by Milana Jacks
Blinking, I try to clear my vision. I’m seeing double. Great. Just great. A dull headache drums at the front of my forehead, and I feel like if I don’t eat or drink something soon, it’ll spread over one side of my face, giving me a migraine right before I pass out.
Where is Hart? He’s late again. The sun’s disappearing, and I’m beat, even though I’ve done nothing all day but sit in the chair and watch Mas move around, which in itself gives me vertigo. I check on him over by the fire. He’s not there, but I spy him walking along the walls as if reading them.
Mas seems restless, more than usual. He’s pacing the entire hall, mumbling to himself, pausing to look at me, then snarling. Fatigue makes me not give a shit about his theatrics. Even more so because there’s flesh and blood everywhere and these males shouldn’t have done what they did. They’re desperate to secure a female, and I feel bad. If I could call someone on Earth, I’d tell them to come. There’re women who would be happy to do what I did and shack up with these dual-form aliens. Predators aren’t what we portray them to be. Not for the most part, at least. And definitely not to me.
Hart walks into the hall, and I sit up, trying to keep my head above my shoulders, but finding it hard. He’s wearing a one-piece dark-green kilt, with several belts over his torso and heavy armor over his wrists and biceps. As he moves through the hall, he sheds the armor, throwing it on the floor. Belts fall next, and I smile, thinking it’ll be just like him to strip off the kilt in front of everyone and let me admire his fitness.
Hart reaches the throne and hands me a blue backpack and a pink purse.
Well, that wakes me up. “What’s this?”
“Don’t know.”
He kneels, and I feel him doing something to my foot. It tickles, and I try to snatch my foot away. When I can’t because he’s holding my ankle, I move the backpack to the side so I can bend and see…a blue flip-flop. I wiggle my toes, noting it’s a size too big. Still, a nice gesture.
I dig into the backpack and feel him slipping on the other flip-flop. Inside the pack are clothes, makeup, and hair care products. In the purse, I find a phone. It’s out of battery. Gum. Lip gloss. Two strips of prescription meds taken once a day, so sixty days’ worth of pills. I don’t know what they’re for, but the person these items belong to might need them.
“Where did you get this?” I ask.
“Found it.”
“I know, but where?”
“Around. Do you like it? Accept it?”
I’d hoped he’d bring food and water, but I’ll accept whatever he brought. It’s just that now I’m aware there’s another person, likely a woman, out there somewhere, missing a blue dress, and maybe going through the same turmoil I am, and with none of the meds she might need. I can’t ask Hart to return them because I have to welcome his gifts. Even though some males brought an animal, and even though they skewered that animal on a makeshift stick and are now barbecuing it right behind Hart. I’m so fucking hungry. And thirsty.
I lick my dry lips, then dig through the purse, remembering the lip gloss. I put it on. Oh, the gum. I unwrap a piece and pop it in my mouth, wanting to eat it, and so I do. I wanna eat the gloss too.
Standing, I smile, and the image of Hart starts doubling, tripling, before my eyes roll, and I’m falling. The last things I remember are Hart’s eyes widening as he reaches for me.
Soft feathers. Hart’s scent. His voice, his touch, and he’s rocking me like a baby. I pry open my eyes and stare at the dim lights in front of me, then open my mouth to say something, but I’m so weak, I can’t utter a word. The lights twinkle, and I watch them as I fall back to sleep.
I wake up several times during the night, but keep drifting off again.
I crashed. Ironic, since I really did crash only a few days ago.
It’s morning. I can tell it’s morning because the sun keeps me warm. Hart’s not here. I rub my eyes before opening them and turn to find out I’m wrong. Although it’s morning, the sun isn’t keeping me warm. It’s fur and blankets and decorative plush pillows doing that job. Sitting up, I groan and bring a soft fluffy colorful blanket Hart must’ve covered me with closer to my chest. “Thank God.”
A space opens inside the bedroom, and Hart walks in from outside. He’s wearing a short dark-gray piece of cloth around his waist that falls above the middle of his thigh, exposing his strong, long, muscular legs. Those muscles flex as he comes around the bed and crouches beside it. His hair is down today, black, wild, and long, framing his face. I roll to my side and reach for a golden bead in his hair, rolling it between my fingertips. I touch his hard jaw, running a finger over his tattoos. “Do they mean anything?” I ask.
“They spell my name in Ka script.”
“Get out. This is what your alphabet looks like?”
“Yes.”
“In English, your name and the word ‘heart’ are similar.”
He purses his lips and shakes his head. “No. My name means the one who rules them all.”
“Top of the food chain.”
Hart nods, then glances to the middle of the room and marches there. He extends his palms and takes something from someplace I still can’t see and turns around. In his hands is a small black bowl. It looks like it had been cracked and repaired, glued together with melted gold. The gold repairs give it a unique look. It’s beautiful and belongs in a museum on Earth. But that’s not all that catches my eye. Steam rises out of the bowl, and the aroma of soup makes saliva pool in my mouth. Excited, I sit up as he returns to his previous position, crouching near the bed.
Shifting to face him, I cross my legs and stretch out my arms, eager to eat.
Hart pulls back the bowl and tugs the sheets away from my front, exposing my nudity. As his eyes roam over my breasts and belly and between my legs, his hunter-form eyes replace the white covering them. It makes my heart beat faster.
He hands me the bowl, and I practically snatch it out of his hands, then bring it to my lips. I sip. Fuck, yes. I groan as something like chicken soup warms my throat and belly. I gulp down the broth without chewing the finely chopped colorful veggies or meat—I have no idea what it is, really—inside it all too quickly, spilling some from the corner of my mouth. I search for a napkin. There isn’t one, of course, so I wipe my mouth with my hand. “Is there more?”
Hart smiles, his eyes lighting up bright orange. “My sweet, sweet goddess. Never quite satisfied, always wants more flesh.”
I chew my lip as I put the bowl on the nightstand. “Um, what was in the soup?”
“Does it matter if you liked it?”
“Yeah, yeah, it matters.”
“Ark’s little cock.”
Bile rises, and I swallow. “Hart, you have to promise not to feed me anything besides vegetables.”
“It was a joke.”
“Oooo. Oh. You got me there.” I laugh and rub my belly. “Tasty, whatever it was. Wait, was it anyone else?”
“Eggs and vegetables.”
“Great. Great. I’ll eat it every day for the rest of my days here.”
The orange in his eyes flares. “Amti, you will eat it every day until the end of our time. I will not be one of your servants.” He prowls over my body, forcing me to lie on my back. His lips touch my lips, and his eyes stay on mine. They’re bright and fierce and hard to look at, but I do it anyway because these predator eyes, unlike the white ones, are expressive. I touch his arms, running my palms over his muscles. I like how hard he feels. He’s carved out of stone and made for sex. I swear it.
Hart kisses me, lingering with his mouth at my lips, and whispers, “You’re enjoying my fitness.”
I run my calves over his legs. “Mmhm.”
“If I penetrate you, I will be your only servant. Do you understand me?”
He wants to penetrate me. Who uses that word, penetrate? Nobody, but mankind should fall in line with what this alien is saying. “I don’t quite understand, but the idea that you’d serve me is alluring.”
He
lies on top of me, and I let out a moan. His body feels warm and hard, and with his plush lips on my neck, I’m feeling frisky this morning. When he kisses me, moving his tongue inside my mouth, he also moves his body back and forth, teasing me with the large hard cock between his legs, making my inner walls contract. I want the penetration he promised.
I run my hands through his hair. Lush coarse black hair falls over his face, curtaining us. It’s partially wet, so he’s fresh out of the shower—lake— smelling like male and sex. So much sex. I lift my hips, nudging him.
A purr rises from his chest, vibrating over my breasts, and he lifts up the bottom half of his body to insert two fingers inside me. I moan into his mouth as he pumps me with his fingers, his kisses getting frantic. He’s already fucking my mouth with his tongue. I fist his hair and try to bring him even closer, but unless I melt into him, this is as far as we can join.
Until he removes his fingers, parts the kilt, and penetrates me.
I gasp, and he rises on his arms, orange hunter eyes watching me. He purrs louder, like a tiger, and it’s sexy and wrong. It feels forbidden, taboo, animalistic, but he’s a male with all the man parts, and yet not quite. Slowly, he moves inside me, stretching me, and although I’m slick and wet, his girth and length are pushing inside, trying to create more room.
The purring intensifies.
Above me, Hart’s upper lip curls, and his jaw expands to accommodate growing teeth. He’s starting to move faster, purring louder and louder, and fucking me harder. I feel him in my belly. His length hits so high that everything feels full of cock.
The purr turns into a growl.
My insides twist, butterflies dancing in my belly. I’m excited, scared, aroused, totally consumed in how he’s having sex with me. I reach to trace his jaw. He grabs my wrist, the other one too, and forces my hands above my head. My breasts jut out, and he lowers his body so my nipples rub on his chest as he moves above me. His jaw widens, revealing sharper, larger teeth. His pupils expand. His groin moves, rubbing my clit. Pressure develops in my lower belly. I shiver, but not from the cold.
He lifts his nose and sniffs, then snarls at me, pistoning faster.
I come with a scream and keep coming because he’s pounding into me, seeking his own release. My muscles go limp and my legs part, letting him do whatever he wants in order to get off while I take a moment to watch him more closely. He throws his head back, exposing the cords of his neck.
“I just want to bite you,” I gasp.
He yanks me up and sits on his heels. With a hand at the back of my head, he directs me toward his neck, forcing my mouth toward it. I lick his neck and taste his maleness, a spicy tang on my palate. He’s so sexy. We’re attached, and I feel him getting larger inside me.
“Bite,” he growls. His voice is mangled, a guttural sound somewhere between human and animal that sends shivers down my spine.
I open my mouth and bite his neck.
Hart lets out a roar, startling me. A jet of cum gushes, and it’s so forceful that I swear I feel it all the way to my womb. Because I’m holding him and I’m pressed against him, I feel his muscles shift, even hear the bones in his shoulders scraping together, and I look up to see him staring at me with white eyes. “You marked my hunter.”
I smile, a little nervous about what he means. “I did?”
He kisses me. “You bit the most vulnerable part of my body. The neck. You bit and didn’t draw blood.”
“I have blunt teeth. Your neck is hard. I don’t know if I can draw blood.”
“Do you want to draw blood?” He sounds excited.
“No, I’m good.”
He moves a stray hair away from my face. “Tell me, Amti, how many of these heat cycles do you need before you can conceive young?”
“Okay, um, I’m Stephanie, and I don’t have heat cycles.” I push against his chest, but he won’t let up.
Instead, he frowns. “I scent a cycle.”
“And I’m over you calling me another woman’s name while you’re still inside me.”
“Amti is the goddess of lust and madness, the goddess I called upon and pissed on before you landed in the Hall of the Fallen. Our goddesses freely take up any form or shape and come to us to tempt us. Amti temps us into madness, which is what you did to me. I’m mad about you.”
I have no words. I’m trying to process what he’s telling me and need to buy time to formulate a reply that won’t offend his beliefs, but I also need him to understand I’m no goddess. I’m Stephanie from San Diego, California, who tried to go on vacation and crash-landed on his planet.
I hug him and, through the window, find the white speck on the tall tower. My pod, except now there are two pods, indicating there’s another human woman somewhere around here.
Sooner or later, someone’s gonna figure out where these pods ended up and come looking. When that happens, the human race will discover this race of predators.
“Hart?”
“Yes.”
I lick my lips, swallow, think about what I’m gonna say next, but I have to say it because a part of me wants no harm to come to this male or his people, even if it means I’m signing off on never returning home. “You should destroy those pods.”
He kisses my shoulder. “Why?”
“They’ll track them, and they will come.”
“Let them come.”
“We are billions. We have warships and weapons of mass destruction. We can annihilate this entire planet in a matter of minutes.” I haven’t seen any modern weapons around here. It’s all rustic and primitive, and the simplicity of it, the brutality of it all, makes my heart full. I kind of love it here. Secretly, I also kind of love this male. Nobody has taken care of me since the age of sixteen, when my mom moved to Mars. I’ve lived alone all my adult life. Not to mention, he treats me like I’m his personal goddess. I take his face between my palms. “Destroy them.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mas needs them to look for the others. The pods emit signature signals, and he can find them and connect to them, then maneuver the lost ones to us. It could mean more females. And if the goddesses are pleased as Amti was pleased, they will bless us with many games and many young.”
I shake my head. “But the risk it too high.”
“Good thing I’m mad, then.” He lays me down, then stands and stretches with his arms above his head. He’s still hard, but the thing at the top of his penis is gone. He scrubs his face, glances toward the middle of the room, then at me, then back at the middle of the room. I’m sure there’s something there he’s looking at, and I wanna ask about it and how I can fix my vision problem if possible, but his penis takes precedence, seeing as we just had sex.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything.” He moves to put on the cloth and cover his bottom half, then pauses. “You’re admiring my fitness again.” He prowls across the bed, but this time doesn’t lie on top of me. Instead, he flips me on my belly, lifts my hips so my ass is up, and practically climbs over me from behind.
He enters me, so big and heavy, his cock creates pressure in my lower belly. My eyes roll to the back of my head. “Oh my God,” I choke out.
Hart fucks me from behind. “God is a fitting name for me, Amti.”
Oh no. He pounds me faster, big heavy balls slapping my clit. “Oh yes, yes.”
Madness and lust.
Chapter Fifteen
Hart
Amti marked my hunter, and I released my hook. It attached to her womb, a marking of my own so that no other male can breed her. The hook carries my genes, and soon she will develop a new scent, one that repels other males and calls only to me.
Marking during the games is forbidden by the laws of the land and the secret scriptures themselves. Releasing the hook while mating is considered selfish, and the male who does it is shunned from the tribe like a traitor. Tribal females move from male to male and breed with whomever they ple
ase, usually with whichever male wins the games.
My father was shunned when he marked my mother. Once the males smelled his scent on her, they knew she could not be bred. Since my mother was a Ra princess, a highly fertile female of a strong bloodline said to be blessed by Bera herself, his actions led to another war, one more devastating than all the others, because the Ra slaughtered our females and our young.
But if Amti wishes it, I shall serve her in madness and in lust.
It’s the middle of morning, and the empty hall tells me the males have gone out for the last day of the games. I didn’t, which disqualifies me. I should be upset and displeased, but I’m content to lie in bed waiting for my goddess to return from the baths. She’s climbed a few rocks and now stands under the waterfall, nude, enticing me to join her.
I stroke myself, running a thumb over the missing hook at the top of my dick. A male gets one hook for a lifetime, and he can mark one female, also for a lifetime. My dick feels weird without it, but the thought of her womb growing my young excites me. Blood rushes to my groin, and I stroke faster, watching her wash a place between her legs, thinking about how that tight place squeezed me. It’s warm and moist, and I wanna penetrate her again.
The portal-control dashboard on the wall flashes. Someone wants to talk to me. Cock in hand, I don’t open a visual, and I don’t wave the control over to the middle of the room from where I normally work. I want to preserve this bit of time with her before I have to face my people and tell them what I’ve done.
The control panel detaches from the wall anyway. Mas is forcing an entry. I stop stroking myself and stand, grabbing the loose cloth and securing it over my middle. I walk to the control panel and shut it down. It flashes brightly, then dims, then dies out. Relieved, I sigh. I haven’t closed a com center down here since…never. It feels wonderful not to be on duty.
Wrapped in a piece of soft cloth, Stephanie walks back into our chambers. She removes the fabric, and I smile, unsnap my kilt, and approach her. My goddess is insatiable. She steps back and uses the fabric to rub her hair.
