Precious Sacrifice

by Cari Silverwood

  Chapter 5

  He had a job to do. Get this over with, mate with her once more. Prove she could adjust to the pet-creating nano-chem and the virus for star-faring that was piggybacked onto the nano-chemicals, then he was done. She was no longer his concern.

  Jadd kept taking those long strides toward her, thankful his wound wasn’t bothering him on this day. On the last ten yards, she saw him and gaped for a second before wobbling on her one leg and toppling onto the grass.

  He nearly laughed, but caught himself. How the kak could he laugh when she was going to die once he did this? Once he…

  Ascend, she was beautiful, even when clumsy. The dress was light as the breeze that tousled with it and wrapped it about her legs, shaping the cloth to her voluptuous body. Pretty swirls of red and orange and curls of black intermingled on the dress. But nothing stirred him as much as her. He remembered how she’d looked as he penetrated her and brought her joy, how she felt in his arms. He remembered her scent. Alien human or not, she fitted him perfectly. The nano-chem was meant mostly to bond her to him, but he was as enraptured.

  It was a little different to how he’d imagined this. A little deeper than how he’d thought a pet-and-master bond should be?

  He wiped his hand down his face as he took those last steps.

  The mission. Keep on course. Last night he’d seeded her with the second dose. Had it worked?

  In a true Hunt, he’d have set rules. She’d know he was coming for her and would be running as fast as she could. Most of the star-faring races didn’t have the look and couldn’t wipe memories. It was why the Igrakk were in demand as Preyfinders. They got to clean up the mistakes others made. The hard part for a Hunter was getting close enough to the prey to let the reaction to his scent take effect. No off-planet devices were allowed to be used. Just male muscle, innate abilities, skills, and cunning.

  The fun part for the Hunters was seeing that pet reaction unfold when the prey was cornered. They all fought like hellcats in the early stages but they never won. The first stage was raw, unadulterated body reaction. Stage two and three, which this was, were cute. Stage four, the women were so in lust with the Hunter they barely protested once caught. They dropped and presented and waited for the collar.

  Brittany scrambled onto her hands and knees, mouth open, eyes wide. Frightened?

  He reached down and softly said her name. “Brittany.”

  Though she trembled, she let him caress her jaw then run his fingers over her full lips. She even opened her mouth and licked his knuckle when he inserted it. Her pupils were moderately dilated despite the sunlight.

  The nano-chem was working. “Very good.”

  But when he went to walk alongside her and trail his hand down her side, she startled into full awareness.

  Squeaking, she scrambled backward. “This isn’t normal! Stop right there.” She held up a hand, palm out. “Stay there. It’s Jadd, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, staying quiet so as not to scare her more. “Yes. I am.”

  “So, did we, you know, a lot, last night?” Her frown was adorable. “I mean if I dreamed it, okay, but I remember you and those painted lines.” Her eyes grew even wider as if she’d seen something more in his appearance than she expected. “They look carved into your face.”

  He shrugged and squatted beside her, then sat with his legs stretched out. “We did. A lot. We both enjoyed it.” The trees here shaded them and to a degree, stopped others seeing precisely what was going on. “Come here.” He patted his knee.

  The command hit her hard and she began to obey, then stopped, her muscles tensing and relaxing. “Hell no. I’m not your puppy. Why do I get so hot and bothered around you?”

  Her curls swung across her face, hiding her from him, making her a mystery to be discovered. She was a little edible, wonderful, what was the human word…screwable hellcat.

  “Thank you for staying on your knees. It pleases me.”

  “I’m not…”

  When she looked down at herself, with the U-neck of the dress gaping, it only displayed her breasts to him even more. Round handfuls, swaying a little. He wanted to get her to bare those so he could play with them. But here? Hmm. There was no one nearby but perhaps it was best not to upset the natives? However, he could use his coat to disguise much that they might do.

  “Not what?” he murmured. Then he grabbed her and hauled her closer, belly down and over his lap despite her obstinate denials. He flipped up the skirt of her dress and cupped one side of her ass, squeezed it. Pink underwear. Pretty. And soaked in the place he liked the most.

  “Wait. Wait. You can’t do this here. No. Uh-uh.” She whispered the words then moaned as he squeezed again.

  “Yes, I can.”

  She wriggled on his lap, teasing his erection, and when he let his hand nestle into the delicious valley between her legs, she parted those legs and arched her ass up at him. “My pretty pet. You do respond well.”

  “What?” Brittany swallowed, and pushed herself off him until she sat up on her knees.

  Curious to see what she intended, he let her. Though with her mouth so close, his instinct was to grab her make her swallow him down. That idea almost made him groan and his cock strained against the zipper of these foreign-made pants.

  “I’m not your anything! I’m not your pet.” The sex haze had vanished from her gaze.

  The indignant tone made him smile. He tucked strands of her red-brown hair behind her ear, traced that gentle curve of her ear down to the line of her neck muscle, then to the place where her breasts squeezed together. He let his fingers play there awhile. The supple give of her breasts was surely a gift from the gods.

  At her sigh, he quirked one corner of his mouth.

  “I guess you’re not my pet, but I wish you could be.”

  A yard away, a small creature he knew was a dog but he’d dismissed as asleep, popped its head up and stared at him.

  “You do?” She put her hands up to rub her eyes. “I feel so odd, like I could do such bad things. Ugh. And I have. My hairbrush is no longer a virgin! What have you done to me?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes you!” She looked about wildly for a few seconds then hissed at him. “What. Have you done?”

  He rocked back, thinking. This was intolerable, subjecting her to this experiment without letting her know what was happening. He owed her. Not as much as his soldier brothers, but he owed her. He detested himself for being such a coward, even if he wasn’t sure why he thought this cowardly.

  “Sit on my lap and I will tell you.”

  She tensed her jaw, resisting his suggestion. “You are like frigging catnip to me. I hate that, even if I do remember you making love to me and, and –” Her voice lowered. “– us doing so many things together.” She took his hand in hers and toyed with his fingers.

  Again, he let her. Her little gesture was one of trust. It resonated in him that she’d touch him despite her sudden awareness of what might be happening.

  But when the time stretched and she stayed put, his impatience reasserted itself. He wanted her, wanted her badly enough that he might possibly battle a few Bak-lals to get to her. He growled once.

  “Sit on me.”

  She huffed but crawled forward. “Oh sure. Get all gruff and command –”

  He grabbed her hair and tugged. Her squeak made him grin. Getting her ass sitting on his lap was worth it. He faced her outward, wrapped his arm under her breasts then pulled her head around until he had those blue eyes looking up at him.

  “You said you’d tell.”

  “You can still think? Unusual for prey at this stage.” He leaned in and nibbled softly on her lips until he brought forth a long drawn-out sigh. He used his teeth to pull out her whole lower lip then let it spring back.

  “I’m going to tell you, but first I’m going to fuck you. Because I cannot resist you.”

  “You can’t?” Her eyes searched his, eager, anxious, looking for answers.

  “I can
’t, Brittany.” Then he took her mouth under his. Those pliant female lips gave at his insistent pressure, opening, letting him in to lick at her tongue, to suck on it. Where scent had failed him this time, taste did not. Her heated pants as he toyed with her, her little cries, her frantic striving to get him so close to her that they nearly shared skin. The woman had been reduced to a pure sexual being. She was his.

  He kept the kiss going for the longest time. Kissing was a human activity more than Igrakk but he liked doing this with her, to her. Loved making her hotter.

  He sneaked his hand under her dress and worked at her cleft until she was more soaked than she had been. Which was saying something. When he could hear the sounds of his fingers slicking up and down the valley of her entrance, he made her suck his fingers. The lust haze had arrived and she devoured his fingers as if they were a gourmet meal, sucking, lapping, cleaning them well.

  The throb in his groin became like the thump of a hammer. By the time he positioned her correctly on his lap and began to force his way into her, she was so unaware of their surroundings, he could have fucked her in the middle of a crowd. But he kept his coat around them.

  People might see them writhing, might know what they did, but they couldn’t see where his cock pumped in and out of her cunt, or see that her juices had spread to and dampened his thighs.

  He still had her hair in his fist and her head pulled back so he had a perfect view of her face.

  He thrust again, smiling when she grunted quietly and her eyes rolled back. From her comments the night before his cock was thicker than an average human male’s. It seemed she liked that.

  “You like me fucking you, pet?”

  He did another hard, jerking thrust and when he hit the very limit, as far in as he could fit, he bit the side of her neck. While his cock stayed there, throbbing inside her, he sat with his teeth locked, waiting for that exquisite sensation to lessen. Then he rocked her to and fro.

  Hearing the build of her gasps and moans, he smiled evilly. She squirmed as if to make him take her rougher. But of course it got her nowhere. He went at his own pace. He slipped one hand in the front of her panties to rub at her clit. With the other, he pinched and tugged at her nipples. They squashed well under his torture.

  “If I could suck on these from here, I would.” Beneath the bodice of the dress, he pulled one nipple outward until she cried out quietly, and he felt the rhythmic clasp of her walls on his cock. She was coming.

  “More,” he said harshly. “Give me another of those.” He rocked inside her again, constructing another orgasm. He took her as he wished, enjoying her when she was at his mercy and climaxing. That, he could have drunk in forever – watching her mouth sucking in air, her body tensing and overcome. And him inside her, with that exquisite milking feeling on his cock.

  Finally, when she had come three times, he increased the roughness of his small thrusts, jammed himself in high, and came within her.

  There were no nanos in his semen this time. Just him.

  “Just me,” he whispered, inhaling her as he pressed his teeth then his nose onto her back muscle. The strap of the dress had slid aside leaving him a good target.

  He eyed a distant group of humans and rearranged his coat over her. None had seen. None that he knew of. And thank the Ascend, he saw no signs of her killer.

  For a while he simply held her. Both of them came down from the high of the orgasms. Their breathing grew quieter. The sweat evaporated. Her trembles lessened. He licked her shoulder a few times, pulled his hand from inside her underwear and took a deep breath. Her. He could smell her. And sex. That too.

  This time he wrapped both arms around her body and leaned back so she would be more comfortable.

  He rested his nose in her hair, wishing he could stay like this forever. Beyond their little copse of trees, the grass spread down the hill like a green rug. Earth creatures flew and flittered. He knew most of their names. Blue butterflies. Various birds, including a sparrow like the one he’d seen following her before. And the little dog. He’d sprinted down the hill and was chasing some of the butterflies. Jadd sighed. He leaned back, taking her with him until they both lay in the short spongy grass, with her snuggled into the angle of his shoulder.

  “The sky’s so blue.”

  Her words were quiet and he had to strain to hear, but he looked up.

  It was blue, this earth sky. “Those are clouds?” The wispy things drifted sideways.

  “When I was little I used to lie back like this and see pretty things in clouds. That one there, looks like a crocodile.”

  Cute. Crocodiles had lots of sharp teeth, according to his Earth information. He kissed the top of her head. “You’re still little.”

  “I guess…next to you. Who are you, Jadd?” Then she ran on with more words, quietly, in a determined fashion. “Wait. Please don’t say anything until I get this all out or I may lose my courage. I’m feeling more than a bit off balance.”

  She swallowed. “Okay. I hope this isn’t too strange. I can’t see how it would be. You’ve probably said ten words to me and most of them were ‘fuck’, ‘me’, and ‘now’. You’ve just made me come more times in twenty-four hours than any other lover has. I know nothing, nothing about you, but I feel safer with you than I could with anyone except my sister. I’m lost in all this, and yet…” She drew in a big breath, let it out.

  “Yet I feel found too. I don’t want to lose sight of you. But this, you, scares me too. Tell me something. Anything. Please. I’m at ground level here, even your favorite color would be cause for celebration.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if it scares you?”

  Silence. Then…

  “Yes.”

  “My favorite color is blue. Just like up there. He raised his hand, the coat sleeve slipping down from it, and pointed at the sky. What he wanted to say next was the equivalent of stepping off a cliff. “It’s my favorite because it reminds me of home. A lot of the planets I land on have a different sort of blue compared to your skies.”

  “Uh-huh.” The quiet, and the way her eyes searched his, spoke of mad thoughts running about in her head. Finally, she licked her lips. “Go on. I’m going to go with whatever you say because I have a stupid inclination to believe you. You know?”

  Her voice had become squeaky and he grinned and squeezed her tighter for a second. “You’re brave, Brittany.”

  “I’ll take the compliment. Marnie would have screamed and run over the horizon by now. I’m sort of chilling out here. Acting cool. So, square one. Favorite color is blue. And you’re an alien. Go on.”

  “Yes. Blue. And I’m a soldier. We were talking of skies.”

  He felt sure the nano-chem had a lot to do with her calmness, and the bond she had with him. Kak. The bond he had too. His heart could pine all it liked for her. Today, now, he was going to give her this. She wanted to get to know him, he would gift her with this last piece of joy. Besides, he liked doing this. It reminded him of home though people here seemed so less dominated by rules.

  “Let’s see. Skies. Some planets have red skies. One had green.”

  “Green? You’re shitting me?”

  “Shitting you?” He got up on one elbow, leaving her lying on her back beside him, her amazing hair laid out like the halo of a sun. He trailed the back of his forefinger down her arm. “I missed that part of your language.”

  “It means fibbing. Pulling your leg.” She smiled up at him. “Telling a lie.”

  “Ahh. I understand. I just added that to my translation guide up here.” He tapped his head. “Shitting me. Check.”

  She laughed then bit it off and reached up to touch his cheek grooves. The flare of lust took him by surprise and he caught her hand.

  “If you want more story, don’t do that.”

  “Why?” Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “Because it’s making me want to tell you to hold still while I do things to you. And
we agreed I had to say more than ‘fuck me now’. Shall I continue with my stories?”

  “I guess.” With her tongue, she toyed with her lip. “Though ‘fuck me now’ is tempting.”

  He shook his head slightly. If she was his, he’d be spanking her so often her rear end would glow.

  “Story?” she asked softly. She drew him down and he let her do so. She wriggled into a better place and took a small fistful of the lapel of the coat he wore as if it were some talisman to keep her safe. “Tell me.”

  When she put her nose to his coat and breathed in he felt his eyes watering. Kak. Warriors did not cry. But she was bonding, tight. It was so obvious. It had happened from their first mating.

  Punishment, remember? It’s supposed to hurt.

  But it’s hurting her too.

  He cleared his throat. “Good. I begin.”

  At first they talked of trivial things – what they liked and disliked. They talked of her family, and his. He was certain his family dynamics puzzled her as much as hers puzzled him, but they moved on, changing topics, laughing, being sad for the other when the story warranted sadness. The day moved on also.

  The shadows of the trees rearranged, shrank, grew longer. A few times she stopped and went quiet, gave him an odd look. He heard her mutter an alien once but ignored it when she smiled. Or rather, he said nothing, in his head he was beginning to wonder why she was taking this so well.

  With every tick of time, the secret he held wore at him, like some dark creature hidden. She’s going to die. With every passing moment, she drew him closer. Her laugh, the feel of her body, the curve of her lips – she fascinated him.

  He’d done what many hunters did to provoke their prey into running – told her where he’d come from and that she was being artificially influenced. But she wasn’t scared. Wasn’t running. He’d been ready to use a look but he didn’t need to. Why?

  Did it matter? He liked her.

  “You’re unusual, Brittany?”

  “Oh?”

  The crinkling of her forehead meant worry so he caressed her arm with his thumb a while.

  His curiosity stirred him to say more.

  “I’ve told you that I have plans to make you mine, a pet. That I’m an alien.” He cocked his head, surprised at how tense he’d become. “Aren’t you worried?”