by Cynthia Sax
Ada-971’s face turned bright purple. Menace’s eyes gleamed.
Death was interested in exchanging fluids with his own female. “You don’t need to be present for that.” He led Tifara up the ramp, into the ship.
“But—”
“You just scanned them. You can scan them after they breed.” If that happened. According to Ada-972, fornication, the humanoid’s fancy word for breeding, was forbidden.
His lips twitched. His friend had a challenge ahead of him.
“We could do that. I suppose.”
“Yes, we could do that.” Death liked that she referred to them as a couple, a team, a family. He had a family, a female to care for and breed with, and he had friends. Two warriors who chose to follow him into exile and a small clone female who would soon be claimed by one of them.
His tread lightened.
“I scanned Ada-972 this planet rotation. It would be very interesting to see what her reaction is to your friend’s presence. Her genetic code should be identical to Ada-971’s.”
“Unless there’s an abnormality.” Death lifted Tifara onto the sleeping support.
“Unless there’s an abnormality.” Her eyes shone with respect. “What if she has the same genetic defect as I do?”
“That’s impossible.” He brushed her out-of-control curls away from her pale face.
“Why?” Lines formed between her eyebrows.
“Because there’s nothing defective about you.” Death kissed those tiny indents. “You’re perfect.”
“No being is perfect, Death.” Her eyes softened with desire.
“You are.” He took the private viewscreen from her hands and placed it to the side. “You’re perfect in every way.”
Her lips moved but she didn’t speak.
He’d rendered his normally talkative human silent.
He opened his mouth.
“No, don’t.” She covered his lips with her fingers. “Don’t ruin the moment by asking me to suck your cock.”
Death grinned. He was going to ask her that.
Chapter Fourteen
At sunrise, Tifara found herself positioned between Death’s bare legs, his hard shaft in her wet mouth. She had no objections to sucking his cock. She enjoyed it tremendously, loved how powerful it made her feel, holding one of her male’s few areas of vulnerability between her lip-covered teeth.
But she fought his constant requests out of principle. She was a medic, not a brainless breeding female, existing solely for his pleasure.
Death watched her as she bobbed over him. His arms were folded behind his head. His eyes were dark with passion. He was a magnificent male, dominant. Even his cyborg friend, Menace, recognized his authority.
Tifara inhaled Death’s shaft, relishing the unrelenting rigidity of his shaft against her tongue, his skin merely a thin veneer of softness. She had a superior warrior, a male who weighed his words before speaking, one who didn’t take his lifespan or happiness for granted.
He groaned as she released him. The sound rolled along her spine, spreading need and want to every curve. Their attraction had a biological base. His nanocybotics fizzed and popped inside her. Yet it had surpassed that.
Tifara liked his mind, not merely his fit physique. She slid her lips up and down his cock. More and more, she found herself waiting for his few words, his rare input. She felt safe around him. He protected both her body and her thoughts.
He didn’t see her inability to save beings as a failure but as a triumph. She extended the lifespans of beings, granting them more moments with their loved ones. No one had ever given her that gift, the ability to forgive herself.
And he did that because he understood her. He cared. He might not love her, not yet, but he valued her, cherished her, made her feel desired and wanted.
That realization had changed the purpose of her experiments. She no longer searched for a cure. Instead, she sought to understand the virus, the bonding they’d experienced.
Tifara licked around his rim, flicked her tongue over his tip, and he rumbled, the muscles in his upper thighs flexing. Pre-cum flavored his skin, decadent, delicious. Tifara nuzzled against him.
“Don’t tease me, my female.” His eyes blazed.
“Or what?” She nipped his shaft.
“Or I’ll take what I want.” He surged forward, sank his fingers into her hair and pushed her down, forcing her to inhale him.
She accepted everything he gave her, with a smile. Her lips curled around his shaft. She loved it when her cyborg lost patience, when he needed her too much to wait.
He guided her up and down, his pace fast and hard. She wrapped her fingers around his base and sucked, working his cock, murmuring words of appeasement against his flesh.
He was too far gone for her apologies. Death was in control, never pushing her too deep, careful not to hurt her, but he knew what he wanted, his focus on his satisfaction, a satisfaction only she could grant him.
He wouldn’t last long. His cock swelled in her mouth. His balls hugged his base.
He’d fucked her twice during the rest cycle. She’d fallen asleep and woken up with him inside her. Yet his desire for her didn’t wane.
Her passion for him was as strong. Her nipples were tight. Her pussy was wet. When he came, she would too, that phenomenon always taking her by surprise.
She wiggled her ass, anticipating that pleasure.
“You’re so soft and full and beautiful, female.” Death’s voice was as deep as space. “My cock is between your pink lips. I feel your heat, your wetness around me, yet I can’t process that you’re mine. How can this much joy be possible?”
He didn’t say much, but when he did speak, he ripped her heart into pieces. She mumbled that he was worthy of such joy, that he deserved every moment of it and more, that she was his in every way. Her words were muffled by his shaft but she let the emotion shine from her eyes.
“Frag, female.” A tremor shook him. “Frag.” His fingers closed and opened, closed and opened in her hair.
Tifara wouldn’t make him beg. She sank down on him, cupped his balls and squeezed.
“My female,” he roared, thrusting upward. She moved with him, sealing her lips around his base. Hot jets of cum splattered against her throat. She swallowed, pleasure raged over her, tearing her to strips, and she screamed.
This repeated again and again. He came. She swallowed. She screamed. He came. She swallowed. She screamed. Her voice faded before he stopped coming.
The bliss destroyed her. She licked the last drops from his skin and slumped against him, her brain fried, her limbs limp.
“My Tifara.” He pulled her lifeless body upward and placed her head on his heaving chest. “You are skilled at sucking my cock.”
“Thank you.” Her voice lilted with humor. “It’s good to know my solar cycles at the Academy honing my intelligence were useful.”
His lips twitched. Making her grim cyborg smile had become a personal quest of hers.
He brushed his fingers through her hair, curled a strand around a fingertip. “You were in many of your friend Safyre’s recordings and you were always smiling, so open with your joy, with your caring.”
She had that luxury. Tifara gazed at his solemn face. She hadn’t been punished for expressing her happiness. She hadn’t killed a child because she’d smiled at her.
“Before I was able to retrieve you, I spent many moments thinking of your smile, imagining that it was for me, that the caring in your eyes was directed my way.”
“Did you?” A ball of fierce emotion formed in her throat. Her dour warrior had spent the precious time between battles imagining a female he’d never met was smiling at him.
“I did.” Death nodded. “When you suck my cock, I know I’m in your thoughts. And when you smile around me, I—” His voice broke.
“You know that my smile is for you and only you.” She touched his cheeks, unshed tears misting her vision. “It is. You’re the sole being in my thoughts. You’re the
male giving me that joy.”
His lips curled upward, that hint of a smile lighting up her soul.
When he asked her to suck his cock, he wasn’t merely asking for physical release. Death was asking for emotional reassurance, for proof he was in her thoughts, that he made her happy.
He played with her hair. Tifara rested her cheek on his left pec, above his heart, listened to the triple beats, steady and strong. She prided herself on being practical, on accepting reality as it was, and her reality was obvious. She loved the tortured male. He owned her body, heart, soul.
She didn’t know if cyborgs could feel love, if they knew what that emotion was. A machine would have no concept of love. It wasn’t logical. But he was half human.
She realized he’d likely never say the words. He was unable to call Menace his friend and the male had given up everything to follow him.
That was okay. She splayed her fingers over his golden skin. What she had with him was enough, more than she ever dreamed she’d have. Her world had expanded past healing others to include loving him.
* * *
Rest cycles consisted of sleep and fucking, both of them sexually insatiable, greedy for each other’s touch. Daylight shifts were spent in the cave, tending to Ada-972.
The rot continued to slowly spread. Tifara tried more and more extreme measures and nothing worked. The pain inhibitors were running alarmingly low. The female required heavy regular doses.
“Medic Tifara.” The clone female beckoned to her.
Her friend, Ada-971, was exploring the surrounding terrain with Menace, the two of them enthralled with each other. Death remained with Tifara, never straying far from her side.
“Ada-972.” Tifara crouched near her.
“I have a favor to ask of you.” The female grasped her hands. They’d discarded the gloves. An accidental and unlikely transfer of nanocybotics could only help Ada-972, not harm her.
“I’ll do anything for you.”
“Wait until you hear the request before agreeing to it.” Ada-972’s smile was sad. “The pain is spreading. It’s in my hands.”
“You should have told me that.” Tifara reached for the injector gun. “I—”
“Don’t.” The female pushed the medical device away from her. “I want to be able to touch you, Ada-971, your male, objects, and feel it. Don’t take that away from me.”
“As you wish.” She didn’t agree with that decision but she’d comply with it. Tifara set the injector gun back on the stone floor.
“What I’m trying to say is it is spreading. Soon, it will reach my mind. I don’t want that. I don’t want Ada-971 to see me like that, to remember me that way. It would hurt her.”
It would hurt all of them. Tifara glanced at her cyborg. Even Death was emotionally attached to the clone female.
“I was holding on because Ada-971 and I only had each other. If I died, she’d be alone.”
“She has Menace now.” Tifara knew where this conversation was leading. “He will never take your place, Ada-972.”
“I know.” The female squeezed her hands. “But he’d help her deal with my passing.”
“You’re not dying any planet rotation soon.” Tifara jutted her jaw. “I’ll see to that.”
“I don’t want you to see to that.” Ada-972’s voice softened. “You’ve given me this time with Ada-971, with you.” Her gaze slid to Death. “Both of you. You’ve allowed me to meet Menace, the male my sister will love for her now long lifespan. I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”
“But…” Dread twisted Tifara’s stomach.
“But, it is time for me to go.” Ada-972 summoned a smile that was so damn brave; it broke Tifara’s heart. “She won’t leave the planet while I’m alive, and I’m tired, so very tired, of fighting. I can’t do this anymore.”
Death moved to stand silently behind Tifara, his proximity giving her the emotional strength she needed to deal with the situation. “You want me to stop slowing the spread of the rot.”
“No.” Ada-972 met her gaze, a steely resolve in her bright purple eyes. “I want you to end my lifespan.”
“What?” Tifara straightened. “No, I can’t. I’m a medic. I prolong lifespans. I don’t end them.”
“I can’t do it.” Ada-972 stared up at her. “To end one’s lifespan is forbidden.” She paused. “And I don’t have the spiritual strength. I tried and couldn’t do it.”
“You can’t ask this of me.” Tifara paced, her heart telling her it would be a kindness, the medic in her refusing to consider it.
“Ada-971 won’t do it. She will never give up on me.” The female had clearly thought about the alternatives. “She’d hate Menace if he ended my life. I couldn’t do that to him, to them. The only other beings are you or—”
“I’ll do it.” Death’s voice was flat.
Relief flared inside Tifara. Shame followed. He cared for Ada-972. It would wound him as much as it would wound her. “No, I’ll do it.” Her voice lacked conviction even to her own ears. “She asked me.”
“I’ll do it,” he repeated, resting his hands on his daggers, visibly reminding her of who he was—a warrior, a killer.
“I don’t want pain,” Ada-972 whispered. “A medic would end my life without pain.”
“I’ll end your life without pain.” He extracted the daggers from their sheaths and spun them so quickly, they blurred. “You won’t feel a thing. One moment, you’ll be here. The next moment, you’ll be gone.”
“If Ada-971 sees blood—”
“There won’t be any blood.” Light reflected off his blades.
Tifara couldn’t allow him to carry her burden. “Death—”
“You’ve done what you can for her, using your skills to bring her happiness.” His eyes were dark, unreadable. “Let me do this. Let me use my skills to bring her peace.”
“It would be your last gift to me.” Ada-972 smiled at him. “Thank you, my friend.”
Death nodded curtly.
Tifara knew how much that smile meant to him. Her heart ached. “When?”
“At sunset.” The clone female had thought about that detail also, her planning reassuring Tifara, telling her it wasn’t a recent decision. “Ada-971 plans to show Menace the constellations she and I used to gaze at and dream about visiting. She’ll get that opportunity now.”
“And you will go on a different journey.” Tifara didn’t know what that journey was—the scientist in her warring with her more illogical side.
“I will. I—”
“Ada-971 and Menace are returning to the cave,” Death informed them.
Ada-972 stopped talking. Tifara fiddled with her medic pack. Deception wasn’t a skill she excelled in. Death placed his big hands on her shoulders and massaged her tensed muscles. She leaned back, into his heat, his scent, borrowing his strength.
“Look at what Menace made for you, Ada-972.” Ada-971 rushed into the space, a clear stone in her hands. “He made this from heating sand.” She sat cross-legged by her friend’s side and held it up to the light. The stone was transparent. “Isn’t it wondrous?”
“It is.” Ada-972’s laugh sounded forced. The other female didn’t appear to notice. “How can such a stone be made from sand?”
The two chattered. Tifara tried to act like nothing had happened, like they hadn’t moments ago decided to end a loved one’s lifespan.
She couldn’t, the façade unbearable.
“My female and I are returning to the ship.” Death slid his arms under her and lifted her into the air. She squawked, surprised. “We’ll check on the patient near sunset.”
That was the time they’d decided Ada-972’s lifespan would end. “I’m the medic.” Tifara swatted his body-armor-clad chest. “I decide when we check on the patient.”
“And when will we check on the patient?” Her cyborg raised his eyebrows.
Her lips twisted. “Near sunset.”
The others laughed. Ada-972 watched them as they exited the cave.
Menace followed them, not speaking until distance had been placed between themselves and the clone females. “Do I want to know what is happening at sunset?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“Understood.” The cyborg held up his hands in mock surrender. “I have my theories and I won’t leave my female’s side.”
“She is your female.” Tifara had scanned Ada-971 earlier in the planet rotation. She was covered with Menace’s nanocybotics. “You bred with her over the rest period.”
“Yes, I did.” The cyborg’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “But don’t mention that development to Ada-972. Fornication is forbidden.”
“We know.” Death’s tone was dry.
“You didn’t affect Ada-972 at all and she didn’t affect you, yet she’s a genetic copy of Ada-971.” Tifara focused on that scientific puzzle and not on the task they had to perform at sunset. “There must be an abnormality I can’t detect.”
“I’ll run their genetics through my systems,” her cyborg offered.
“I’ll return to my female and perform other tests.” Menace’s eyes danced with mischievousness. “They’ll be less scientific but more fun.”
Tifara looked over Death’s shoulder, watching the warrior as he swaggered out of sight. “He knows, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad she has him.” She allowed her head to fall back, trusting her cyborg not to drop her. “And I’m glad I have you.” She touched his face. “We’ll complete this planet rotation’s task together, the two of us, as a team.”
“The two of us, as a team,” he agreed.
They’d kill the female they loved together.
Chapter Fifteen
Half a planet rotation later, Death watched his female buzz around the ship’s chamber, touching objects and chattering to herself. They’d had two breeding sessions. Those frantic ruttings had decreased their tension but hadn’t eliminated it.
He processed that their relationship would be altered with the action they must take. It might not survive it. He checked his weapons, moving his hands over the daggers and guns.
