Rogue

by Cheryl Brooks

  “I figured that much,” I said, ignoring the innuendo. “I just want to know what time it will be. I haven’t seen anything remotely resembling a clock around here. How do the Darconians mark the passage of time?”

  He pointed at the window. “With that,” he replied.

  “That? You mean the sun? No device?”

  “No,” he said patiently. “That.”

  I looked at the window again and didn’t see anything there to tell me what time it was. “I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head.

  “The stones around the window,” he said. “They’re also in the corridors.”

  Taking a closer look, I saw that part of the design around the window appeared to be highlighted. “Oh, don’t tell me they’ve got clock rocks, too!”

  He nodded.

  “And how do they work?”

  He shrugged.

  “So, they’re like the glowstones, then?” I suggested. “No one knows?”

  “I believe they are similar.”

  I hadn’t seen a calendar yet, but, God knows, they probably had a rock for that, too! “Do they have more portable models? I mean, how did Wazak know when to meet my ship?”

  Another shrug. Obviously, with clock rocks on every wall, no one had much use for wristwatches.

  “Perhaps the ship contacted him before it landed.” I mused. “Maybe they all have to report to him—after all, he is the security chief. It’s possible that he meets every ship that lands here. I don’t suppose there are very many of them.”

  Tychar apparently didn’t know.

  “Oh, that’s right. You don’t ever get out. Do you even remember the spaceport?”

  “Vaguely,” he replied. “It was a very long time ago.”

  “Might even be a different building by now,” I said. “Tell me something, if you ever wanted to escape, where would you go?”

  “The mountains,” he replied promptly. “There is water there.”

  “Not a whole lot, though, I’d expect,” I said. “And you’d have to cross the desert to get to it.” Then I nearly choked on a piece of fruit as an image of Tychar, in flowing Bedouin garb and riding one of those camel-creatures across the desert, popped into my head. Lawrence of Arabia had nothing on him!

  Leaning my cheek against my fist, I gazed at Tychar, wondering where he would be and what he would be doing if it hadn’t been for the war tearing his world apart. Somehow, pleasing me for a living seemed… inadequate. He was overqualified for the job and should have been off somewhere doing great, heroic deeds—or even singing for a living—but instead, he’d gotten stuck here in a desert palace catering to the whims of a big lizard, just as he was now catering to mine.

  “What did you do before the war?” I asked.

  He looked up at me as though surprised by my question. “I have never been anything but a soldier,” he replied.

  “Oh,” I said blankly. “Yes, I suppose so.” In a world besieged, there was little else for a strong, healthy male to do, was there? I waited a moment, still mulling it over in my mind. “But before you knew you would be a soldier, was there anything else you wanted to do?”

  He shook his head. “The war was already being waged from the time I was young. There was never a chance for me to want to do anything else.”

  “Well, what about now?” I persisted. “If you could go anywhere, do anything, what would it be—or did you think you’d spend the rest of your days here, pouring Scalia’s wine?”

  “It seemed pointless to think about doing anything else until you came.”

  It was reasonable that he would think about other things now that I was there, but in all reality, looking after me couldn’t be that much different than serving Scalia—except for the sex, that is. “But when you’re out there, sleeping beneath the stars, what do you dream about?”

  His glowing blue eyes met mine. “You, Kyra,” he replied. “I dream about you.”

  This was a sweet sentiment, but rather unlikely under the circumstances. “Oh, how is that possible?” I scoffed. “You’ve only known me for two days! How could you dream about me?”

  For a moment he was quiet, glancing away toward the window and the brilliant cobalt sky. “Many years ago, I had a vision,” he replied, “and I knew that one day, you would come, we would be lovers, and my life would change.”

  “A vision?” I echoed in surprise. “You have visions?”

  “Sometimes,” he replied. “They are different from ordinary thoughts or dreams—I cannot tell you how. Many of my people have this ability, and though such visions are not common, we know them to be true.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said doubtfully. “And you’re saying that you saw me, specifically? You mean, you recognized me?”

  He nodded, smiling devilishly. “I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time, Kyra.”

  “That’s fairly obvious,” I said dryly. “Whether you had a vision or not.” I was finding this extremely difficult to believe. I’d run across a few oddities in my day, but certainly no one who ever had visions—especially visions concerning me. “And just how will your life change, now that I’m here? Will you be freed?”

  Shaking his head, he replied, “I don’t know, but I believe it will be a change for the better.”

  “That doesn’t sound too hard. After all, you are a slave!” I declared. “It’s no wonder you seemed so glad to see me!”

  His seductive smile nearly took my breath away. “I was,” he said, “very glad to see you.”

  And Trag hadn’t been—which at least partly explained the difference in their reception of me. “Does Trag have visions, too?”

  “If he has, he’s never told me about them,” Tychar replied. “But it is possible. Some of our people have more of this ability than others.” Just as Trag had said that some of them tasted sweeter than others. Interesting…

  “Did you tell him about your visions?”

  “No,” he replied. “I kept it to myself, only knowing it was true when I first saw you.”

  “Maybe you should tell him,” I suggested. “It might convince him to stop hitting on me.”

  “He hit you?” Tychar exclaimed, obviously aghast at such a notion—though just when he thought Trag would have done it when he, himself, had been with me most of the time since my arrival, I couldn’t begin to guess.

  “It’s an Earth expression,” I said, laughing. “Meaning that a man is really interested in a woman and keeps making comments to that effect. It isn’t painful, and in this case, it’s actually rather flattering. I mean, here I’ve got two of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever seen, and both of them are—”

  “—hitting on you,” he said, contritely. “I’m sorry if I seemed too… anxious.”

  If it had turned out to be any less fabulous, I suppose I might have been irritated, but, as it was, I had nothing—and I do mean nothing—to complain about except, perhaps, that it had taken me this long to find him. Still, he’d been waiting at least as long as I had and had been a slave for many of those years. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have dreamed about Tychar and then arrive on Darconia to find him there, and I decided that, yes, I would have been quite anxious, to say the very least.

  Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had been looking and waiting for him all my life; I just hadn’t had a vision to show me who he actually was. Then there was the fact that, despite a boatload of discouragement, I had come to Darconia in the first place. Me, who rarely left my hometown, had crossed the galaxy to find the man I was destined to meet.

  Destiny. Prescience. Kismet. Fate. All these things, which I had certainly heard about before but had never truly believed in, were now proving themselves to be real. Suddenly, I felt the cold, hard finger of fate touch the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine, despite the growing heat of the day, and
I knew that it wouldn’t turn out to be as easy as asking Scalia to let me keep him with me all the time. There was more to it than that, even though asking for anything was always a challenge for me. I could have told her about his vision, told her how we felt about one another, but still, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t be quite so simple.

  Sitting there, staring off into space, I probably would have gone on pursuing that train of thought if Tychar hadn’t recalled me to my current surroundings with an uncomfortable-sounding clearing of his throat.

  “What?” I said before I remembered that he had apologized for being too anxious—and I hadn’t responded. “Oh, an apology isn’t necessary,” I said quickly. “I was a little… anxious, myself.”

  Then I realized just how anxious I was. I wanted to get as much of him as I possibly could before he was taken away from me. The reality was that Scalia probably wouldn’t keep a piano teacher around forever, and I knew that if I ever left Darconia, it would be without Tychar, unless something else happened to change that. I would have to buy him, or win him, or earn him in some way. Then there was the problem of the bounty on Zetithians. What if we ran into bounty hunters on the trip back to Earth? I was pretty sure he would be safe once we arrived, but there could be dangers along the way.

  I hated to admit it, but Tychar and Trag were probably safer right where they were than anywhere else. Perhaps Scalia had the right idea after all.

  Tychar cleared his throat once more.

  Poor Tychar! My mind had raced away again. Smiling apologetically, I leaned over and kissed him. “Yes, I was anxious. You’re pretty hard to resist, you know.” Toying with my glass in a nonchalant manner, I said, “So, would you like to sing for me this morning, or would you rather do something else?”

  The smile he aimed at me was anything but apologetic. “I don’t mind singing, but I would prefer to do… other things.”

  Which is exactly what I might have expected him to say, the little devil. After all, a guy doesn’t break a twenty-year dry spell and then just forget about it for another twenty years! “That’s right. You did say you wanted Trag to go away, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.” He looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes. “And, in case you haven’t noticed, he’s gone.”

  “Tell me something, then. Is it true that snard tastes sweet?”

  He gazed at me in surprise. “How do you know of snard?”

  “Trag told me while you were asleep.”

  Cocking his head in suspicion, Tychar asked, “He didn’t give you some of his own to taste, did he?”

  “No, I just said you were a sweetie, and he made that assumption.”

  “Oh.” He sighed, his lips curling into a smile as he purred. “Then I’ll give you some of it to taste, and you may judge for yourself.”

  I just stared at him for a moment as my mind went into a tailspin. Honest to God, if every handsome man on Earth were lined up for my inspection and approval, I would have ignored them all. This was the one who drove me wild. This one, and this one, alone. I’d never had much in the way of visions before, but I was certainly having them now! What he would look like on his knees with his buns in the air, his cock and balls hanging below, swinging back and forth when he moved. How his nuts would feel as they bounced against my tush. The way his scrotum would be pulled tight over his balls as he plunged into me as far as he could go. Too bad I couldn’t actually see all of that, but I could imagine it, and it was making me wet and swollen with desire. So, this was what happened when you got together with a Zetithian!

  Then I got a mental picture of his dick firing off in my face and had an orgasm.

  Tychar was obviously paying attention, for he was standing by my chair within seconds, the smooth skin stretched tight over his dick; the jeweled cuff around his cock and balls offering them up for me to lick, to suck, to savor… My hands were wet with his fluids as I took his cock and slid my fist up and down his shaft, heard him purr, heard him groan.

  “Put it in my mouth,” I gasped. “Fill me with your snard… let me… taste it… Make me… scream.” It was shocking. I wanted him to do things—wild, erotic, sexual things—and actually had the nerve to ask for them! And at the breakfast table, no less!

  He wound my braid around his hand and pulled me closer. “Suck me, then,” he said with a purr. “Feel me in your mouth. Taste me.”

  The ruffled head of his cock pushed past my lips, sliding deeply into my mouth. He tasted good already and felt hot and powerful, as though he were pumping life into me. When my orgasms began, I tried to ignore them and focus only on how he felt, how he tasted, how he smelled. My own body was burning with desire, but I ignored that, too. It was so good, I didn’t think I would have needed his orgasmic cock syrup to make me climax—I think I would have done it anyway.

  Tychar was still purring, but now there was a groan with every thrust of his dick into my face. I backed off and managed to gasp, “Talk to me. Tell me what you like, how it feels.”

  “It feels so good,” he said. “I like being in your mouth, watching your lips and tongue tease me. You are hot and wet, and your eyes are clouded with hunger.” He thrust into me again. “Oh, yessss,” he sighed. “Suck harder. I like that.”

  I nearly swallowed him, stretching the ruffled corona back towards the head on the outstroke. His knees buckled, and he gripped the back of my chair for support.

  “Yes, like that,” he gasped, his purr becoming more frenzied. “Suck the snard from my cock, Kyra.”

  Then his breath went in with a hiss, and I swallowed the first shot without even tasting it, but on the second, I let go of him to watch. At point blank range, I saw him erupt, and his snard splattered all over my face. When I gasped in awe, the third round hit me right on the tongue.

  And yes, it was sweet—sweet, creamy, delicious, and maddeningly euphoric. I watched, fascinated, as the corona began to undulate and then took him back in my mouth, letting the scalloped edge tease my tongue while I caressed his balls with my hands. I’d never felt anything like it—had never even dreamed of such a thing—and soon there were hot tears running down my cheeks.

  “Feels so good you could cry, doesn’t it?” he whispered.

  I nodded and felt his nuts spasm again in my hand when I moved.

  He withdrew himself and wiped the snard from my cheek with his cockhead before sliding inside once again. “How does it taste?” he purred. “Is it sweet enough for you?”

  Nodding again, I ran my tongue around the corona, tasting his semen, never wanting to let go of him again—ever.

  But I did. I backed away and just sat there and stared; it was as though I could get as much pleasure simply by looking. But that wasn’t true, of course. He moved closer again, sliding the head of his cock through the snard on my face, massaging my cheeks, my lips, and my nose.

  It was hot, wet, slick… I had another orgasm… and another… and another. This was something truly amazing… something I couldn’t have ever imagined, not if I’d racked my brain for a million years. He was more than any human lover could possibly hope to be—and Scalia had two of them…

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t want to wait five or six months for it to wear off; I wanted an antidote for my birth control pill, and I wanted it now. I wanted to have babies—boy babies. Hundreds and hundreds of them who looked just like Tychar. Then I wanted to take them back to Earth and watch women drool over my sons. His sons. Our sons. I wanted to save the species; to rescue them from extinction. I wanted his genes to be dominant over mine, so that you could never tell a Terran had given birth to them. I wanted other women to know the joy and pass it on.

  Scalia couldn’t keep them. The tigers couldn’t reproduce on Darconia. They had to go where there were other mammals—humanoid mammals—who smelled good to them and made their dicks hard. And if there was a bounty on them—and I only had Scalia’s word for that—well, we�
��d just have to kill anyone who tried to take them. And I would kill: to protect my children, and to protect him. I would gladly squeeze the life out of anyone stupid enough to make the attempt.

  Of course, if there was a bounty on Zetithians, the way I was feeling was obviously the reason why. It was doubtful that I was the first to experience it, and I hoped I wouldn’t be the last. Something had to be done. My scruples about being used to save a species from extinction had disappeared. Scalia was just sitting on these guys, when she could have bred hundreds of them by now. She should have gotten mates for them years ago.

  I wondered if she’d tried. Perhaps she had, and I was just the first one to show up. I was an experiment: she’d needed a piano teacher, so she’d gotten a mammal from Earth. If I was ever granted a moment alone with her again, I would ask her if my suspicions were correct. I wasn’t going to be afraid to ask questions anymore, or to make requests; I would decide what I wanted, and I would ask for it—or find a way to get it myself. Having had this brief time with a man such as Tychar had convinced me that I was as deserving as anyone else; God hadn’t forgotten me, he’d simply saved me for the right man. Nindala would be proud—if I ever saw her again.

  I would ask Scalia if she would book Nindala’s troupe at my earliest opportunity. I’d never seen them perform, but if Nindala was anything to go by, the show had to be spectacular! The audience the night before had seemed to enjoy my piano recital, so they might be more open to other forms of entertainment now—though I was pretty sure there was a world of difference between the two. Of course, my ulterior motive was to find a mate for Trag. I wondered if he liked redheads…

  Nindala might not like Trag, though. I couldn’t begin to imagine why, but there’s no accounting for taste. Perhaps, being more sexually experienced, she might not be as overwhelmed by the Zetithians as I was—which would be a crying shame…

  The entertainers in question turned out to be mammals all right, but they weren’t humanoid, reminding me more of goats than anything; they even had horns. So much for finding a mate for Trag. This region of space didn’t seem to have much in the way of potential candidates. No wonder Scalia had had to look for one on Earth!