Otherworldly

by C F Rabbiosi

  He spins me around and his eyes fall on the tops of my breasts that push upward so unnecessarily. “This is from the wardrobe of one of the women here. She was the smallest.”

  “Was?”

  “Like her mate, she has been lost to us.”

  I immediately think of the moment I arrived here, huddled in the dirt, the giant tearing toward me before Kassien killed him. What did his mate do to receive a similar fate?

  I slide the small leather skirt up my thighs and though Kassien moves behind me to help tie it, I turn away and manage it myself. My reflection in the glass reveals a half-naked girl, broken and lost. I cross my arms over my stomach and long, tangled tresses fall to my waist. The Koridon behind me sees it too, and takes a few steps back.

  “What are your plans for me?”

  He crosses his arms over his chest, thick leather vambraces up to his elbows, and stares fire through me. My cheeks sting as I realize that being lost in thought has landed my gaze somewhere below his belly, though that’s the last place I care to look. In fact, a chilling thought reminds me how much bigger that part of him will be compared to Alexander. I sigh as he glimmers at me without any hint that he plans to answer my question.

  “Have you ever brought a human here before?”

  “I’ve had many.” His words chill the air. “We have use for them as there are still many things we do not understand here.”

  I don’t understand much either, but I have a feeling there’s still so much my people have passed down to me, ideas, skills, even songs I could sing to him. This brooding warrior couldn’t possibly sing or enjoy music, but maybe he would find me amusing anyhow. “Do you have any books?” I ask.

  He tips his head to the side.

  “Surely you read. That’s how we’ve learned everything again since you—” I avoid saying destroyed our world years ago. We have rebuilt it through the knowledge of the survivors who had passed down their skills as well as through the tough, leather bound books dragged out of the rubble.

  “Yes. A few. They are rare, but we do use them if they have valuable information. So many are completely useless, however.”

  “No book is useless.”

  He stiffens, if that were possible, already statuesque as he stands. “I do not understand why you would have any interest in false stories that could never come to fruition.”

  “Really?” I look out wistfully toward the wild outdoors. “I guess you have no need for such entertainment when you already live an adventurous life.” How marvelous to have traveled to other worlds and flown through the stars, the very things my stories are made of. Of course they don’t need to read about Frankenstein or Grimm’s fairy tales. Silly as it may be, I love it and am not ashamed.

  “Where I come from, there were written works, but after a time they were long forgotten, burned up with the rest of my world.”

  “You mean…” I never once considered that they may have been forced to come here. I always thought it was in their nature, that they wanted to conquer and gain power just like the Kings of the past in our world did. Take and devour, their own only sense of purpose. Always living simply and raised with fear in my heart, it is a mystery why anyone would want to hurt, kill and destroy for glory. “I’ve never known anything except...” I must take care in keeping my village out of this predator’s ears. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I can’t imagine what you’ve seen and done.” The pads of my fingers find the glass and the smell of pine on a cool wind whips against my face, as real as though I stand barefoot in the middle of a beautiful meadow. Will I always be on this side of the glass? Always looking, never touching. Touching but never tasting…

  “Do you like the water?” he asks.

  “I don’t mind it. Fruit juices are my favorite, though.”

  He shakes his head and the tiniest of smile creeps across his lips. “No, I mean, do you like to swim in it?”

  I pull back and quirk a brow. What does he mean? “I don’t know what kind of baths you have here, but I certainly do not play around while washing myself.”

  “Ready yourself, girl.” A laugh I didn’t think possible enters the stagnant space. “We go out today.”

  ***

  The sun shines brightly over the hills as Kassien escorts me out of his grounded ship. He moves quickly and I take long strides to keep up with him. I want to ask him where he’s taking me, but every time I urge myself to let the words free, my mind has already jumped to the bird on a branch or the red and yellow flowers poking up from the brush. The foul memories from last night hardly surface, though I feared it so much.

  From a little brown bird chirping on a twig, Kassien comes into focus. “Have you never seen a flying creature before?” he asks.

  “Of course I have,” I recover. “I’m a nomad. I’ve been wandering from place to place my whole life.” Oh. Sparkling water plays with the sun’s rays from behind him and my mouth drops open. It’s more water than I’ve ever seen before, blue that reaches across the land in every direction. The stories are true. Moby Dick, A Thousand Leagues Under the Sea…Joy warms my bared skin. “The ocean.”

  He snorts a laugh. “No. A lake.”

  I bite my lip, too entranced to care about my misstep. “It’s so beautiful.”

  His breath hot against the back of my neck, my muscles lock. The lightest brush across my shoulder, his lips, a caress that sends blissful chills racing down my spine. His hands grab quick and rough at my leather bottoms.

  “No, please, Kassien. I can’t; don’t you understand what it will do to me?” Fear pounds through my vessels but he loosens the strings at my back no matter how the thumping of my heart sounds in his ears. He said he would wait until I was fully healed! Another beautiful moment out in precious freedom, and it will be stolen forever by a male whose only care is to mate me, no matter how I am destroyed.

  Moving in front of me, he unlatches his vambraces. My head drifts down, everything around me turning to dust, my joy lost. His touch glides across my nipple and a knot forms in my throat. The pink bud stiffens against his fingertips and, with the other hand, he lifts my chin. I do not miss the monstrous bulging beneath his dark leather pants as my face moves up, nor the frantic rise and fall of his chest. I recognize the animalistic gleam in his countenance, the desperation in his stillness, as it takes every bit of his strength not to attack me.

  He cups my breast, kneading it within his strong grip, and a soft utterance releases from his lips. The strangest feeling rises inside as I take him in. This giant’s massive form will crush me to death the moment he loses control, and that huge part of him will force inside my slit against everything natural. It will devour and caress him and he’ll be driven to madness. He will kill me, pull my hair and snap my neck, smother me or break my bones in his frenzy. And yet…pure fire dances in his eyes and reflects me back as something so beautiful, I can’t stop myself from wanting to do whatever he asks.

  “Do you lust after Efaelty as you do for me right now?”

  He lets go of the silky flesh he teases. “She means much to me, but warrior women are made to be strong. They don’t feel like water rushing against the hands.” He lets my long locks slip past his fingers. “They are not made to be attractive or produce such intoxicating aromas.”

  “I smell nice? That’s why you like me?” His own scent, the one that drifted into my senses as my face was buried in his chest last night, ignites little shocks of strange feeling. As he ran me out of there, bleeding and traumatized, that pleasant scent didn’t sink in until this moment.

  That wandering touch resumes its search up my stomach, then he brings the pad of his thumb down my lips. “That is not why.” It can’t be, his eyes say. He kneels and, placing a hand between my shoulder blades, pulls me to his mouth. A warm, wet flick of his tongue laves up the middle of my breast, and if he wasn’t wrenching me against him, it would have thrown me backward.

  “Step away from me, Koridon,” I force. My shoulders push forward and I bra
ce my feet into the ground, but he doesn’t allow me an inch of movement from his fevered grasp.

  He laps at them, sliding up the quivering flesh, tonguing the nub while I squirm. My aching slit feels the breeze upon it, wetness seeping. He groans, something invisible jerking his head down. He breathes me in deeply and, when he snaps back up, the storm raging beneath his skin cannot be contained any longer.

  “No!” I fall and my back slams against the ground. “Kassien, stop! This isn’t what you wanted! You wanted me to survive!”

  He shakes his head, a starving animal with a feast of rare meats lain out before him. “I am being torn into pieces, Calypso!” He crawls on top of me and I throw my fist into his rock-like exterior.

  12

  ~Calypso~

  The Koridon spreads my legs, and by his brutish handling, I know he is unable to hear my pleas. Hopelessness sets in, all of it lost on the determination splashing his face. My hands imprint into his chest, my elbows bending painfully as he crushes my forearms down.

  The monstrous part he strokes in his hand is so thick and unnatural, no man’s could compare. I bury my face in the softness of his beard and summon my courage. His heavy form presses my body into the wet dirt and, as he takes a handful of the hair strewn out around me, ice water flows through my veins. Nothing can stop what he will do to me. His steely maleness pressures my pelvic floor and I take a deep breath.

  I’m going to survive this.

  I touch his face and snap some part of him back to sanity. “Kassien, it hurt so much when he did that to me last night. I just don’t understand why you would do this.”

  “I have never wanted anyone like this. I can take being wounded, beaten until bloody, but what you do to me is evil.” He moves up and glides his fingers against my slickness and over the nerve bundle just above. He leaves me shuddering, an unwanted longing under his touch. “I have never wanted anything until now.

  “You will destroy me.” I smear shining tears across my cheek. “I’m not ready. Please, give me the time you promised.”

  “You will not be destroyed, Calypso. Look deep into me.” Our eyes meet and their beauty pulses through me in waves, captivating me with their intensity. But I can’t imagine what he’s trying to make me see. My body shrieks as he drives himself an inch into my flesh. I tell myself to relax and open for him but my torso clamps in fear of him losing control and suddenly forcing himself in. The world blurs as hot tears sting their way to darken the sand.

  Trying to keep him from reaching a rabid craze that would see me torn to shreds, I talk to him, my only defense. “Do your women like it when you take them like this?” I manage, my lip quivering. The ones back at his domicile weren’t monstrously big like Kassien and the other males.

  He bends my leg hard, knee past my ear, and grasps my thigh to gain more leverage. His hips grind forward ever so slightly, a massive object pressing against my walls until it hits a strange note, something pleasant deep underneath the expanding pressure. “They are strong.” He bears his teeth and I look between my bent legs. Below a light thatch of hair, his massive girth embeds into the shining pink that stretches around him. You are more slick than I have ever felt.”

  “Maybe that’s a human thing. Do you like it?” I’m no frail princess. My back scrapes against the tiny pebbles in the dirt as he digs another inch of his silk upon steel in. His blissful groan closes my lids and I feel my leg fall to the side. My other one is tremulous in his grip.

  “Your slickness feels like sweet misery stroking my entire being.” He roars and slams his hands into the ground beside me. In a cloud of dust, he says, “I need to move inside you. I need to fully mate you.”

  I nod fearfully. “I know. And you will; I’ll do whatever you ask. But you have to control it. You know what could happen.” If he fully mates me and loses sight of my frailty, he will break my bones and turn me into another woman loved to death.

  He moves his head slowly from side to side, his eyes rolling back, stuck inside me only a few inches, needing with every screaming fiber of his being to embed his full length in my liquid heat. If he doesn’t hold back, this could be it. Another mangled girl staining the golden sand red. The waves shimmer across the lake’s surface. I hope it will be quick.

  I know it won’t be.

  I lift and touch my lips to his. He pulls back but I follow, feeling him deepen. “Let me kiss you,” I say, and he scrunches his brows together. “Please just give me that.” I run my hand along the ink drawings down his carved bicep. He tilts his head and becomes dead still. “You don’t— Oh.” The kiss must also be something their people have no use for. Taking him by the back of his neck, I move my mouth upon his. He lets me. A bond, a closeness between us squeezes my heart and the way he responds with unsure kisses back shoots a thrill straight to where our sexes meet and he hardens further. My spine arches a moment before I move my hips softly, massaging his oversized crown and just beyond with my body.

  Responding to the dragging up and down, he grasps the side of my face and devours my mouth as though it were giving him life. Our tongues meet, a quick jolt, and I know he feels it too.

  He digs further, and just as I’m losing myself, a warning goes off. The thought of Alexander finishing roughly, down my throat then also between my legs, sobers me. If the Koridon finishes with that last, hard stroke—

  I struggle under his kiss, suddenly asphyxiating, his heat and weight too much. Upon flailing, my hand hits something sharp. A few attempts over the ground and I smack on top of the object. I grasp the sharp rock tightly and bring it down hard.

  Slice. Blood drips from the cut flesh of my leg. The Koridon freezes, then sniffs. He grabs the wounded area, then quickly pulls away to peer at shining red fingers. He tears away from me, taking his heat and threat with him, and the relief is instant. “What have you done?”

  He removes the leather strap around his waist and wraps the cut, mumbling in his language. The second he finishes, I jump up and run.

  My leg throbs its protest as I run toward the lake. “What are you doing?” Kassien yells and gives chase.

  The chill of Hollow’s-Eve time belts against my nakedness, but I slosh into the water anyway. Cold rises up my calves and a laugh bursts from my mouth when it tickles my waist. Kassien barrels in behind me and, careful not to tread too deep, I glide onto my back. I have never been in a huge body of water before, like in the stories of Black Beard and his pirates, and I’d rather not drown today.

  “Girl! Your leg.” I smile up at him, the vast graying sky his background. “You should keep it dry. Rest it!”

  “It’s fine. You’ve seen my scars. You’ve seen all of me.” I don’t fear a little cut. It feels especially nice as it saved me from dying underneath a Koridon. He appears completely unamused as he places the tip of his finger onto my chest and pushes down. The water engulfs me and flows down my throat as I’m submerged. I come back up, kicking and screaming.

  Now, he’s the one smiling. It’s one I haven’t seen upon him yet. He scoops me up and flings me around onto his back. Then, he dives through the green surface, my grip around his neck nearly failing.

  13

  ~Calypso~

  My body slices through the water as he swims, the cool rush against my skin the only thing reminding me I’m not flying. The cold doesn’t seem to touch me, and the wind thrashing into my face is exhilarating. His arms move fast, thrusting forward then gliding apart, and I am carried through the abyss by the prince of a sea kingdom. The speed, the rush…I have never felt so free.

  “Hold your breath,” Kassien calls out, and I do, but just before he dives under, lightning webs across the sky. I still see it burned into my vision as we drop beneath the surface. The swishing of his movements sound through the water like violent whispers of the gods. We propel deep down and I can’t be afraid, even though my lungs already burn, because I’ve never felt so alive. All around me is a thick mist of blurry green, and I find myself dreaming about floating through it
forever.

  Kassien swims to the bottom and stabilizes his feet into the murk. He clasps a hand over mine to fasten me against him and bends his knees. The tendrils of my long hair float around us like smoke in the night sky before he vaults us back to the surface with his powerful legs. We explode through the surface and I gasp in a huge breath. Swaying along the undulating waves, rain spills from the clouds. Still breathing hard, I move around to Kassien’s front. “That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced.” A low rumbling sounds through the heavens, and raindrops patter all around with its millions of tiny splashes.

  Kassien’s dark tendrils have come loose, and drenched pieces hang over his stormy eyes. His arms encircle my waist tighter than he’s ever held me, and his gaze shoves through my chest. I can see what dances through it, images of us in the sand, where he almost made me eternally his. Right now, under this spell, I almost wish he had.

  “It is taking every bit of my strength not to claim you, Calypso.”

  “We came so close, but I couldn’t let you do it. Not yet.”

  “You cut yourself open, and there were many times before it. Why?”

  I have never spoken to anyone about this in a serious manner. Alexander caught me and I spat out a few things unwillingly, but for the first time, I feel like speaking openly on it. “I do it because I fear everything, nd because I want to open my skin and let the thing beneath it out.” A chuckle breaches my lips at the thought of the sunrise to sunset in the hands of a Koridon, the most exciting day of my life. Even our sexual encounter today falls softly on my mind, the relentless need of such a being pouring into me as he suffered. All my life, the tales of these monsters frightened me, and dark as I can be, sex with one never once crossed my mind without it being laden in terror.