by Iona Strom
The air grows thick with anticipation. Charged with an uncertain outcome, I shiver in fear and silently root for Natu.
In my next heartbeat, they attack. Lunging at each other in a full-frontal assault. This is unlike any fight I’ve ever seen. Fists are not exchanged. It’s a full-bodied wrestle. Huge hands clamp down on massive biceps. The combatants push and strain against each other as if an imaginary line has been drawn, trying to maneuver the other past it for the win.
Natu appears to have gained a foothold, pushing the other male back. That’s when their canines come out to play. That dagger-like dental work’s purpose answered in a single horrific crunch. In a lightning-fast strike, flesh from Agris’s shoulder is ripped away—muscle torn from bone. Blood the color of magenta spurting from the wound.
With an angry cry, Agris pushes back. First blood is drawn. The fight escalates. Jaws snapping, he strikes out narrowly missing Natu’s clavicle. Natu returns the attack with blurring speed, his movements too fast to track.
The chomping sounds of teeth ring out like hammers against stone as they barely miss the other. Muscles bulging. Veins popping in stark relief with their show of strength keeps but a sliver of distance between them.
Natu’s feet begin to slide. I gasp as Agris gains the advantage. With a fake to the left, Natu loses a chunk from his right bicep but rebounds with surprising speed.
Driven by anger, Natu digs his feet into the yield of the strange floor. His handsome face unrecognizable in its ferocity. Agris’ blood drips from his chin. Contorted into a mask of concentration, Natu will not be fooled again. As Agris shows his hand by trying a similar tactic, Natu drops into a crouch avoiding the clamp of another bite.
Momentum born of pure strength, Natu springs forward, launching himself at Agris’s neck. Mouth open wide, he covers the male’s throat. Slamming Agris to the floor, he lays paralyzed under the heft of Natu’s mammoth frame. With throat still intact, Natu’s jaw is like a hunters trap, not tearing, only holding the other male captive under threat of annihilation.
Xuel circles the combatants, his luminous eyes searching for something.
After what seems like forever, Agris drops his hold on Natu’s biceps and smacks the floor in defeat.
Sagging in relief, the fight is over. Natu is declared the winner with an approving nod and growl from Xuel. Agris keeps his eyes locked on the floor as both males stand to face each other. A blade is unsheathed.
What happens next makes me weak with horror.
Applying the blade to his chest, Agris traces over a slashing design that covers the upper portion of his left pectoral. Carving it from his own flesh, the raw meat of his self-inflicted wound is a deep purple.
I cringe, imagining the pain of it on my own flesh. Agris doesn’t even flinch when he peels it free and offers it to Natu. Blood drips from the chunk of meat in a sickening thunk, thunk as drops of blood splashes the floor at Natu’s feet. Natu accepts the offering.
Utterly barbaric. Forcing back the bubbles of hot bile in the back of my throat, I blink hard against my dimming vision.
In a wide sweep, Xuel’s blade slices across Natu’s chest. I sway in shock as a strip of flesh is torn from Natu’s chest, matching that of Agris’s wound. I’m baffled as that strip of flesh is discarded, dropped to the floor in a heap of raw meat.
Xuel takes Agris’ offering from Natu’s hand and places it over the damage he just wrought. A jar similar to what the royal-blue alien used to soothe my aching flesh is produced. With a dip and a swipe, Xuel generously applies the ointment over the ragged edges of the adopted strip of flesh.
Before my eyes, the black tribal-like design becomes a part of Natu’s pectoral. Where once a gaping and ragged wound, is now healing, decorated with another male’s flesh.
Natu stands proudly before Xuel while Agris maintains his bowed head. Waiting. For what, I can only imagine.
Chapter 7
Natu approaches me. Standing tall, he speaks fast and excitedly in that strange tongue. Not wanting to appear rude, I nod and smile as he talks. I appreciate that he’s sharing something important to him. If any of these males deserves my attention, it’s Natu, but he’s blocking my view from what’s happening between Xuel and Agris.
There’s a grunt, and a body collapses with a heavy thud as I try to peer around the width of Natu’s powerful frame. He remains a wall of male flesh, bending to meet my eyes to regain my attention, pointing at his new patch of skin.
My own skin shrinks to my bones from the horrors I’ve just witnessed. Afraid to look at where he wants my eyes to go, I don’t want to see the jagged tears of the grotesque patchwork. He’s persistent, and I finally relent, looking at where he’s pointing and… Healing right in front of me. I can see the flesh knitting together, the jagged pieces from both males sealing up as if none of what just took place happened. Reaching out, my fingers graze over the marvel.
The ointment!
It has to be the cause of the incredible healing. That’s what took away my pain. It wasn’t merely an anesthetic to conceal the discomfort, it actually healed my flesh. This stuff is like Neosporin on crack.
“How does this work?” I mumble, leaning in closer for a better look. “What’s it made of?”
Pulling away the sheet of material covering me, I examine my breasts and between my legs. Normal. It all looks perfectly fine. With the searing pain from my shower, my feminine flesh had to have been nothing but raw meat.
“Jakato,” Natu says with a nod at my body. “A healing balm.”
I shake my head, wanting so badly to understand his words.
“Jaa-kaa-tow,” he sounds out.
Out of all the males, this one seems the least threatening. With the proper persuasion, maybe he can help me get out of this mess. Grabbing onto the opportunity to learn the alien’s language, I repeat, “Jaa-kaa-tow,” to the delight of my gorgeous captor.
“That is correct, Avay!” Natu mispronounces my name. He looks so pleased with me that I don’t bother correcting him.
Movement behind Natu catches my eye. We both watch as Agris leaves the room with a prominent shuffle, Xuel tight on his heels. The vanishing wall reforms behind them, and I’m left alone with Natu.
Turning back to face me, he props a hip on the edge of my bed, and I’m suddenly very aware of his presence. His narrow pupils round out and drop to my chest. His natural musk intensifies.
Swallowing hard, I don’t think I’m ready for sex again this soon after what just happened. My reservations dissolve with his musk that saturates the air, triggering me to inhale. Taking in his heady essence, my body changes my mind. My sex blooms under the blanket of his arousal.
Self-preservation comes with a touch of fear that still clings. It is paramount to my survival that I set all my misgivings aside. If I’m going to survive this captivity and find a way home, I need to find an ally. The gentleness reflected in Natu’s eyes may be related only to the sex I know he wants, but perhaps I can sway him to my cause. He has already saved me from a fate worse than death by convincing Xuel to buy me. Endearing myself to him may be just the thing I need to rescue myself from this abduction.
Natu reaches out a hand. I tremble beneath his touch. After the carnage I just witnessed at his hands, I’m shocked at the care he takes with me. In a lover’s caress, the softest of touches brush down my cheek. Closing my eyes, I breathe in his musk, my sex already wet for his use.
Without warning, my stomach lets loose an embarrassing grumble. My eyes open just as Natu’s fly to my face.
“You are hungry,” he says, gesturing to his mouth. “Hungry.”
“Hoo-grose,” I pronounce the alien word, but I’m not entirely sure what I’ve just said. Could be anything from eat to food.
Natu leaves me and crosses the room. With a flash of his palm, he accesses the hidden panel next to the door. The thing illuminates, and he speaks into it. A disembodied voice answers.
Returning to my bed, he resumes his place. Natu poi
nts to the hidden door and puts his fingers to his mouth, miming what I hope is coming. With everything that’s happened, I hadn’t realized how hungry I am.
I grin and nod, giving my belly a rub. Natu copies me, and then we sit in silence. Him raking his eyes over my body, me stealing glances at his.
Done with just looking, he reaches out and smooths the back of his hand along my collar bone. Seemingly obsessed with my breasts, I let the sheet of material drop. My nipples tighten at his intense perusal, and I don’t pull away when his huge palms reach out to easily cover my large breasts. Licking his sculpted lips with his alien tongue, my flesh becomes heavy beneath the warmth of his touch.
Lying back, I give in to what my body craves. Gone is my hunger for food. As his musk settles around me in a delicious fog, he becomes a flavor I’m curious to sample.
Common sense should be telling me that I need to be terrified after what happened to me earlier, but Natu is different from the first two males. His scent an enchanting pheromone that whets my appetite for what’s pressing, long and hard, against the material of his flowing pants.
I can see my reflection in the black depths of his blown-out pupils, a sure sign he wants me. My lips part, panting out breaths for what I want to happen. Healed now, thanks to the jakato ointment, my flesh grows desperate for his touch. Parting my legs, I make room for Natu’s hand that’s found its way beneath my sheet of material.
I should be horrified over my own actions, but I simply tremble like an untried teenager as he lightly touches my labia. Dipping a finger inside, he finds me wet… willing. Blasting out a breath, I arch into his tender probing. His finger is fat inside of me, smearing my nether lips with my own lubrication.
I’ll ponder how easily I’ve relented to my position as a sex slave later. For right now, I’ll muse over the feel of his second finger as it joins the first, and his thumb as it begins to circle my clit. Rolling over me with the fire of an incredible climax, any lingering contemplation of falling into the role as a slut to a band of aliens is consumed. Flying high with sensation, Natu sends me soaring into a state of blinding ecstasy. No man has ever brought me to orgasm this fast or this hard. Peering into his lust-filled face as he crawls between my thighs and frees the girth of his alien cock, I’m reminded again Natu isn’t a man.
Carefully, he probes me with his erection. The tapered head of him slipping easily inside my heated channel but stops halfway. His heavy arousal too much for my small opening. Instead of forcing his way in, he fucks me with short strokes, working my intimate flesh with what he can safely fit inside without tearing me. Bumping along my clit, the strange anatomy of his alien cock feels incredible.
Grunting, he drops his head, bringing his pointed horns close to my face. I shiver with a mixture of fear and desire. Rubbing his cheek against mine, he turns his head. I think he might kiss me, but instead, he inhales my fragrance from the curve of my throat.
My hands cover the ropes of his amazing abdominals, feeling them flex and bunch with every roll of his hips. Reaching around to his firm ass, I encourage Natu to fuck me harder. Lifting my hips off the bed, the building of something incendiary has me reaching toward a point of light just beyond my reach.
My bottom half explodes. Eyes slammed closed against waves of euphoric bliss, my vaginal walls convulse and grab at his thrusting cock. My orgasm gives him the yield he needs to seat himself fully. I feel the stretch of my flesh as I fit around him like the tightest glove.
Natu groans above me. With a final stroke, he tenses as hot jets of his release wash my insides in a fiery bath.
Running my palms over his powerful arms, I bask in his strength. I’m complimented that he carefully holds his incredible weight above me while I take my time floating down from the highest place of pleasure I’ve never imagined.
Chapter 8
Natu slips his cock free. I feel the results of our sex flow out and onto the bed. The scent of what we just shared saturating the air, thick and musky.
Refastening his pants, our eyes remain locked on one another. Something amorous passes between us, but there’s no time to ponder it as I’m startled by the small figures filing out the door. Searching for my sheet of material, it’s a little late to cover up, now that our audience is leaving.
Having been observed during an intimate moment doesn’t seem to bother Natu. Making his way over to a table that’s been set up with trays of what I hope is food, he waves me over.
Wrapping the material around myself toga style, I pad over to where he’s popping out bench seats from barely discernable panels in the illuminated wall. Sitting, he gestures for me to take the bench opposite the table from him, and between us, a feast of unfamiliar foods.
My stomach clenches from hunger. I remember my last meal on Earth, but how long ago I ate it, there’s no telling. I want to dive into what’s spread out before me, but I wait for Natu.
Sweeping his hand over the meal, he brings his fingers to his lips.
“Food, Avay. Food. You must eat.”
I shake my head.
“Food,” Natu smiles, touching his mouth again.
I nod in understanding. I want to keep this conversation going, but something that looks a hell of a lot like sliced apples has claimed my undivided attention.
Salivating, my hand goes to the dish, picking up a wedge. Natu looks at me strangely as I give what I hope is the alien equivalent of an apple a sniff before putting it in my mouth, but I’m too hungry to care what he thinks.
It smells like a pear but tastes much sweeter. The consistency of it is all wrong, reminding me of the soft flesh of a banana. But whatever, I like it, so I eat another and another until the dish is empty.
Meanwhile, Natu is all over a platter of meat. His dagger-like canines tearing into something that looks like chicken. He notices me watching and offers me what was about to go into his mouth. I shake my head and reach for something green I hope is some sort of vegetable. Even if I wasn’t a vegetarian, there’s no way in hell I would try the mystery meat. After the creatures I saw on that alien planet, I refuse to imagine what kind of animal he’s devouring.
Giving the green pod a sniff, I break it in half and look inside—just like a green bean except the beans are a bright white. I eat one, and it tastes exactly the same as steamed soybeans. The familiar taste sends a pang of longing for home to the center of my chest. Not that my life was all that great, but I had just made my first move toward a fresh start.
After years of muddling my way through a modeling career that never really got off the ground, I sabotaged what was left of my floundering career by making the most epic of mistakes. When the plus-size modeling gigs began to dry up, and assignments went in favor of the younger girls, in my most desperate moment to pay my overdue rent, I unveiled myself for a not-exactly-Playboy-caliber magazine.
Not that twenty-five is old, but to the modeling industry, I’m ancient. My timing has always been for shit. The year of my birth was no different. Had I just been born a few years into the future, with my hourglass figure, I would have been one of the top money-making plus-sized models. Curvy girls like myself are finally beginning to cut through the whip-thin supermodels and getting the recognition we deserve.
Once my trashy pictures were discovered, my agent dumped me. With no more jobs coming my way, and my last dollar stretched anorexic thin, I’d hung my head and slunk my way back home with plans of making a new life. To go back to school and get that education I should have gotten after high school. Then I could start over fresh.
Whoring myself in an alien world was not at all what I had in mind.
Finishing off the bean pods, I lift an oblong-shaped fruit from the tray. Bringing it to my nose, it has a perfumed scent. The skin feels soft, so I give it a squeeze. Natu holds out his hand, so I place the fruit in his palm.
With both hands, he demonstrates how to break it open. Giving half back to me, I watch as he scoops the pale pink flesh from the skin using his teeth, so I do the same.
The taste is an explosion on my mouth. There’s nothing I’ve eaten before that I can compare it to. It’s simply divine. Sweet and juicy, I could eat a hundred of these and never tire of the taste.
“What is this called?” I point to what’s left of the fruit we both ate. “What… is… this… called?” I say my question slower in hopes he will understand, but I feel like an idiot. Natu isn’t simple-minded, he just speaks a different language.
“Plurius,” he says, pointing.
“Pl-oo-rees,” I say, and he nods. Apparently, nods and shakes of the head are universal. “It’s delicious.”
“Delushious,” he grunts in agreement.
“Natu.” I sit forward with my elbows on the table. “What are you called? Your species, I mean.”
His brows knit together as he tries to interpret my words.
“I am human. Human,” I say, patting my chest. Then I reach across the table and pat his forearm. “What are you?”
He doesn’t respond, just continues to eat without losing that look of consternation.
“I am human,” I try again. “Natu is…?” I let my question trail off and shrug my shoulders.
The light of understanding suddenly shines from his face. “Mannock,” he points at me, then to himself. “Nomadica.”
I suppose mannock is his word for human. It’s disturbing he knows of my species when I know nothing of his. I mean, I’ve watched those television shows about people claiming to have been abducted by aliens. Entertaining as it was, I took those stories with heavy doses of skepticism. Now, I wish I could remember every single word of what those people had said. Those abductees somehow made it back to Earth, which gives me hope that I can too.
“Nomadica,” I try out the word, wondering what planet he’s from. Wondering how far away from Earth I’ve already traveled. Wondering where in the hell I am now.
Finished with our meal, Natu motions for me to follow. Accessing the panel to utilize the shower, the flow of the water begins, and Natu bends to remove his calf-high boots and loose pants. I lose my makeshift toga and step under the spray with him. Another panel lifts and reveals a tall, slender bottle.
