by Alexa Kim
When I almost feel like a human being again, he turns off the water. My muscles are pudding. The strong cramps have taken a toll on my body. I can still barely stand upright on my own.
When he unclasps my bra and rips off my panties with a jerk, I don’t even have any energy left in me to fight. Maybe that’s a good thing… Who knows what he’s going to do to me if I struggle… “Please… Don’t do it,” I quietly plead anyway.
I can feel his hard torso pressed against my back… and I’m sure I’m not just imagining his breath quickening, or the extreme heat coming off his naked skin. “You can’t sleep in your wet underwear.”
Next thing I know, he’s putting a big towel around my shoulders, then wraps me up in it. He doesn’t want to violate me? Not yet…
“Your body needs rest right now. I’m taking you to bed.” The look of horror on my face makes him huff in frustration. “Your bed.”
And that’s exactly where he’s taking me: into my room, putting me down onto the bed. He pulls the towel off my body, and I feel completely at his mercy once more. He pulls the covers over me, but he takes his time doing it. I can see him eyeing me… my boobs… and my private parts. He’s checking out his property… because that’s what I am… at least for the time being. I would cry if I wasn’t so damn exhausted.
To my horror, he doesn’t leave, but lays down next to me instead. There’s a sheet between us, but he pulls me close and drapes an arm over me possessively.
Again, I can feel his hard torso… can smell him… Strangely, his scent isn’t unpleasant. He smells like after-shave – a bit tangy. I don’t know what I was expecting… maybe that he would smell like cougar, like any of the predators held in cages in zoos on Earth? I have only been to a zoo once, but the stench of the animals – especially the males – was pungent. Zookeepers told us that the smell was a sign of their virility and readiness to mate. Maybe the eight percent predator DNA didn’t have an effect on how he smelled.
“Go to sleep now,” he says without having an inkling of my absurd thoughts.
He’s joking, right? Does he really believe I could possibly sleep a wink with him holding me like I’m mammalian prey?
Yet after a while, I feel fatigue setting in. I try desperately to stay awake, but the ordeal my body has suffered is now taking its toll… and there’s something about his smell that calms me down and gives me peace – as weird as that sounds.
Torn
If she knew the agony of being next to her without being able to touch her… A part of my brain has relocated to my dick, and all it wants to do is fuck her. It’d be so easy. All I have to do is pull away the sheet, open my fly, and push into her heat. When I was undressing her, I could barely restrain myself. The urge to push my tongue between her lower lips and have a taste was all but overwhelming. My body is on fire… It’s in need of that woman as if there was no other female on the whole damn planet!
With every other partner, I already would’ve relented to my body’s need of satisfaction. But with this little one, there’s this irrational urge to protect her… even from myself, if need be.
I hope she’s asleep and doesn’t notice my hard-on pressing into her back. I couldn’t resist lying down next to her and pulling her into me… just being close to her. But that only makes it worse. I’m plagued by irrational thoughts and feelings: She’s mine… and I have to make sure everyone knows it. No! If I give in and have her, Life Tree will take her away as soon as my semen has done the job and she’s pregnant… But Life Tree will take her either way, won’t they? If I don’t fuck her, she can’t get pregnant—and they can’t have that. What’s more, if I don’t fuck her, I’ll go insane…
How old is she, anyway? She seems so young… and so innocent. I still don’t know what she did to get taken to Terra Alpha. She’s so small… Well, all women are small, really, their anatomy is not an optimal match for us. That’s probably because the predator DNA cocktail only sticks to male chromosomes, so we always have to mate with fully human women to reproduce… and to satisfy our sex drive. I didn’t used to have a problem with that. I know how to get a woman ready to take me.
Larona – I remember her name – however, is petite even for a female. Dr. Barner doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem. So I imagine spreading her legs, and slowly pushing my cock into her. And I imagine her enjoying it…
“Sure thing, Romeo,” I mutter to myself. She’s afraid of me like of any wild animal. Surely, the last thing she wants, is to be that close to me.
But that’s what she’s here for! And if you don’t do it, someone else will…
The thought alone makes me aggressive. I feel my mood changing, so I carefully extract myself from her. I takes effort and will power, but the need to protect her is working in my favor.
A look at her face tells me she’s asleep. Her lips are slightly parted, relaxed; her eyelids flutter.
I leave the room without making a sound—another perk of my genes. I can move around silently despite my large build. Normal people don’t notice me standing behind them until it’s too late. If that’s what I want, of course.
After closing the door to Larona’s room, I go into the living room and place my hand on the screen of the telecommunicator embedded in the coffee table. I type in the code for a connection to Crow. Apparently he hasn’t been asleep yet either, because his face appears on the screen.
“How are you, brother? Do you like your new partner?” I start up a conversation.
“Sure, man. A bit scared… but she’ll come around.”
“Hm-hm,” I mutter, and I know Crow notices immediately that something’s up with me.
He may be the youngest of our unit at only twenty-five, but he’s the one I’m closest to. He became part of the unit just two years ago, and was chosen for INBREED last year because of his even temper. This is only his third time with a partner.
“What’s wrong, Torn?”
Crow has vivid blue eyes that always give you the feeling he is cutting right down to the core of your problem, before you even know you have one. It’s what he does most of the time and damn, do I have a momentous problem.
“It’s about the woman they brought me…”
His brow furrows. “You don’t like her?”
I shake my head. “On the contrary… I like her too much.”
Crow is silent for a beat, then asks, “How much?”
“I feel possessive of her.”
He draws in a sharp breath, then curses silently. “That’s not good, brother… you know that. It’s forbidden, and if Life Tree finds out… You know what they did to Arrow.”
I nod. I remember very well what happened about half a year ago. At first, everything went well with Arrow and his partner. However, when Life Tree came to get her as soon as she was pregnant, he went rampage and fled with her to the outer zone. I have no idea where he planned to go, but the story didn’t end well. They sent a unit from Sector C after them, and they killed him. They didn’t find his woman, he had hidden her too well. And he didn’t give her up, protected her with his last breath. I was the one who found her a few days later. When Arrow hadn’t come back, she must have tried to make it on her own – impossible for a female! Terra Alpha’s outer zone is tropic jungle full of dangerous predators, poisonous fruits and plants, and the biggest threat there is: Crawler. She didn’t stand a chance. A group of Crawlers found her. They raped and hurt her until she died. When I found her, I could smell twenty different beasts on her. And I hunted down and killed every last one of those damn Crawler monsters with my unit. We owed Arrow that much—he was a brother.
“Torn…”
I’m startled from my thoughts and focus back on the camera of the telecommunicator, so Crow can see my face.
“What happened to Arrow will happen to you. Tell Dr. Barner. She will take the female from you without a fuss. You know those kind of feelings are wrong. They are going to discharge you… if they don’t kill you on the spot, that is.”
&nb
sp; From early childhood, we are told those feelings are a glitch in our genetics. If we’re lucky, we never develop those kind of strong feelings for a female… but the truth is, it keeps happening more frequently.
“If it’s wrong… then why doesn’t it feel wrong? And why does it keep happening if it’s supposed to be genetically impossible?”
Crow gives me a stern look. “That’s dangerous thinking, brother.”
“I know…”
Truth is, we are also keeping some things from Life Tree. We learned early on that it’s vital they don’t perceive us as a threat. They believe their ridiculous rules keep us in order. Putting the females in differently colored suits so we know who she belongs with, and that she’s off limits for everyone else… It’s bullshit! As if those little tricks would work. In fact, we can communicate with one another with our sense of smell on a level that the humans have no idea about. We can smell another man on a female when she has shared his bed. No one would touch a woman that belongs to another. We can even smell when a female is aroused, afraid, or when it’s time to impregnate them. But we keep that a secret from Life Tree. The scientists would be scared if they knew we could see right through them on a level they can’t control.
Our strong sense of smell is also a reason program INBREED is so popular. Because the females they bring to us here are clean – they don’t have the scent of another man all over them, unlike the women in Sector B. It’s against our nature to fuck a woman who has just been with another man. But not even Dr. Barner knows about that… We’re keeping our mouths shut about it, we’re all in agreement there. It’s like an unvoiced law, kept by all units in all Sectors. What happened to Arrow fortified our resolve to keep Life Tree in the dark.
Like all of us, I was raised in Sector C, was trained for combat from age fourteen to eighteen, and then became part of a unit. I don’t know anything else. I never questioned my life before… but now I have a conflict of interests.
“You should let them take her and ask for a new partner, brother,” Crow pulls me from my thoughts once more.
I shake my head. “I’ll do my job. I just need to get my head cleared. I’ll feel better after I’ve had her.”
He looks at me with doubt. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“Give me a chance… I can’t just let her go.”
He sighs. “Damn it, Torn… You’re really putting our friendship to the test. Come over tomorrow so we can train together. A good fight to let off some steam.”
“Good idea, brother. I’ll be by around noon.”
He growls something, then the screen goes black.
I’m lying to myself, and I know it. It won’t change a thing, no matter if I allow or deny myself to touch her. Larona is my natural completion… the other half to make me whole and give me peace.
Too bad she’s scared to death of me.
3.
Larona
I still feel shaky when I wake up. I’m relieved to find myself alone in bed. He must have gotten up and left somewhere in the middle of the night. I wonder if he… No! I would’ve noticed. Besides, I’m still wrapped in the sheet.
I sit up in bed and wait until I feel steadier. I’m parched, my throat so dry it’s killing me.
I keep the sheet wrapped around me as I move to the door and quietly open it. I strain my ears to listen to any sounds in the house. It’s still early – he’s probably still asleep.
I pad into the kitchen as soft-footed as possible to get a fruit juice out of the fridge. I almost have a heart attack and am tempted to flee back into my room when I find him there, puttering around.
I didn’t make a sound, but he instantly turns around and looks at me. “Feeling better?”
I nod, frightened as a doe caught in headlights, and watch him cracking eggs into a pan and slicing tomatoes. He’s not wearing his combat gear today, but black sweatpants and a lose-fitting t-shirt. And… he cooks! The huge Trooper monster is standing in the kitchen making breakfast!
“You need to eat. Scrambled eggs and tomatoes… I hope you like that?”
I get myself together and nod again. The way he’s standing there, he doesn’t look like he’s about to pounce… and he didn’t do anything last night, either… Just saving your life, my mind adds.
“Sit,” he orders in his deep voice.
I tuck the sheet safely in place around me, then take a seat at the table. I’m famished – and I never thought I’d have scrambled eggs and tomatoes ever again in this life. He puts the plate with the eggs down in front of me. As if reading my thoughts, he pours fruit juice into a glass and hands it to me. I drown the contents in two large gulps. Then he sits down in the seat across from me, just staring, and I feel my heart sink into my boots… which I’m not even wearing, by the way.
“So,” he says quietly, but there’s no doubt I am not to argue with him – that it’d be unacceptable, “why did you take all that stuff?”
I put down the fork. What does he want to hear? The truth? That I’d much rather die than be raped by him?
“I… wanted to die,” I say carefully.
He arches an eyebrow. “Using cardio-stimulating drugs?”
“No idea,” I answer truthfully. “I didn’t know what that stuff was.”
His mouth stretches into an almost-sneer. “I noticed. We use those drugs on missions in the outer zone. They produce adrenaline and mobilize extra strength. They are not meant to be used by your kind.” He eyes my body, and I feel his stare burning holes through the sheet. “Especially not for a petite woman like yourself. How old are you?”
“I– Twenty-three”, I reply timidly.
“Twenty-three,” he says as if to himself, and I think I see a pained expression flicker across his face for a second. Then he openly stares at me again. “I know you’re afraid, Larona. We got off on the wrong foot. My name is Torn.”
Torn… I think it’s a strange name, but I’m not letting anything show.
“Why are you here?”
I swallow. What am I supposed to say? That I’m innocent? That I was betrayed by my boyfriend who planted his drugs on me? He wouldn’t believe me, just like no one else had. “Drugs,” I answer curtly and see his brow furrow.
“Alright, Larona, here are some simple rules. You won’t touch anything in my drug cabinet. I’m going to change the code so you can’t access it anymore. And you won’t try to kill yourself – in no way whatsoever.”
“Sure.” I nod hurriedly. I’d promise him anything as long as he won’t hurt me. In fact, I had enough of the suicide attempts for the time being. After the experience in the bathroom, I think I want to hang on to my life for a while longer, as crappy as it may be right now.
“We’ll talk some more later. I’ll be gone for a few hours.”
I try to hide my relief. Suddenly, he gets up, and my alarm bells are going off like crazy. I jump up as well and stumble away from him.
“Sorry, little one, but I won’t have a minute of peace if I know you’re here alone. Not after what you did last night.”
“What?” I ask just as his arms wrap around my waist like a vise. The tiny piece of trust I had just started to build was now crumbling like a house made of cards.
I kick and flail around, but my resistance is nothing more but mosquito bites for Torn. He throws me over his shoulder and carries me out of the kitchen, back into my room. He deposits me on the bed. I try to flee right away, but he straddles me, careful not to crush me with his weight.
“Please… Torn…” I say his name because I once heard on a documentary that a victim’s chances to appeal to their tormentors are better when addressing them with their names.
“No worries, little one,” he states calmly and pulls something out of his pants’ pocket. It’s a zip tie – just like the ones UG soldiers use to tie up prisoners. They used them on me when they dragged me from my apartment in front of everyone.
Torn places one around my wrists and pulls it tight. Then he does the same to my ankle
s, and uses a rope to tie my hands to my feet. I’m all bundled up… rather comfortably, but still without a chance of freeing myself. At least I still got the sheet around me.
“Please… Why are you doing this?” I ask close to tears.
He looks at me, and for a moment I see doubts flicker across his face. “I can’t risk you hurting yourself.”
“I won’t… I promise.”
His huge hand touches my cheek… incredibly gentle… A way I would’ve never thought a killing machine capable of. “I know you’re scared, Larona. And fear can make you do things you wouldn’t normally do. I’m sorry… I can’t trust you.”
Tears spring from my eyes. Great! Now I’m crying… and it’s probably going to piss him off.
All of a sudden, he’s bending down and his lips touch mine. Panicking, I pull at my restraints, but then something happens I don’t understand – something that frightens me just as much as Torn’s unyielding dominance, which has been intimidating me ever since I entered this house. Heat zings to my core, my nipples draw tight, and my head spins. The feelings are so intense, I even forget my fear for a moment and part my lips. Torn’s tongue pushes into my mouth instantly. A soft moan spills from his mouth… and his kiss grows demanding. That’s when I feel his erection straining against my stomach through his sweatpants. I immediately freeze in terror. Torn moves away, and I can breathe. He storms out of my room without another look or word in my direction, and I’m alone.
Torn
Fuck! I almost lost it… When the scent of her fear was suddenly overlapped, when I realized she wanted me! I’m not even sure it registered with her it in that moment, neither am I sure if I even want her to pick up on it. Because if she loses her fear of me… nothing will keep me from giving into my natural instincts to ravish her. Nothing will protect her.
I need to leave… I need to blow off some steam and get my head back on straight. Training with Crow should do the trick. My body is like a live wire, my hormonal levels are off the charts – and I know Crow will notice right away.
