Their Human Vessel

by Lizzy Bequin

  Corrie did as she was told. She didn’t want to piss Vorne off, and beside that, the sudden tug at her throat had snapped her out of her panic. There was no point screaming like a frightened bimbo in a horror movie.

  And at least Vorne had called her by her name instead of “little human.” That was an improvement.

  A very minor improvement.

  But there was still the matter of the two other aliens approaching her. In particular, she was worried about the one with the broken horn. The one she had freed from its containment cylinder at the secret Juvanis farm.

  “This is Xalleus and Grekh,” Vorne gestured to the two aliens, first the one with the broken horn and bandage, and then the young one with the mohawk. “Grekh is my brother.”

  The two aliens were right in front of Corrie now, really invading her space. Her spine experienced a tremor of fear. She felt so vulnerable, totally at the mercy of these beings. It was like being trapped in a cage with a trio of Siberian tigers.

  But the aliens did not pounce. They merely stared at her, taking in her naked body with their curious glowing eyes.

  Vorne spoke some undecipherable words to his companions. The only part that Corrie understood was her name, spoken with a strange, unnatural stress pattern.

  “Koh-ree,” Vorne had said.

  “Koh-ree?” Grekh and Xalleus repeated, as if savoring the sound of her name on their alien tongues.

  They began to touch her, and Corrie tried to back away, but Vorne’s leash held her, and besides that, she had her back up against the stone wall of the grotto.

  There was nowhere to run.

  “Koh-ree.” It was becoming like a chant. A mantra.

  She cringed and whimpered as their fingers explored her body. They took her short hair and rubbed it between forefinger and thumb, like merchants testing the warp and weave of expensive silk. Their thick, brutal knuckles grazed her shoulders and arms, enjoying the soft smoothness of her skin.

  The one with the broken horn, Xalleus, palmed her breast. Corrie gasped and pressed herself back against the wall. The younger one, Grekh, followed suit, kneading her flesh and rolling her nipple between his fingers. A whine escaped Corrie’s lips, and the pair of curious aliens grunted with approval.

  In the background, Vorne stood with his arms crossed, watching, the leash still held in his fingers. She was his new pet, and he was showing her off to his companions.

  Xalleus spoke something in that strange alien language.

  Vorne nodded. “Xalleus is grateful that you freed him.”

  “He didn’t seem grateful before,” Corrie dared to answer.

  It was hard to speak. The dual attention of these alien males was kicking up a storm of conflicting emotions inside her. Foremost was fear, and she knew that was the appropriate response to this situation. But there were other, unaccountable feelings welling up inside her too. Visceral, primal feelings that manifested themselves in shameful ways, like the stiffening of her nipples between Grekh’s pinching fingers.

  Vorne laughed and translated her jibe to Xalleus, who chuckled cruelly and spoke again as he continued touching her, thumbing her trembling lips, clutching her throat.

  “Xalleus apologizes for his prior treatment,” Vorne said. “You have to understand his mindset at the time. He had been kept in that containment cylinder for over twenty cycles. And then when he was freed, the first thing to greet his senses was the odor of your femininity.”

  Her femininity? Was he talking about...

  Grekh’s hand had relinquished Corrie’s breast and now slid down her belly until his fingertips parted her pubic hair and reached the upper ridge of her clitoral hood.

  “Wait,” she gasped. “Don’t. You can’t—“

  Now she did try to push the alien’s hand away from her crotch, but it was as useless as attempting to shove a statue. The young alien’s curiosity was so intently focused on her sex, that he didn’t even notice her struggle.

  Instinctively, he peeled back her fleshy cowl and touched her bud, which was somehow full and tight with arousal. A zap of pleasure traveled deep into her core, and she moaned blissfully.

  This shouldn’t be happening. Just one little touch shouldn’t set her off like that.

  Corrie had been with guys who would stroke her down there for what felt like an eternity with little to no response. But one simple, probing touch from this alien and her knees felt like they were on the verge of buckling.

  Was it her fear? Epinephrine in her veins heightening her senses?

  She didn’t think so.

  Her mind hit on another thought: the two massive doses of “medicine” that Vorne had released inside her body hours before. By some uncanny intuition, Corrie suspected this was the cause of her tingling sensitivity. That alien seed had changed her somehow, had crept into the cells of her nervous system and turned up the dials of her arousal.

  But it was so vile and wrong. Being violated by one alien male was bad enough. This, however, was beyond imagining.

  “Please,” Corrie whimpered to Vorne. “Please make them stop.”

  But the alien holding her leash merely smirked at her.

  Grekh continued strumming at her erect and throbbing nub. He was clearly fascinated by the tiny appendage and the way that it caused such unexpected sounds to issue from Corrie’s mouth.

  Now another hand was trailing down her hip. It was Xalleus’s. His fingers traced the ridge of her pelvic bone and followed the fold between thigh and groin. Those fingers found her warm slit, oozing with moisture. Gently, he separated her wet folds, and touched the pad of his finger to her entrance.

  “Please,” Corrie warbled, unsure what she was begging for now, whether she was pleading for them to desist or continue.

  With a sudden motion that was not gentle in the least, Xalleus forced his thick finger knuckle-deep in Corrie’s hole, lifting her to her toes.

  “Oh fuck!”

  Her shocked cry only encouraged the two aliens. Grekh stared at her with a look of amazement in his glowing eyes, but he never stopped stroking and manipulating her pulsating clitoris. Meanwhile, Xalleus grinned and growled as he worked his finger around her insides, probing her, exploring the soft wet inner tissues of her vagina. The pad of his fingertip grazed the tender place on her front wall, and she mewled weakly. Xalleus noted this reaction. He stroked her there again and again until she was nearly sobbing with pleasure.

  “What are you doing to me?” Corrie gasped.

  The fingers of Grekh’s other hand traced down the curvature of her spine, over the hard bump of her tailbone, and delved into the cleft of her ass. He touched the outer rim of her anus and grunted with curiosity.

  “No, wait, not there!” Corrie tried to say.

  But it was too late.

  Grekh shoved a finger inside her rectum. With no lubrication, the thick, invading digit hurt, a stinging, burning sensation of tissue unprepared for that rough touch. Corrie let out a sharp barking cry of real pain.

  Startled by this response, Grekh immediately withdrew his finger. His brow furrowed with concern. Even Xalleus slipped his probing finger from her other channel, and it exited her with an embarrassing, wet sound.

  Grekh said something to Vorne, and a brief conversation ensued. Vorne nodded toward one of the dark tunnels leading off of this main chamber and Grekh darted away, the slap of his bare feet on stone gradually disappearing amid the other sounds of the cave—the trickling of water and the sough of subterranean winds.

  “You must forgive my brother,” Vorne said. “He did not mean to hurt you. He was merely curious about your various holes.”

  Her butt still ached from Grekh’s probing, but she would be okay. Now she was more curious about what Vorne had said.

  “He’s your brother?”

  “Yes,” Vorne answered. “My younger brother. I have sent him to fetch food and water for you. You must be hungry and thirsty. Sit and rest.”

  Xalleus had stepped back, finally giving her some
room to breathe. When Corrie made the mistake of glancing down, she saw that his member was still fully erect, however. She immediately turned her eyes away.

  “Sit,” Vorne repeated more forcefully. “Rest. You will need your strength.”

  Corrie wondered what exactly she would need her strength for, but she didn’t dare ask. Part of her wanted to defy the alien’s brusque command, but the truth was that she felt weak. Even though she had barely used her legs all day, they felt wobbly and unsteady beneath her. She lowered herself to the floor. Xalleus and Vorne crouched and stared at her with those frightening green eyes. They conversed in their alien speech.

  “Are you talking about me?” Corrie asked. “It’s rude to talk about someone when they are sitting right in front of you.”

  Vorne laughed, then grew serious.

  “Why were you brought here?” he asked.

  “You’re asking me?” Corrie lifted her bound hands and tugged at the leash. “You’re the one who brought me here, remember?”

  Vorne shook his head impatiently.

  “No. I mean why did the humans bring you to Terramara? There hasn’t been a female on this planet in decades. Why did they bring you now?”

  “Oh,” Corrie said. She thought about it for a moment, and then explained in as simple terms as possible that she had not actually been brought here—she had snuck onto this planet secretly and against the Galen Group’s wishes.

  And now she was paying for that indiscretion.

  It was not clear how much of her story Vorne understood, but he seemed to get the gist. He spoke to Xalleus, apparently translating what she had said. The other alien had never once taken his eyes off her the whole time.

  When Vorne seemed to be finished translating, Corrie spoke.

  “You said there hadn’t been a female on this planet in decades. You mean there hasn’t been a human female, right? There must be females of your own species.”

  Vorne’s expression turned grim, and Corrie felt a tingle of fear that she had said something wrong.

  “No,” Vorne said coldly. “The females of my species are all dead.” He paused, then said, “You do not know of this?”

  Corrie shook her head. She wanted to find out more about what had happened to the Terramaran females. It was her journalistic instinct to probe and ask questions, but she sensed it was a touchy subject.

  “Most humans know nothing about this planet,” she said. And then, timidly, she asked. “Are they really all dead? All of the females?”

  “All but one, the Listener, and she is ancient.”

  Corrie couldn’t help herself for investigating deeper.

  “What happened to them all?” she asked.

  But before Vorne could answer her, there came a sound of footfalls rushing up the passageway and Grekh hurried into the grotto chamber. He was bearing a ceramic jug sloshing with water and a shallow wooden bowl loaded with some kind of strange food.

  He kneeled and set the jug and the bowl beside Corrie on the rough stone floor. Then he looked up into her face and their eyes met.

  “Hello, human female.”

  His speech was halting, his pronunciation awkward. But there was a certain tone to his words that Corrie found difficult to identify at first. When she realized what it was, her heart skipped.

  It was reverence.

  “Hello, Grekh,” she found herself answering back almost without thinking.

  The young alien grinned and moved back, crouching alongside his older brother. Now Corrie had an audience of three aliens staring at her with glowing green eyes. Naked aliens at that, except for Vorne, who was clad in his black leather loincloth.

  It was more than a little offputting.

  When she didn’t eat right away, Grekh nodded insistently toward the food.

  “Eat, human,” he said in his thickly accented speech. “Eat.”

  Corrie turned her attention to the bowl of food. It was a bit hard to make out at first in the soft lighting of the grotto, but as she focused in, she saw what looked like long, thin, leathery strips of dried meat, similar to jerky. As she looked closer, however, she noticed what appeared to be nubs, rather like one might find on the tentacles of a squid. She hesitated.

  “Eat,” Vorne insisted.

  As if on cue, Corrie’s hungry stomach rumbled like a thunderstorm. The fact of the matter was that she hadn’t eaten anything since last night, and she was starving. Her stomach was tying itself in painful knots as if it were trying to devour itself.

  She lifted a strip of dried whatever from the bowl. She sniffed it. Gave it a nibble.

  Whatever it was, it was definitely meat of some kind, but it had been well-seasoned with salt and other spices she could not identify. There was also a tart, sweet flavor to it, and she realized that something like little wild berries had been pounded into the meat.

  It was kind of like the pemmican that her father had brought along as a trail snack during their hiking excursions in the mountains back on Earth, back when she had been a girl. A wave of nostalgia flowed through her.

  She ate and found, much to her surprise, that the strange alien pemmican was not bad at all.

  In fact, it was pretty darn delicious. The meat was tender, and the combination of savory and sweet flavors was a perfect balance.

  Corrie lifted the bowl into her lap and began to eat ravenously. She must have eaten a dozen of the meaty strips before she finally slowed her pace. It was exactly what she needed however, The combination of protein and carbs was nourishing, and already she could feel her energy making a resurgence.

  She took up the jug of water and drank lustily from it. The fluid was clear and almost sweet with minerals. It was wild spring water that flowed smoothly down her throat.

  Corrie took another long drink from the ceramic jug. When she came up gasping, she noticed that all three of the alien males were staring at her, their glowing green eyes studying her every movement with intense curiosity.

  “Why don’t you take a picture,” she muttered. “It would last longer.”

  Without taking his eyes off of her, Vorne spoke to his companions in his husky alien language. The one with the broken horn, Xalleus, let out a bark of laughter and said something brief in reply.

  Vorne chuckled.

  “Xalleus is amused by your joke,” he said.

  “I’m glad someone is entertained,” Corrie said between sips of water.

  “Xalleus is pleased that his little human mate has such a sharp wit.”

  The jug slipped from Corrie’s hands and crashed on the floor, breaking into shards and spilling the remainder of the water.

  “His mate?” Corrie stammered, eyes wide. “But I thought...”

  “You thought what?” Vorne said, apparently not upset about the broken jar, which the young one, Grekh was now gathering up from the cavern floor.

  What had Corrie thought? She had thought that if any one of these aliens was claiming her as his mate, it was Vorne. She didn’t think of herself that way. After all, they had only done that vile act one time—that hardly made them “mates” in her book. But Vorne had seemed so possessive, so protective of her. She hardly expected him to willingly share her with the other aliens.

  Vorne smirked, seeming to read the thoughts tumbling through her mind.

  “We Terramarans are not selfish like you humans are,” he said. “We share our possessions with our companions.”

  “Possession?”

  Corrie felt a rush of blood surging up the arteries of her neck and heating her face with a deep flush of anger.

  “Possession?” She said again, this time shouting the word indignantly.

  Grekh paused in his cleanup of the broken shards. His expression became confused, and he looked back and forth between Corrie and his brother. The other two aliens remained impassive despite Corrie’s outburst.

  She knew that she should stop, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Everything she had been through was coming to a head. Yes, Vorne
had saved her life from the guards. But he had also fucked her, used her, and tied her up like a dog. Yes these aliens had fed her, but now they were talking about her as their possession.

  She wasn’t going to allow that.

  The floodgates of her emotions had opened, and a torrent of indignation came pouring out.

  “No wonder your females are all gone!” she shouted, rising to her feet. She lifted her bound hands in front of her. “No fucking wonder, if this is how you treated them. Did you call them your possessions too? Did you tie them up and put them on leashes like animals? No wonder they are gone. I bet they all ran away the first chance they got.”

  Her words were coming out so fast and in such a ragged, angry voice, she wasn’t sure if Vorne could even understand her. But the way that his features hardened indicated that he got the gist.

  “They didn’t run away,” he growled. “They died.”

  Corrie stopped. The anger drained out of her, replaced by a cold feeling.

  “All of them?”

  Vorne didn’t answer, He nodded toward the knotted tendrils looped around Corrie’s wrists, which she was still holding out before her.

  “And I told you, Corrie, the bindings are for your own good. For your safety. We are protecting you.”

  And that, her anger welled again. Protecting her? That was clearly bullshit.

  Corrie plucked at the makeshift collar around her neck.

  “If this is the kind of protection you are offering, I don’t want it.”

  “I don’t care what you want,” Vorne said, rising to his feet. Corrie was suddenly reminded of how intimidating the horned alien was when standing at full height.

  “You are too important,” he continued. “The fate of the planet lies within you, Corrie. Your body is far too precious to be left to your own childish human whims. You belong to us now, and we will protect you, whether you like it or not.”

  Corrie glared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. This alien asshole meant every word he was saying.

  “You are dying, Corrie. This atmosphere is poisonous to you, and you need us to keep you alive. To provide the antidote.”

  Corrie shivered at the implication. She was suddenly aware once again of how naked she was. How exposed.