Blade (Dark Monster Fantasy Book 3)

by Cari Silverwood

  The male was blushing as if that would matter to her, a word. Cycle. It wasn’t even rude.

  While she thought frantically, Led had moved closer. He couldn’t help her after all. His statement would add nothing to this.

  She should tell him to go but that would require assertiveness.

  That part of her had drained away and been replaced with a molten heaviness...and of all the times for this to happen, but she was going into that phase again wasn’t she? She wrapped her arms across her front.

  Swear words failed her. Nothing was going right this night. She should hide, except here it was nearly impossible. Though the naming ceremony was in the closing minutes, people were in their thousands outside in the seating area, and she had to be on a ship. She didn’t even know how long this would last.

  Even that disgusting sex she’d had hadn’t worked out right.

  Oh fuck this.

  Angry, deeply angry and past caring about appearances, she snapped out. “Baldor, what stops a cycle? Makes it pause for a week or so. Is it not mating?”

  “What?” He blushed deeper. “Yes, Of course it is that.”

  “Sex?” There must be more. No time for delicacy, though she was probably making Led get all puffed up talking about this. Males and their primitive attitudes to sex. “I did it with him because I was attracting males – all the males near me. I thought my cycle would stop.”

  She grimaced at her honesty. Like baring all her intimate secrets this was...because these were her intimate secrets. She wanted to slap herself.

  Finally Led spoke. “You’re starting again, aren’t you?”

  Such a deep voice he now possessed. She eyed him up and down. Thrassians had a certain allure – those claws, hair you could scrub yourself with, scales, and that gorgeous tail. The males looked mean and dominant by default. Annnnd that was the cycle making her horny.

  “I think so,” she said softly, heart doing a little dance at his nearness, his scent, his massive size and the way the air seemed to bend to avoid encroaching on his masculinity. Symptoms escalating fast.

  There was Baldor too. If this worsened Baldor was going to be... Wanting her.

  She stared at the floor then peeked at the s’kar. This had to be solved. Now.

  “Baldor. I sort of skipped through sex education when Jocelyn gave it. Navigation, command, ship design, those were more interesting. Is there anything else? Please. Think. I cannot travel on a ship if I’m going to do what seems to happen when I...”

  And so her downfall was cemented – she was begging for sexual details from a male. Maybe about to beg for sex too.

  “You said he was cyborg? It’s that, maybe. You need to do it and for there to be...ejaculate. I think I should go.” He took one step back. “They told me you might change. Why you’re a biohazard.”

  Swallow your pride, your normal morality. She had to be able to get off planet, soon. Being arrested here, for this offence, she foresaw decades in high-security prison while they poked and prodded her. Once away from here she could figure out what to do next.

  “Help me?” Still, she couldn’t quite say out loud what she wanted. Baldor and his semen. His dick.

  “I can’t help, you know? With this. You’re not a pure s’kar.”

  Oh.

  Rejection couldn’t get much worse.

  She looked down. “And that bulge in your pants? You should go. In fact you should probably run.” That slow, fluttery rise of loose bits of litter and dust from the floor... It began. “Run!”

  He backed a few steps. “Good luck, Thorn. You have some extra in your account. Some mine, some from the Hierarchy. I’m so sorry, girl. Forgive me.”

  “Oh.” Open-mouthed she watched him turn and sprint back toward the stage. “Oh.” Too late for thanks. Today was so fucked up.

  And then there was Led.

  She’d bet he thought she wanted him to do it again. Sex. Mouth downturned, she studied him and he studied her. “You know you have red eyes?”

  He snorted. “Theoretically. I avoided mirrors.”

  Red eyes, and somehow her ovaries still wanted her to jump him, but this was not right. He was a stranger. Males did it and walked away, fucked, walked away. She’d never wanted to be someone’s cast-off fuck-thing.

  “I hate this.”

  “You’re part siren? I find that interesting.” He tilted his head, as if that’d help him see her better before drawling out, “There’s no one else who will do this with some form of control,” he added, not even bothering to ask her properly.

  He assumed. How dare he. Even if he was correct.

  Thorn fumed. She felt herself changing, wanting him...not wanting him.

  The shivers hit and the heat whispered in, puckering her nipples. Those shoved at the cloth as if to burst it, and her clit swelled and ached.

  Her hair levitated, flailing at the air. The threads of her clothes wriggled. She might not be able to get more clothes before morning. Thorn plucked at the white top where it molded to her.

  “Not again.”

  “Yes, again. You want fifty males to come in here and grab you? That seems the likely result of us standing here and waiting. It’s coming.” He dared to reach out and stroke his hand down her hair then his grip tightened, hauling at her scalp. “Let me.”

  That hold of his was mesmerizing. Her body liked this even if seconds before she’d wanted to stomp her foot...on his toes.

  Those thick fingers in her hair. She swayed in her boots. She must protest. A good s’kar female would never go quietly to be screwed by another species.

  The chairs rattled. One toppled and fell with a clatter. It’d been hovering, far off the floor.

  “Come. It’s almost too late.”

  The litter around them fluttered higher. The storm inside built, circling in her veins, her cells, her mind. She was a biohazard? How did she defeat this? Solve it? Why now of all times? If only it had waited. And if it had waited?

  As captain of a starship she might’ve been in deep space instead of here, then whatever the worst of this could possibly be, it would’ve happened there, with her crew. The middle of space and she’d might’ve incited an orgy. Maybe. She wasn’t sure.

  Whatever. Think on this another day.

  Ejaculate everywhere though, if that’d happened. Ewww.

  Say yes to Led, it was the only possible choice, even if she was annoyed at him for being here at all. Like...he’d known this would come to be.

  He’d better not have.

  She licked her lips.

  His fingers loosened in her hair. “Your answer?”

  Thorn pursed her mouth. “Yes. I guess. Just know that I hate this...maybe you too.”

  He barked out a derisive laugh then snatched at her hand and hung on. “I scanned the building plans while you gossiped with that other fancy s’kar. I know somewhere we can go.”

  “Don’t you dare enjoy this.” She flexed her fingers inside his. “You’re a stranger, no matter what you might be imagining.”

  “I know.” He smiled. A smile widening on that previously expressionless face was startling. Like watching a predator be born. “And I’m the only one who seems able to fuck you without losing my mind. I heard what he said. You’re half siren and you need my –”

  “Yes. Yes, I know you know what I need.”

  Semen, ejaculate, cum. To stop her cycle for long enough to think of a solution. Was this some god’s joke? A way of telling her she should be a whore? Least she couldn’t get pregnant from a thrassian.

  Of course there was another uncertainty. Even if she did this and it worked, for how long would it work?

  “Enough talk. I have no time and neither do you.” Towing her, he ran down the hallway. Somewhere behind them, doors they’d passed were opening. Males... She raised her head and sniffed. Males were coming to life.

  “Too slow.” He hoisted her up and over his back then resumed running.

  It was going to be bad, worse than before. Th
ough upside-down, she pawed at Led’s back and gathered the cloth in her fist.

  He smelled good. Dubious, she eyed his lemon-colored shirt, knowing there were scales beneath. She’d bite him, if it wasn’t for those.

  She bit him anyway.

  “Hurry.”

  Walls went past, upside down, and floors, and his butt...even if it wasn’t s’kar butt, moving inside those tight pants. Doors were torn open and slammed. A stairway and more doors, and the sounds getting dimmer as the lights grew dimmer and the air grew moist, and everything became about them.

  Only them.

  Through a door that was closed but she could feel them out there. Men, males, their awareness growing.

  Led telling her to strip and her staggering as she dragged off the boots then the legs of her uniform. Peeling out of her coat. The synthetic cloth stuck to her, the programmed designs of buckles and daggers fizzling into scattered pixels as the cloth chip went crazy.

  “You’re even fucking up your clothes with whatever you do,” Led marveled.

  Around her, crates towered, stacked high. Shelves of steel glimmered in the faraway light leaking from ceiling holes. The dust motes jiggled, and she wondered if the crates had shifted too.

  “We’ll keep going, soon. This storage area goes further in.”

  “We have to talk,” she slurred as he pressed against her, length to length, warm scale to her hot skin. He kissed her on the mouth, breathing into her and that was a first. First kiss. Erratic – shutting her eyes, jerking her lower body into him, she muttered words she hadn’t thought up. She kissed him back then bit, holding on to lower lip until he growled.

  The growl stirred her, ominously. The crates creaked some more. Sweat beaded her eyebrows. Did they sway, or was it her?

  Just her, just him.

  The others came, because she whispered sweet nothings into the air and sent them on their way. No walls could get between her and her prey.

  The danger reminded her. Priorities. “They move. The crates.”

  “Shit.” He picked up her clothes, eyed her where she stood, braced by the stack, her breasts hypnotizing the mere thing that he was. Males with their dicks were hers by default.

  Come. The call was working. They came. The doors were hammered on, flung wide and in the dazzling light of the opening were two of those she’d reached.

  Led snatched her up and slung her over his shoulder, began to jog further into the stacks. “You’re doing this aren’t you? There’s an emergency generator room down this way where I can lock us in and away from them. If the map’s right.”

  The others paced and slithered, casting long wavering shadows in the irregular rectangle of light cast by the entrance.

  “Where are you going after tonight?” he asked casually, as if she might answer.

  Her mind cleared enough for her to answer quietly, half to herself. “To my mother.” Then the fog closed in. Pull them. Draw them. Make them hers.

  Chapter 8

  Ledderik wedged his back into the generator room wall. He wrapped his fist about the nearest sturdy bar while he wiped his brow, only to realize he wasn’t sweating despite the run. The males across the room continued their frothing and drooling. They were outside. He was in. He empathized, even if he’d like to turn them into mush.

  Thorn was compelling.

  Currently only one mating tentacle was worming across the floor. Too short to reach Thorn, or he’d have lopped it off. His lips twitched as he contemplated doing it. That would probably be painful to the owner.

  This room was where it was supposed to be according to the blueprints but was only a cage of sturdy cross-hatched metal bars and not a true room. The powered-down generator was inside another cage in the center. He’d sprinted in and closed the door, put Thorn down, locked the door, pushed her back. She’d been trying to get out again, or to crawl all over him and lick him or something, then he’d threaded chains about door and frame then knotted them, using only his hands.

  His hands weren’t even marked. Remember not to meet a thrassian in a dark alley minus weapons.

  Little naked Thorn squirmed and cast another potent wave of attraction. It made his balls cry for satisfaction. They’d probably sing an opera at the moment. The other males beat at the cage with hands and paws and long, ropey tentacles. They’d already left suspiciously goopy liquids on the bars.

  This... This was why Thorn was a biohazard.

  She was worse than last time – incoherent or saying things that reminded him of old witch stories. Unable to understand her predicament.

  When this was over she’d be cursing.

  He’d tied her wrists to the generator cage with her clothes and Smorg’s belt. His time with this loaner was nearly gone. So he was a little nuked to say it politely. Enough time to fuck, he guessed, not enough to get back to Tewel.

  In no version of the future was he throwing himself on Thorn, fucking her, and dying a perma-death because of mere lust. He needed to think. He’d fight this pull if he had to gnaw off a hand...not a dick though. He grasped the top one through his pants, felt the warm throb, resisted doing a little therapy with his palm.

  A little attached to this already. Now he finally knew why men were cock obsessed.

  He detested being made to do something that wasn’t in his best interests.

  Find the answer.

  The other males were probing the holes between the bars. They wanted in, and her.

  He sucked on his teeth, and found he had a lot of incisors, then counted the males again. It was dark here and the waving tentacles made numbering difficult. It was three? Something tentacle-y like a mollok but with a less humanoid head. A rodent alien whose species he vaguely recalled started with N. And one s’kar. Three.

  Naked, tied to the generator cage, with her skin shining when she writhed into the patchy light. Why did every wriggle make his cock stiffer?

  “What do I do, Smorg?”

  “Fuck her? Wasn’t that the point?”

  “I’ve not got enough time to get back to Tewel.” Would Tewel dock him more LoL time? Yes.

  “Dumb-ass cyborg.”

  “Nope. Not a cyborg anymore.” He held up a scaled finger for emphasis, then wondered about inserting that into Thorn. Somewhere wet, with a hole. Everything was about fucking her with something at this very moment. He groaned.

  Think!

  “That explains the lack of brains. Didn’t you say this deal with Fellen Zed was strange? If it’s illegal then...I don’t know but that sounds promising?” Smorg was rambling.

  He wanted more than LoL.

  More of her. More of life. He crunched his fist in tight. Life had a purpose it didn’t have a few days ago.

  But he needed a body, and his was gone.

  “Smorg.” He sat forward. “You have a point.”

  “I always have a point, that’s the whole point of swords.”

  “Shhh.”

  He sent the message. *Tewel, I have a proposal for you.*

  It took a minute but Tewel replied. *Yes.*

  *I know Fellen Zed is doing something odd. I’m guessing you’re not in on the deal. Let me do the first leg of what he wants, take this body to another planet. I’ll pay you by being your man, and I’m good at what I do. Better than Fellen Zed. If I figure out his game, I’ll make it worth it to you.

  *If I don’t you’ve still got me on a string for the rest of my real life.

  *Deal?*

  The silence was long.

  Technically, he didn’t have a real life anymore.

  While he waited for an answer, Led stripped off his pants and shirt, laid the sword against the cage surrounding the generator. Not far from the pile of his clothes, Thorn sat with her back against this inner cage, panting, her crooked arms held to the sides by the ties on her wrists.

  “If Tewel says no I’m still fucking you.”

  “Can I watch?” Smorg asked. “Though I feel as your guardian angel that I should advise you of the dangers
of unprotected sex with a siren.”

  “What?” He frowned at the sword.

  “I’m making this up. Keep going...”

  Led sighed.

  *You have a deal, Ledderik. Get Fellen Zed to a new planet. You have to find the money for any future loaners or I take all your LoL time. Prove you’re worth it, and I will be nice.*

  Iffy deal, still... But it meant he was right about Zed. He was cooking up something. Figuring out what it was could wait.

  *Thanks, Tewel. Excuse me now. I have someone to fuck.*

  *What! You’re not to use his –*

  He cut the connection.

  “It’s me or them.” He nodded toward the three battering the outer cage. He was voting for himself. Though he’d addressed the words to Thorn it was his own justification. He normally didn’t need to justify his actions.

  Something about this was getting to him.

  A tentacle had squeezed through and reach further than before, stretching until it almost touched Thorn’s foot. The bulge on the end squirted a little white fluid.

  Big-eyed, she watched the intruder, her wrists twisting in the clothing bonds. That she couldn’t get out of those said her brain was functioning at amoeba level. Despite her intermittent hostility, he preferred her lucid and intelligent.

  “You need me, right?” He leaned down to brush his lips over her ear, to kiss her there. A piece of anatomy he’d rarely appreciated. “I never realized ears could be so pretty.”

  Thorn turned her head, seeking his neck with her mouth, her tongue licking at him, and how eagerly she squirmed toward his cock.

  The tentacle brushed him. Led spotted it lurking below. “Excuse me. I have to take care of something.”

  He stomped on the tentacle, trapping it, then dragged it to the side and wound it about a bar, finishing the knot with a jerk.

  Someone squeaked and kept squeaking...make that whimpering.

  He returned to Thorn, hauled her up the generator cage until she was standing then urged her to open her legs. The side of his foot tapped against the insides of her bare feet.

  She spread them, and he paused to savor the sight. A naked girl trapped for him, waiting for him to stick his real cock into her. Real, not synthcock. Bigger than that had been too – he’d gauged the circumference and length.