Alien Rogue's Captive

by Viki Storm

  “Then we can use her now,” the Phurusian says. He’s not asking, merely stating a fact. “Approach, female.”

  I look at Anax, my last chance to escape this disgusting fate, but he’s looking disinterestedly out the one small window, probably seeing if the mechanics are done oiling up his rotator cuff or whatever.

  “I said approach,” the Phurusian repeats.

  “Better do it,” Anax says to me. “It might not seem like it, but they have worse ways of punishing convicts who don’t obey.”

  I take a tentative step towards the three clearance officers. One of them is already working the fasteners on his metallic sheath ensemble.

  If one of them tries to put it in my mouth, I’m biting it off. I don’t care what worse ways they have of punishing me.

  “And mind your teeth,” the Phurusian says, as if he can read my mind. “Or I’ll have them pulled out one by one with one of the mechanics’ rusty hand tools.”

  I take another step forward, and one of them grabs my wrist.

  That’s when everything goes white, like every light bulb in the place just went haywire and flared.

  I can’t see; the flash of light was too blinding, and the orange and yellow afterimages blot out the scene. Unless I’ve gone blind. Maybe one of those jerks used a Phurusian mind-blast to fry my optic nerves.

  It takes me a moment to register that my wrist is free; no one’s grabbing it anymore. I spin around, waving my hands around, groping for a handhold so I don’t trip and sprawl out on the floor buck-ass naked.

  I don’t hear any of the Phurusians, but neither do I hear Anax. Oh great, it’s the Phuru Apocalypse, and I had the good luck to arrive on the very day of its occurrence.

  “Can you see?” It’s Anax.

  “No,” I say. “What the hell happened?”

  “It was the muzzle-flash of my weapon. It’s not supposed to be discharged indoors. Come on, we only have a few minutes.”

  “And how long is a minute on this stupid planet? If it’s anything like a year, it’s probably twenty minutes.”

  “Enough blathering,” he says. “Take my hand. You’ll regain your sight soon enough, once we’re into the Black.”

  My fingertips brush his, and I seize them, his hand like a deep lungful of air after being held underwater for too long. The tip of his claw scrapes at my hand, and I get a shiver that goes all the way up to my shoulder. I’m reminded that whatever he is, he’s not human—he was born and bred to hunt and kill.

  Whether I like it or not—whether I trust him or not—he’s my only chance off this hellhole and back to Earth.

  I take a few careful steps, and I’m not surprised when I feel the huge, strong hands of this warrior around my waist. He lifts me up and slings me over his shoulder again. When he picked me up and carried me earlier on the street, it was annoying mixed with frightening, but this time it’s a relief.

  And his scent. I get to breathe it in again. Had I thought it was spicy and elemental? That’s about right. It’s not cologne; it’s coming out of his pores, mixed with the scent of unwashed skin and adrenaline.

  I close my eyes and breathe. After all that’s happened to me today, I don’t want to deal with anything anymore. I don’t want to think, don’t want to walk, don’t want to talk. It feels… good. Good to let someone else deal with this nightmare. I think under the circumstances I’ve held up remarkably well, but you can only take so much, and I’m at my limit. I want him to knock me out and put me in that sleep-pod thing again so I can wake up back in Los Angeles.

  I feel us go up a few steps then stop. “She got a little disobedient with the clearance officers. I had to discipline her.”

  “Wouldn’t have gotten disobedient with me,” a voice says. I recognize it as one of the mechanics. “She’d have been begging for more.”

  I want to tell him that he’d be the one begging for me to dig my fingernails out of his eyeballs, but I want on Anax’s ship more than anything, want to get out of here and back to Earth, and I won’t jeopardize our travels with pointless insults.

  I know now that Anax isn’t going to let any of the Phurusians touch me. But why did he tell me that I was going to have to? Why did he instruct me to let them do anything they wanted?

  Whatever Anax did to get us flight clearance must have worked because we’re soon in the ship, and he’s firing up the newly greased engines and strapping me into a seat.

  “I don’t have time to induce sleep,” he says. “So you’re going to have to endure the rigors of supra-light speed travel.”

  “I’ll endure the rigors of just about anything, so long as I don’t have to endure a rigorous lovemaking session with any of these aliens,” I say. In truth, now that most of the danger seems to be behind us, I’m a little excited to fly. If only my vision would return, I’d be staring out the window like a little kid on their first airplane ride.

  “Don’t you dare call it that,” he says, and something in his voice is sharp… almost dangerous.

  “What?” I ask, unsure what he’s upset about.

  “Lovemaking,” he says. “The word love you humans use has nothing to do with it. It’s a gross perversion of the word.”

  “Obviously,” I say. “I was using the term humorously.”

  “And there’s even less that’s funny about it,” he says.

  “At least we can agree on that,” I say. I fumble around for a seatbelt, but I can’t find anything. I sense Anax’s heat as he reaches over and pulls a chest harness down and gently manipulates my arms, threading them through the harness. As he does this, the back of his hand (at least I think it’s the back of his hand; I still can’t see anything) brushes against one of my nipples. I’m surprised to find that I actually lean into it, arching my back upwards, the way a cat pushes up against the hand that pets it. I don’t know what the hell it is, maybe a side effect of being nude for so long with all this talk about sex, or maybe it’s relief and gratitude towards my savior.

  But somehow I’m not sure if it’s any of these things. I think it just feels good. Because it does.

  He clips the belts together, not acknowledging his accidental (at least, I think it was accidental) touching by repeating it or mentioning it.

  “You’re sitting on the last strap,” he says. “We don’t have the time, so…” He reaches between my legs and underneath my thigh. There is heat—so much heat—from his rough skin, and I can feel it with my sensitive areas. I almost want him to rub against me, so I can feel his hot fingers strum slowly up and down my clit. He pulls out the strap and clicks the last two buckles in place. My head is reeling—I’m definitely confused now. Three minutes ago, I was ready to fight three aliens to the death before I let them touch my nude body. Now?

  Now I sorta want one of them to? Yeah, yeah, he’s a Kenorian and not a Phurusian, but it’s not like I even knew the difference between the two up until a few hours ago. But there is a big difference between the two species. Kenorians are all muscles, chiseled jaws and masculine aura. Phurusians are the creepy things that you’re afraid live underneath your bed.

  This is too weird. Instead of being grateful that my captor is keeping his hands to himself, I’m disappointed? Rejected? Insulted?

  After all, what makes me think that he’d want to grope me? Maybe human females are as physically repugnant to a Kenorian as a Phurusian is to a human female. Maybe the sight of my nude body is disgusting to him. Maybe he doesn’t even have a cock and his species reproduces with spores or by squirting DNA out of their cloacas.

  “What was that bright light business?” I ask.

  “It was my weapon,” he answers. “What I used to disable them while I got you away and edited the computer records granting my ship access to go off-planet.”

  I think about this for a moment. He was probably going to use me as a distraction, let the three Phurusians rape me, and while they were busy, he would edit the computer records. But then something made him change his mind, and he blasted them with hi
s weapon instead.

  A barrage of questions invade my overtired mind. Why didn’t he let them touch me? Why is he taking me off-planet? Why is he risking everything in order to get me away from Phuru?

  The answer comes, so obvious I feel like quite the dullard.

  Anax has simply decided to take me and keep me for himself.

  He’s not rescuing me. He’s kidnapping me.

  Chapter 6

  Anax

  Once we’re into the Black, I relax enough to set the autopilot and rummage around the ship’s storage to get Brooke something to wear. I find an insulated undersuit and bring it to her. “It’s going to be too big,” I say.

  “I’d wear a pickle barrel with suspenders at this point,” she says. Her sight has returned, and she examines the suit, nodding approvingly. I don’t know what a pickle is, but I get her meaning.

  I leave the cockpit to give her privacy. Not that it matters much; I’ve seen every curve of her nude body already. And I can’t stop thinking about it, especially about the way it felt to pick her up—to own her. The sensation of my hands on her skin was electrifying, as if something inside her was reaching out to something inside me—like our atoms wanted to bond, the electrons trying to find the stability needed to form new molecules.

  After a few minutes, I tap on the window of the cockpit before opening the doors. She looks absurd in the undersuit—it’s sized for a Kenorian warrior. But it’s endearing, like when a child uses the wrong word in an idiom.

  “Where are we going?” she asks. I know she’s going to ask. “Earth?”

  “No,” I say. “We are most likely being followed right now.” That much is true. Can I take her back to Earth? In the courtroom when I was overwhelmed with pity for this human, I was ready to take her back to Earth in a heartbeat. But now? Now that I felt that… that cog fall into place? Now that I feel the pull of our bodies—our destinies—screaming to be together?

  I don’t think I can take her back.

  She’s mine.

  “We’re being followed?” she asks, her eyes wide and glazed with horror.

  “Probably,” I say. “It’s logical to assume. They can track my ship—and they can track your collar.” Her small, smooth hand touches the hollow of her throat, slender fingers probing the collar around her neck. I have no idea how we’re going to get it off. But we need to soon—it’s pointing the Phurusians straight towards us.

  “I guess I can’t go back to Earth until we get this thing off my neck. I can’t very well just go home and call a locksmith.”

  “It would be rather suspicious,” I agree. “Your governmental authorities would have a lot of questions as to its origins.”

  “And I’d end up in the loony bin when I told them,” she says. She touches the collar again and her face pales. “Didn’t you say there was an explosive charge inside this? That they can detonate it remotely? Please tell me we’re out of range for that.”

  “As far as I know, there are no limitations on the range,” I admit. I can’t bear to give her bad news, but I won’t insult her intelligence by coddling her. “However, I’m quite sure they’re not going to detonate it yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “They’re going to try and capture you first. You are the first convict to successfully escape in years. They will want to punish you severely as an example to the other convicts.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No,” I say. “But it’s the truth, and it buys us some time.”

  “They’ll pull out all my teeth one by one with a pair of rusty pliers?”

  I can’t help laugh at that. It’s what one of the clearance officers threatened her with as he was preparing to take her mouth. But my laughter at her spunk is quickly replaced with rage at the memory, still fresh and sharp in my mind.

  “What’s funny?” she says. She’s angry, but the huge undersuit that she’s wearing is so ridiculous-looking that it undercuts any menace she might have possessed.

  “He threatened you with pulling out your teeth,” I say. “Can I make a wild guess that it’s because you thought to yourself that you were going to bite off his cock?”

  Confusion clouds her face, creasing her brow. “How did you know?” she asks.

  “Some Phurusians—most, actually—possess mind-reading abilities. It’s variable. Some get inklings, some can read a mind like a large-print book. It also depends on the complexity of the nervous system of the lifeform. Humans are relatively simple and easier to read. You thought to yourself that you were going to bite off his cock, and he read your thoughts and threatened you accordingly.”

  “Can you do it?” she asks. “Read thoughts?”

  “No,” I say. “Kenorians are warriors. We are not a cerebral race like the Phurusians. Compared to what you’re used to on Earth, I might seem intellectually gifted, but compared to other races, I am not. I can only make educated guesses. But part of our warrior training is learning how to shield our minds against those races who can intrude upon our thoughts.”

  “Well, you’re right. I did think to myself that I had a mouth full of sharp teeth and would not hesitate to use them.”

  “That’s why I told you that you had to submit yourself to their desires,” I explain. “They needed to sense your thoughts, feel your fear and hesitation and anger. If we went in there and you were calm and cocky, thinking that there was no way you were going to have to submit, then they would have picked up on that in an instant. They would have been suspicious, probably would have restrained you and called the Hall of Justice to have you taken away and re-educated.”

  “Re-educated?” she asks. “Is that as bad as it sounds, like a lobotomy or something?”

  “What’s a lobotomy?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure exactly, but they screw around with your brain. Poke it with a needle or cut out a piece of it.”

  “Holiest Fate,” I say. “Is this a common practice on your planet?”

  “No,” she says. “They used to do it a long time ago, but even then I don’t think it was common.”

  “Barbaric,” he says.

  “High-and-mighty morals coming from the guy whose planet enslaves people for crimes they haven’t committed.”

  “Phuru is not my planet,” I say carefully. I know it’s not her fault, that an Earth human has no way of knowing anything about Kenor or Phuru. But it still pokes at my Kenorian pride. Pokes hard with a sharpened blade.

  “Why are you there?” she asks. “You say you hate them and it’s not your planet, but then why are you in the thrall of those bastards?”

  “I am in no one’s thrall, remember that, Earth female,” I say. I raise my voice a little louder than intended, but it’s my wounded pride. “Our planet, Kenor, was destroyed ten years ago. A few squadrons were off-planet when the attack occurred, so we’re not wholly extinct, but damned close.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. And something tells me that she’s actually sorry, that the idea of an entire planet’s destruction disturbs her. Could she really be a murderer? Someone who cares about a planet she never heard of?

  “And the reason that some of us are now serving in Phuru is because historically the two races have helped each other. Phurusians provided Kenor with technology and equipment, and Kenorians raided other planets on behalf of Phuru. That’s where most of us were when our planet was attacked, conquering a planet rich in mineral ore for Phuru. When we didn’t have a home to go back to, many of us just stayed in Phuru.”

  “Are there others of your race elsewhere?”

  “Maybe,” I say and shrug. “I’ve heard some rumors about a Kenorian settlement on Erebus.”

  “But you never wanted to check it out?”

  I sigh. How to explain to her that I’ve always been afraid to? Kenorian warriors are supposed to fear nothing. “No,” I say. “But we’re going there now.” It’s the best chance I’ve got to keep her safe.

  There is silence for a long while, and when I look ov
er at her, she’s asleep. No wonder. I can’t imagine the strain she’s had to endure. All because of me. Because I chose to serve the Phurusians, thinking I had no other options. There was no bond of servitude between the Kenorians and Phurusians. I could have gone anywhere else to make my way, but in truth I was looking for something familiar, and since a few other Kenorians stayed, too, it was a way I could be around my own kind. We heard rumors, of course, that there’d been other warrior ships off-planet when Kenor was attacked. There was really no way of knowing who was off-planet at the time because all of our records were destroyed. There were rumors of a settlement on Erebus or Vh’lix, and of course rumors that some Kenorian females had been off-planet and now survived in one of the settlements.

  But they were just rumors.

  Some of the more crude Phurusians even took to using the expression “more rare than a Kenorian female”—how that stung every time I heard it. Without females, our race is only a few more years away from becoming wholly extinct. Gone. We can mate with other species, but it’s not quite the same. While our traits are dominant to other species, the DNA would not be pure. The first half-breed generation would look and act Kenorian, true. But what of the second generation? When two half-breeds reproduced? Slowly the Kenorian traits would become diluted. That’s assuming that half-breeds could even reproduce—it’s well known that most species of hybrids cannot reproduce naturally.

  But what if this human is your bonded mate?

  How I wish it so. I would fill her womb with seed and watch her belly swell. I would fill the rooms of our domicile with the sound of children’s laughter.

  Suddenly, I’m jarred out of these thoughts by the shrill beeping of my radar screen. Brooke, in the seat next to me, wakes with a jolt and a weak scream. It takes her a moment to get her bearings, and I watch her face change from the innocent peacefulness of sleep to the confusion and disappointment of being on a ship with me. Can’t say I blame her.

  “What’s that?” she says. “Please tell me that’s just the timer you set to let you know that your waffles are ready.”