Pinned by his weight, impaled on his cock, Brandi discovered she couldn’t do much beyond flop ineffectually—like a butterfly pinned to a mat.
It felt absolutely divine, however, and even better than that when he began to stroke her channel rhythmically by thrusting in and out!
As mindless in her pursuit of glory as he was, Brandi struggled to move the way she needed to move to attain rapture.
Not that he missed a lot. His dick was so thick it stretched her almost beyond her limits, so the flesh was thoroughly scoured by the friction of his movements. But some places, she discovered, needed more pressure.
It began to seem as much a battle of wills as a pursuit of pleasure, but Brandi finally managed to angle her body just right to maximize her sensations and Ulrich found the rhythm that suited him best and they reached nirvana almost as if their climaxes had been synchronized.
Brandi uttered a series of ecstatic cries of release in a chorus with Ulrich’s deep growl of satisfaction.
He sank heavily against her in the aftermath—so heavily that she began to think he was going to push her through the padding beneath her. “You’re crushing me,” she gasped.
He levered himself upward immediately, heaved a gusty breath. “You may thank me more when I return.”
Brandi uttered a chuckle that ended in a snort.
Ulrich laughed. “That was elegant.”
Snickering in spite of her annoyance and embarrassment, Brandi searched the bed blindly and finally came up with a pillow to hit him with. “Kiss my ass.”
He did.
It tickled and Brandi beat him on the head with the pillow, laughing harder.
Prying the pillow from her hands, he tossed it into the corner. “You will be sorry you broke that on my head when there is no pillow.”
“Hmm,” Brandi responded non-committally, settling to doze.
“I must go.”
Brandi was drunk enough with the afterglow of fabulous sex that it took her a few moments to digest that. “What? Go? Go where?”
“I have lingered far longer than I should have already.”
Brandi stared at him blankly as he rolled off the mattress and began to adjust his clothing. But there was no getting around the fact that he was clearly planning to leave—immediately.
Wham, bam, thank you ma’am!
“You’re going?” she asked in disbelief.
“They will be waiting for me.” He shook his head at her expression, clearly struggling with impatience now. “We must cut off the head of the serpent.”
Ok, she was completely lost now. Something must have been lost in translation. “We who? Serpent? You mean snake? What snake?”
His expression hardened. “I will never again be a slave and I have no mind to spend the rest of my life running or looking over my shoulder. I will destroy Nhewa and his followers.”
Brandi gaped at him. “By yourself?” she gasped. “Not that you aren’t the most amazing man I’ve ever met, but …. There are hundreds of them! Maybe thousands!”
His eyes gleamed with pleasure. He surged toward her, leaning down to kiss her lips briefly before he straightened away from her. “I spent weeks gathering an army and working on a plan to destroy the order of Nhewa after they released me—told me I had forfeited my right to you when I had not shared you with joy as Nhewa demanded and tried to keep you to myself.
“Nhewa has far more enemies in this land than friends. I doubt his priest warriors will fight once I have killed him, but we are many, as well. If necessary, we will kill them all,” he said grimly.
Brandi couldn’t think of a thing to say to that as he turned and strode quickly to the door. He paused there, turning to look at her again. “If I do not come back, this place and all that it holds is yours.” He scanned the small cabin with his gaze. “It is not much, I know, but it is solid and will shelter you. And there is good soil in the garden I prepared. You could live here in reasonable comfort and it is secluded. There are not likely to be many who venture near here.”
Brandi scrambled from the bed and raced to him, flinging herself at him and hugging him tightly. “Don’t go! Please don’t leave me! They won’t find us here!”
He held her away and studied her face. “There is no escaping them. They must be dealt with or there will never be any peace.”
She felt like crying. “But … you said we would make a baby together!” she reminded him a little desperately.
He flushed, the first time she’d ever seen anything even approaching a blush. “When I return …”
Brandi swallowed with an effort and nodded, realizing nothing she could say would sway him but it could distract him when he didn’t need to be distracted—or create disharmony between them … resentment that they’d demanded more than the other was willing to yield.
Beyond that, she knew he was right. They had come after them before and nearly beaten Ulrich to death—to say nothing of what they’d done to her.
She didn’t think she could endure that again.
“Be careful.”
He looked disconcerted. “I will be making war.”
Brandi blushed, afraid, and irritated because she was. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be careful, damn it!” She studied his face. “I can’t do this by myself, Ulrich. I don’t know how you could think I could. My world isn’t like this at all. I could take care of myself there, but I can’t here. I don’t know how to do anything here.”
He shook his head at her. “Yes, you can. You are strong, and brave, and smart. They could not break my Brandi’s spirit. That is why I saw I must do something! They were determined that they would break you and you refused to yield your soul to them. You have the heart to do anything you set your mind to. You can do this. I am sure of it.”
What about beautiful? He didn’t mention beautiful! Didn’t he think she was beautiful?
She was still flattered by his assessment—and felt uncomfortably guilty because she knew she hadn’t exactly hated it—not all of it.
Well, she might as well be honest about it—she felt like a pervert, but she hadn’t just gotten used to it. She’d found it pretty thrilling—scary, but a turn on. She damned sure hadn’t volunteered or chosen to do it, though. And she wasn’t going to feel guilty about it when that was as true as the fact that she’d enjoyed something she’d had no power to prevent!
And what good was having the heart for something when she didn’t have the knowhow? No training for this kind of thing? No clue?
She swallowed with an effort against the knot of misery forming in her throat. “Promise you’ll come back?”
“I cannot ….” He broke off when her chin wobbled and tears filled her eyes, looking horrified. “I will do my best.”
Brandi sniffed and smiled at him with a touch of relief. His best, she was sure, would bring him through it.
She hoped.
Because she didn’t know what she was going to do if he didn’t come back.
He didn’t want her to follow. She could tell that, but she followed him outside anyway. She watched him forlornly as he climbed atop the guak and turned its head so that it was facing the path down the mountain and set out the way they’d come. She watched him until he was little more than a bouncing dot, shimmering like a desert mirage because of the tears that had filled her eyes that she refused to shed.
Sniffing, she moved down the steps after a little while and crossed the clearing that made up his yard. She found a wall of rocks at the very edge and peered over the short wall. The drop on the other side was steep but certainly not sheer.
She would probably have rolled halfway down the mountain if she fell, but she was careful climbing up on it and when she’d settled she could see Ulrich, far into the distance now. She sat straining to make him out against the mountain until she was certain he’d gone into the forest.
Then she began to look at the world around her and realized she could see almost into forever from the peak Ulrich had chosen to build his p
lace.
It made her stomach go weightless.
A sense of unreality invaded her. The view was awesome. At the same time—alien without a doubt, so foreign to her senses that it was impossible even to pretend for a handful of moments that she was looking at a panoramic Earth view, regardless of the familiarity of some aspects of the landscape.
The sun, setting behind a distant peak of the mountain range, looked like an enormous fireball—far bigger than Earth’s sun even at those times when it seemed huge. The mountain range itself might almost have been one on Earth. The valley it formed was covered with vegetation—shades of red rather than shades of green—and not nearly as soothing to the senses.
She knew a lot of studies had been done on the effects of color on the human mind. She wondered what living on this red world would do—had done. And did it affect the natives?
Dismissing the thought after a few moments as it sank in that she’d sat staring at everything and nothing until dusk was rapidly settling over the land, she clambered off of the rock wall and headed into the cabin at a brisk pace.
Standing in the middle of the main room, she studied it as she had the landscape outside … except with far more purpose.
She wasn’t going to allow herself to entertain the possibility that Ulrich might not come back, but he was gone right now and she was on her own.
She moved from the middle of the floor after a few moments and began to explore, examining everything carefully.
The place wasn’t exactly filled to overflowing, quite the opposite, in point of fact. Everything that was there seemed to have been collected for beauty and or comfort. Most of it looked virtually new—from the bed she discovered in the upper loft to the tiny, and clearly recent, addition that held a smaller bed.
For the woman he planned to buy?
Or the child—son—he hoped for?
She pushed the sadness that thought caused her to the back of her mind.
A short hallway that opened off the other side of the cabin, that also seemed like a fairly new addition, led to a tiny, very strange … bath?
Joy!
There was plumbing! Somewhat crude but effective!
It was sure going to beat the hell out of squatting in the woods! Which was pretty much what she’d had to do from the time she’d arrived on this godforsaken world!
Well, forsaken by any all powerful imaginary magical friend that might have been willing to make things a little easier on its inhabitants!
She relieved herself and headed back into the main cabin to study the small area she thought was set aside for a kitchen.
There was something that looked like a pot-bellied stove that she realized after examining it must be for both cooking and heating.
It was unfortunate that she was so unfamiliar with such things.
A frantic search for something to make fire came up empty.
Ditto something to make light.
When it became clear that she wasn’t going to cook and she wasn’t going to even be able to see much longer, she rushed around the small cabin locking everything up as tightly as possible and then barricaded herself into the tiny bedroom.
She had cause to be grateful that she was so exhausted. She didn’t think she would’ve been able to sleep otherwise.
Starving when she woke the following morning at the crack of dawn, her first order of business was to find something to eat.
She found that something in the garden Ulrich had mentioned. It had been left unattended, undoubtedly, far longer than he’d intended when he left to buy a woman. It was badly overgrown, and a good bit of it dead from needs not attended, but she gathered up everything that looked edible and, after a little thought, headed to the tiny stream she’d noticed the day before.
There was a tiny cabin sitting across it and when she went inside she discovered Ulrich’s cache of food!
“Oh thank god!” she gasped, studying the contents greedily and refusing to think about what she would have to do to refill it or keep it from being completely depleted.
There were no grocery stores!
That thought almost inspired panic, but she fought it down.
In the days that followed, she had to do that repeatedly.
She’d never in her life cooked anything that didn’t arrive in her refrigerator in a package or her pantry in a box—mostly prepared—where she pretty much had nothing to do beyond throwing the ingredients together in a sauce pan or microwaveable bowl and adding a little water. She was on her own at the cabin three days before she managed to actually cook anything and it was a horrible disaster—half burned and half raw.
She was tempted to throw it out except for the fact that she’d worked so damned hard to produce it. That grain of reluctance was a good thing because it gave her time to consider the limitations of her food supply.
She couldn’t afford to waste it because she’d screwed it up. She threw the raw stuff back to cook a little longer and cut the burned parts off and ate what she could.
She didn’t recognize the meat, but she was glad she didn’t know where it came from. She needed meat. She preferred to get it already butchered, cleaned, and packaged.
That wasn’t going to happen here.
She was going to have to get used to killing things to eat—assuming she could figure out how.
She was tired enough, and sorry for herself often enough, that she frequently burst into tears for no other reason, but then she calmed herself, washed her face, and tried some more.
One day, almost month after Ulrich left, when she’d long since given up hope that he would come back, she looked up to see a rider approaching.
Her heart swelled with such joy, relief, and gladness when she recognized the figure atop the beast that she felt like a hot air balloon. “Ulrich!” she cried, racing to greet him.
He slipped from the beast and caught her in his arms as she reached him and launched herself at him, laughing and crying at the same time. “You were gone so long! I thought you weren’t going to come back!”
His arms tightened around her until she could barely breathe. “I thought for a time that I would not come either,” he muttered.
Brandi fought her way free of him to look up at him. “You got hurt?”
His expression twisted. “I have a few new scars.”
She scanned his face worriedly. “But … you’re alright now?”
“I am here.”
He wasn’t actually ‘alright’, though.
It was clear by the time they managed to get inside that he hadn’t actually recovered from his wounds.
He dropped to his knees almost as soon as they got inside and then fell forward like a toppling tree. He shook every floor board in the cabin and rattled all of the crockery when he landed.
Chapter Eleven
Brandi’s alarm gave way to deep anxiety when she’d done what she could to make Ulrich comfortable.
There was no getting him off of the floor. He would get up himself or stay.
She tried not to think about what that meant if he didn’t recover.
Thankfully, despite the collapse, he wasn’t completely insensible. She managed to bully him into helping by lifting various parts of his anatomy and turning when necessary so that she could remove enough of his clothing to make him more comfortable and to examine him.
Not that she knew a damned thing about medicine!
Of course, even if she had she didn’t know how much help it would be when he was alien.
Which she wasn’t really inclined to think about anymore, but did have to consider under the circumstances.
He felt hot enough she thought he had a fever and she was pretty sure that meant infection.
She felt a little sick to her stomach at that thought because if he did have an infection she was pretty sure he was a dead man if his body couldn’t fight it off.
She figured cooling him down couldn’t hurt and might make him feel better so she filled a pot with some of the cold water
Ulrich had piped into the kitchen area from the stream and settled on the floor beside him to bathe him until he was shivering and his teeth chattering. She covered him with an animal skin blanket then and got up to search for something to make soup.
Not that she knew how to make soup with the ingredients she was going to have to work with!
At home she would’ve just gotten out a can and poured it in a bowl or pot.
Man! It totally sucked trying to do every little damned thing from scratch!
She managed to make something that wasn’t totally inedible and carried it to him.
“Do you think you can sit up and eat this?”
He seemed to think it over—or maybe he was just gathering his strength?
Finally, he struggled upright and examined the contents of the bowl with an expression of disgust on his face.
She felt like smacking him.
After a brief show of reluctance, shrugging, he tipped it up and downed the contents.
“That was good,” he said. “More?”
Brandi studied him suspiciously. “Your cooking must be worse than mine,” she muttered finally and headed back to get another bowl full.
There was no medicine, but Brandi tried a concoction she’d heard helped with some irritations—salt water—which Ulrich was very unhappy about. He didn’t try to fight her, though, and she was able to see that it did actually did seem to reduce his soreness and a lot of the redness around his healing wounds when she’d bathed the wounds a number of times.
And there were a lot of them!
Thanks, she was sure, to his constitution not her doctoring abilities, he improved fairly quickly and began to get up and move around before she really thought he should.
He said, though, that neither of them would survive if he didn’t given that she knew pretty much nothing about survival.
She informed him that she came from a civilized world, damn it! Survival on her world meant getting a job and paying other people to do all the things she couldn’t do.
Alien Slavers II: Breaking Brandi Page 11
