?” she said. “Why is it here now?”
We shared a look. Neither of us knew what to make of it.
“Shouldn’t we go through it?” Maddy said. “After trying to dig through the wall, now there’s a door there, and it’s scarier than when there wasn’t one.”
Because you don’t know where it leads, I thought. But there was another way of looking at it…
“We know what’s on this side of the door,” I said. “Something better might be on the other side.”
“Or something worse.”
The lights flashed. There was a brief interlude of darkness before the flashing lights resumed.
“Wait…” Maddy said. “Is the door closing?”
It shrank from the top, an inch between each flash.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “We either go now and take the chance things will be better or stay here and things will stay the same.”
“We have to go,” Maddy said. “We could be free out there. In here, we’ll be trapped forever.”
We got up and quickly got dressed. Then we moved toward the door. It’d already shrunk to half its original size.
“Are you ready?” I said.
She nodded.
We held hands and stepped through the mysterious doorway.
Maddy
The most surprising thing about the doorway was that it led immediately into the next room. It wasn’t a tunnel. The three feet I dug the previous day should have brought us a good distance inside the room.
What sort of sorcery was this?
The room was of a similar size as the one we’d just left behind but very sparse, with no furnishings besides the long table that divided the room in half. On it was a bunch of items.
I looked over at Chax. In ordinary circumstances, just looking at him would have produced flickering images of our time together last night and made me blush.
The sex was incredible. I’d always had a… combative sense of sex. I liked to feel a little used when I got intimate with someone. And when I couldn’t get that feeling? Then I punished my lover by using them.
If you weren’t willing to go the whole hog the way I needed, they were wasting my time. And I was very jealous with my time.
I didn’t need to worry about that with Chax. He gave me everythi
ng I wanted.
Everything and more.
The guy was a sex-machine.
I didn’t understand how he could last so long, how he could jackhammer me so deep and with so much intensity I almost lost consciousness.
I wanted more.
I’d been looking forward to a nice round three this morning, but then we discovered this mysterious doorway. It didn’t look likely it would happen now.
To be continued…
“What’s going on?” I said. “What are we doing here?”
I fingered the items on the table. They appeared to be separated into two piles. There was a single item of clothing with an electronic device beside it.
“Don’t touch them,” Chax said. “We don’t know what they are. It could be some kind of trap.”
It didn’t seem like a trap to me. The room we just came from was the trap. A prison. This felt like we were getting closer to freedom.
But maybe I was wrong.
There was no doorway out of here either. When I turned back to the doorway we’d stepped through, I found it was no longer there. In this space, there was no comfortable bed, no replicator to make the things we needed, no toilet.
Nothing.
Had we just walked into the trap? Had we made the wrong decision?
“Good morning,” an ugly and unfamiliar voice said.
Lights flickered in the three corners of the room—it was triangle shaped. Beams of light met in the center, atop the table. A figure materialized. He was taller than Chax but stick thin and disgusting. He had hard natural plating across his body and was built like an insect. Just looking at him made my skin crawl.
“Welcome! I am Quus,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Finally meet us? What was he talking about?
“It must come as quite a shock for you to wake up in that room,” he said. “No matter how many times I see it, I can never quite imagine what it feels like. Do you know why you’re here?”
He spoke not so much as if he were speaking to us, but projected his voice as if he were in a stage play.
“You abducted us,” Chax said. “You’re a Changeling.”
“Guilty as charged,” Quus said. “But we don’t like to think of it as abduction. We prefer to think of it as recruitment. A chance to give you a more… eventful life.”
