by Cher Hollis
Talis was not strong enough to subdue and influence the female to mate.
And the man was tottering in the midst of a war within.
Vytor had to convince him.
Bo tightened his hands on Cassie’s hips. Female hips bent over and positioned to fill a man’s darkest desire. His fingers jerked as he spread soft flesh, but he growled deep inside a violent internal struggle.
He yielded for an instant to the battle of overpowering and unexplainable lust, and he positioned his hard shaft, hovering.
Cassie cried out as she felt Bo’s intention pressing hotly to reach its goal.
Then a roar from behind her thundered over her, and she screamed again.
Suddenly she was released!
The bellow was still vibrating in Bo’s throat, as he harshly shouted, “No!”
Straining, he tried to back away from Cassie.
Vytor panicked.
Then frantically, Vytor used the only possibility left to him, he swept forward and entered the male’s body, completely combining his energy with Bo’s essence.
He possessed Bo.
Sharing his body and his mind. He merged with all that was Bo.
Freed, Cassie scrambled forward crawling on her hands and knees, but suddenly Bo came back down over her, pressing her stomach to the deck. Dazed, she sprawled beneath him, and the next second she couldn’t understand the confusion of having Bo’s warm lips kissing her neck and shoulders. But he wasn’t doing it wildly or roughly as he had before.
His voice and words stunned her. "I love you, Cassie."
He was not demanding, but seductive.
Then his hands were turning her over and his mouth covered hers with breathtaking persuasion. She shoved her fists against his broad chest without effect, as he kissed her again and again.
Vytor had seized on a human emotion so strong inside Bo, it completely overrode the most basic and primal urges of Talis.
It was love.
Bo called it love in his mind, and to further his goal Vytor embraced the emotion in Bo's essence. Then Vytor encouraged it free from any bonds that could hold it back, as he became caught up within its effects.
By releasing the restraints in Bo's mental function, Vytor discovered the most powerful inducement in a human to mate.
Love...
Vytor was one with Bo. The effects of love so intoxicating, Vytor wasn’t willing to pull back now that he’d found the key.
Vytor could feel Ela Cassandra’s flesh beneath Bo’s fingers, he could taste the saltiness of her skin, and he could sense the heat of her growing arousal. He could feel the power of Bo's body as if it was his, and the longing to possess Ela Cassandra consumed Vytor, as it did Bo.
All Cassie could hear was Bo’s deep voice persuading her that he loved her between his kisses. With each convincing kiss, her panic melted more into the strength of his body. Finally, a releasing sigh escaped her lips, which were covered so passionately by his. Her arms signaled her total surrender as she hugged his back, returning his embrace.
His wide hands caressed her body, and she swayed against him from the pleasure of his touch, as he coaxed her to answer his desire.
Then the green charge engulfing them, which had been agitated and demanding, turned warm and seductive. It pulsated tingles of pleasure along her skin and she felt loved within the lights glowing warmth.
Bo’s body was glowing with the same green magnetism, and it set her on fire.
Cassie knew she loved Bo with desire so strong, it moved her to answer his urging. Her body yielded, to bind them.
Bo’s mind exploded with love for Cassie. Not one ounce of him tried to fight the certainty; leaving him giving as much as he could give. He possessed her, making her his, and he persuaded her to join his passion thrust for thrust.
Vytor experienced the most basic nature in the entire universe. He was falling in love with the epiphany that was Ela Cassandra. His senses exploded with the sensuous nature of their combined mating, and he discovered the purest form of energy to exist in the galaxies.
Bo took Vytor into the natural rhythm of the universe, thrusting with pleasure so intense, it could only be answered by Cassie’s return undulations. They hurled beyond the bounds of physical constraints, vibrating in liquid green fire.
Cassie’s cry of fulfillment echoed Bo’s tenor groan, as Vytor felt the rapture quiver around him. They all became one, caught in ecstasy so pure; the entire universe seemed to take a breath within the expelled release.
Vytor’s preternatural energy followed the chance of life, sealing its certainty inside Cassie’s womb.
Then Vytor broke into telepathic songs of jubilation, taking his vocal rhythm from the parents exhausted sighs. Vytor’s harmonious orchestration welcomed not one, but two new life forms into existence.
Bo and Cassie were left panting in the aftermath. A tangle of limbs soaked in the mystical euphoria of green energy.
Vytor was filled with rapture; he had fulfilled his life’s ambition!
Vytor induce Bo into tasting Ela Cassandra’s sweet lips for him one last time, and Vytor reveled in the love that had been shared, offering all of his feelings through Bo’s lips to seal a kiss on beautiful Ela Cassandra.
At that moment, Vytor realized Ela Cassandra’s mind was returning to awareness and his own reason started to return.
He realized that he had expended vast amounts of his preternatural energy to affect the breeding, and he was still intersected inside Bo’s essence. Vytor knew a moment of panic, when he tried once, and failed to extract himself from Bo’s life force.
What he’d done had never been attempted before, and he became very worried that he could undo it.
Bo was mentally and physically weakened by Vytor’s alien manipulations, and Vytor realized he would get no help from Bo’s weakened state to affect the separation.
Cassie’s vision cleared with her mind returning from a peak so high it was hard to comprehend, but then she gasped at the presence kneeling between her outstretched thighs. She could see it was Bo, but his skin was electrified in a brilliant fluorescent green energy.
The energy rippled along the length of his well-muscled body, which was bold and naked. His arms floated high, vertical to his body and his now greenish-tinted gray head was tilted back, as if in surrender.
All that was missing was the cross, Cassie thought with massive alarm, which made her scramble up before him while urgently calling his name.
He didn’t answer!
Bo’s eyes were closed and Cassie thought about putting her hands on his shoulders to give him a shake. Only she hesitated, because she was afraid of what the surreal green charge would do to her if she touched it.
Instead, she cried, “Bo! What’s happened! Bo, please answer me. Say something!”
Vytor struggled, trying to break free inside the boundaries of Bo’s inner matrix. Then at the same moment Ela Cassandra frantically grabbed Bo’s shoulders, he finally managed to burst free from Bo.
Vytor swept free, and then he hovered, feebly drained, with muted splatters of his matrix colors weakly flashing.
Cassie shrieked, trying desperately to catch Bo as he fell like a broken piece into her arms. Bo’s limp weight landed them in a pile on the deck as she managed to support his upper body in her lap.
She had viewed the distinct separation from Bo and the green energy. Hysterically, she was unsure where to place her attention first.
Clutching Bo’s head to her chest, she cried, “What have you done to him!”
She checked Bo’s pulse and found a weak beat in the hollow of his neck. She was terrified by the alien presence floating before them, but fierce protectiveness for Bo overrode her fear.
“Answer me!” she screamed at the entity. “Tell me what you have done to him. Will he be all right?”
Vytor was drained. The battle to separate from Bo had dangerously threatened his life essence. Never before had he felt such fading away of his preternatural energ
y source. Abruptly, he realized that his life was threatened by serious injury, as his mind sought for any avenue to repair himself.
“If my Circle was around me, this would not be happening!” he cried shrilly into the flight deck.
Then it came to him—his ship carried the energy he needed.
“I must get to my ship!”
Cassie heard the alien shrilly yelling and her astonishment and fear at understanding its words was eclipsed by her immense concern over Bo. She watched with wary shock as the misty green swirling entity floated, in a staggering manner, out of the entryway from the flight deck.
She surprised herself as she cried out, “Wait, you can’t leave Bo like this! You must help him!”
Tears began to form, stinging her eyes as she saw evidence of the green light fading in the corridor.
“No… he can’t die!” Cassie cried, as she caressed Bo’s forehead, his face, and then his neck with worried hands.
Without warning, a willowy voice filled the alcove. “He will survive, my love, Ela Cassandra. You will both survive.”
And then the voice was gone, as Cassie cradled Bo in her arms, while silently crying.
Bo was held hostage in a nightmarish dream. It was a nightmare where he’d fought to wake up—thought he had, and then realized he’d only dreamed he had.
It had been filled with hallucinations of erotic things, then savage, then loving. In the seconds before he’d woken up the final time, to come back to reality, he’d understood it all. He understood the knowledge of Vytor’s life, a life that spanned an eternity in human terms.
But that amount of knowledge was too massive. It threatened to burst his brain’s ability to take it all in, so his brain shut down and huge volumes information filtered away into oblivion. It left him with only bits and pieces of a complex and bizarre puzzle, and it left him wanting to just stay unconscious.
But the feeling of tears on his chest and a soft body shivering against him brought him back.
“Cassie,” he rasped, into the dark curls brushing his face.
“Bo! Thank God,” Cassie exclaimed.
Bo realized he was naked, lying on the deck, and Cassie was beside him clinging to his chest. He was dazed to find that he didn’t have the strength to do anything, but look up at her beautiful face. Just looking at her eased him. Her brown eyes were filled with tears and concern as she kissed his temple, his cheek, and finally her lips brushed his.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t wake up,” she whispered, while her tears fell on him like hot droplets.
“Love you, baby,” he whispered.
There was one thing his otherworldly experience had made clear and that was he loved her so strongly, he’d never been so sure of anything like it before. He didn’t have the strength of a normal voice, and he struggled to raise his hand to the smooth line of Cassie’s wet cheek.
She helped steady his shaking hand by covering it with hers.
“Love you so much,” she murmured. “I was afraid that I’d never be able to tell you that. I just kept praying.”
She broke down and he tried to strengthen his hand cupping her cheek. He’d only been as alarmingly weak one other time in his life, after the aliens had destroyed his unit and he’d ended up in the hospital. Alive, but for a time, barely.
“Hush, angel, I’ll recover,” he said, and he hoped to hell he was right.
He could feel Cassie shivering, while she tried to gain control, and he realized he was shaking too. It was from more than the trauma they’d suffered.
“You’re freezing,” he rasped.
“I should have gotten a blanket. I just couldn’t think straight,” she said, moving to get up.
It wasn’t far; she only had to reach over him to the bench seat they were lying next too. She tugged a blanket and bench cushion back down beside them, putting the cushion under his head. Then she worked at arranging the blanket over him.
“No you,” he said, bringing a hint of a smile to Cassie’s lips.
“I can count on that stubbornness, it makes me believe you’ll be okay,” she said.
Cassie reached over him again and grabbed the other blanket, wrapping it around her bare shoulders. Then she wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.
She was beautiful even with the aftereffects of their trauma so close, and he knew he’d always think of her that way. Then it hit him—the fact of what he’d nearly made her do, and then the fact of what he’d later done with Vytor’s invasion inside him.
He made a hoarse sound with the realization.
During the first abduction by that alien of his mind and body, he’d nearly forced Cassie.
He groaned as the truth swept over him.
Christ.
And now he knew, with some otherworldly senses he’d gotten from the alien’s abduction, that Cassie was pregnant! She’d been violated by him and that rampaging alien. An extraterrestrial entity who thought he was giving them a rare gift.
At his groan, Cassie put her hands on his chest, obviously concerned. “What can I do, Bo?”
Silently, Bo cursed his weak condition—weakness that unnerved his normal Variant abilities. But he had to have time to sort out the phenomenal events. So he tried to sidetrack Cassie’s question.
“Water, Cassie. And food. I left nutrient bars by the med-pack on the other bench,” he said, trying to rise but falling back, too weak to even do that.
“Stay still, I’ll get them,” she said, going to retrieve the water and food.
“She doesn’t know,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes closed under the weight of it.
He lifted a shaking hand to his face, as if he could stop his eyes from showing her the truth. How could he ever tell her about what he’d done to her—about what Vytor had done to her?
Vytor had done more than use Bo and his body like a puppet; that damn alien had left pieces of its entity behind that were still inside him. Those remaining slivers of Makkars essence—Vytor’s essence—were embedded in Bo’s soul. Those slivers of essence were allowing Bo to perceive the actual presence of his sons’ life beating in Cassie’s womb.
Their aura began to surround him and a melody formed.
Two boys—his sons—they were singing to him of the beginnings of their life.
Calmness came over him.
It was something in their song.
Cassie returned with the food and water. She carefully raised his head and put a water flask to his lips and he drank deeply.
“Now you,” he ordered, watching as she did it.
She drank several times, before she asked, “Do you want more?”
He shook his head, and she got a nutrient bar and put it to his mouth. He thought he could handle the bar on his own, but he let Cassie feed him. He needed the closeness, and he thought it might help take her mind away from the traumatic events.
“You eat too,” he said, refusing to take another bite until she had started to eat, between feeding him.
They both ate two bars, which was all that was left from the supplies he’d gathered the day before. Bo could feel a small part of his strength returning, but he could tell it was going to take a while before his full strength returned.
“Do you think it’s gone ... I mean the alien?” Cassie asked, sounding hesitant.
Bo knew he had to reassure her—he couldn’t let her think she might be attacked again, even if he couldn’t tell her the consequences right then.
“I know he is gone,” he said. Cassie’s expression had a questioning look. “I seem to know things now. The alien was named Vytor. He’s from a race named Makkars, and they are not the aliens attacking us,” he said, reaching out his hand and searching for hers.
“There are two alien races,” she exclaimed and she tightened her hand in his. “What did he do to us, Bo?”
Bo closed his eyes, not wanting her to see what was there. “Come lay beside me, Cassie.”
She shed her blanket and got underneath his. She was still co
ld as she moved to lie alongside him. Bo raised his arm so she could lay her head on his shoulder and he could feel the satin touches of her skin.
He wouldn’t tell her about the breeding; it was too much too soon. After everything that had happened, he wouldn’t risk destroying her with that knowledge, and he was too unbelievably weak to take care of her.
“I’m not sure, baby, but I think in his own alien way Vytor ultimately meant us no harm,” Bo said, trying to keep his voice neutral.
“But he was a part of you, Bo. I clearly saw him leave your body,” Cassie said, rising up on her arm to look at him. A tremor ran through his body. He couldn’t stop it. “Never mind, Bo,” she said quickly. “It doesn’t matter now. The only thing that matters is that you are all right.”
Her hand reached up to stroke his jaw, and she whispered, “Get some sleep now, you need the rest.”
Bo let the comfort of her touch soothe him and he thought he would only rest his eyes for a minute.
But then they slept for hours, drained to exhaustion by the cataclysmic events of Vytor’s possession.
Cassie was the first to wake and she laid quietly, while listening to the even beats of Bo’s heart against her ear. Rationally, she knew she should be hysterical and overcome by the immensity of the latest happenings. But against all odds, she didn’t feel that way.
Instead, she had a sense of feeling whole. A complete wholeness of being as she’d never felt before. It was serenity with a feeling of extraordinary fulfillment.
Was it love?
She knew she was in love—and it was for the first time in her life. What made it so special was her certainty that Bo felt the same intense way she did. Whatever had happened to them while under that alien’s power, it had released all normal human restraints.
