His Feisty Human

by Ivy Barrett

  His Feisty Human

  By

  Ivy Barrett

  Copyright © 2017 by Stormy Night Publications and Ivy Barrett

  Copyright © 2017 by Stormy Night Publications and Ivy Barrett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Barrett, Ivy

  His Feisty Human

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by RomanceNovelCovers/Jimmy Thomas, 123RF/mppriv, and 123RF/algolonline

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Prologue

  A shrill scream jarred Mal Ton from a dreamless sleep. He grabbed his pulse pistol off the rickety nightstand and opened the door with a mental command. Increasing the mutant intensity of his eyes, he illuminated the hallway as he ran. A second scream guided his steps. He rushed down a flight of stairs into the bowels of Fane’s hideout.

  Fane stood in a doorway halfway down the main corridor. He calmed his people with firm directives and unflagging patience, dispersing the crowd pressing in around him.

  Mal Ton watched from the shadows, amazed at Fane’s unshakable composure. People liked Fane. They sensed his strength of character and obeyed without question. Few leaders ever achieved this level of devotion.

  Tucking his weapon into the back of his pants, Mal Ton approached his friend. “There’s no imminent danger, I presume?”

  Fane moved aside so Mal Ton could see into the small room. Sean Wylie sat on the floor beside the narrow bed with a young woman cradled in his arms. She trembled and tossed her head, babbling incoherently. Sean rocked her and brushed damp strands of hair back from her misshapen face.

  “Her name is Sarah,” Fane whispered. “She made the sacrifice. She’s our most powerful dreamer.”

  The sacrifice. It was such an innocuous term. Sarah allowed the Protarian lentavirus to ravage her body and mutate her mind. That didn’t sound nearly as civilized. Were prophetic dreams a fair exchange for physical well-being?

  “What’s her connection to Sean?” Mal Ton looked at her face, ignoring the impulse to avert his gaze. No one sought out the Underground until they had exhausted all other options. They were all mutants in one way or another.

  “Sarah is Sean’s younger sister.”

  She screamed again, thrashing and arching despite Sean’s careful hold.

  Mal Ton stepped back into the corridor. If there was no danger, there was no reason to linger.

  “You’re restless, my friend.” Fane joined him in the hallway.

  “We were created for action. Waiting will never sit well with me.”

  “I suspect you’ll be back in action shortly. The accuracy of Sarah’s dreams tends to determine their intensity.”

  Accepting the information with a nod, Mal Ton leaned against the cool stone wall. “Any word from Stilox?”

  “Nothing new.”

  Though they had both been born on Stilox, only Mal Ton still considered it home. War with the Protarians had destroyed the planet, consigning Stilox survivors to scattered climate domes. Mal Ton couldn’t look at Protaria’s lush forests and elegant cities without remembering all the Stilox soldiers who had perished in the never-ending war. The Underground was better. Hidden in, and beneath, deserted sections of Protaria’s capital city, Fane’s sprawling hideout was home to mutants from a number of races. Still, Mal Ton longed for the scorched landscapes and twisted ruins of Stilox.

  “Fane,” Sean called. “She’s ready now.”

  Fane stepped back into the bedroom while Mal Ton went no farther than the doorway. Sarah sat on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap. A scarf had been wrapped around her head, concealing everything but her glowing amber eyes.

  “The human test subjects are in Old Towne.” Her voice was well modulated and composed. No one would guess she had been writhing on the floor moments before.

  “Old Towne is huge,” Fane said. “Can you be more specific?”

  Her gaze shifted to Mal Ton and apprehension inundated his empathic receptors. He stepped back into the hallway, unwilling to add to her discomfort.

  “I saw an old-fashioned marquee. I’m pretty sure it was the Paramount Theater.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “You need to hurry. They aren’t reacting well to captivity.”

  Chapter One

  “I have them, sir.”

  Mal Ton Adoha glanced up from his thermo scanner and turned his head toward Sean Wylie. “Send your signal to the main display.”

  Sean complied. His scanner zoomed in on a dilapidated structure directly ahead of their scout ship. The windows had been sealed and there were no visible signs of life. Luckily, their search didn’t depend on visual clues. Seven life-form indicators blinked near the center of the scanner grid.

  “Only four humans,” Mal Ton muttered. “Damn.”

  “You didn’t really think Max would keep them all in the same place, did you?”

  “No,” he grumbled. “He hasn’t missed a trick.” As if fighting the Protarians wasn’t challenging enough, one of his own kind had turned traitor and sabotaged their efforts at every turn. Mal Ton searched the other buildings visible on the display. “Can you set down here?” He motioned toward the level rooftop directly across from their target.

  “Structural integrity is acceptable but we’re exposed from all sides.”

  “No one down here is going to approach a police scout ship. This sector has been condemned for years.” The ship’s external shield could be modulated, creating the illusion of any number of vessels. Invisibility had been the original goal of the technology. Still, clever distortions worked nearly as well.

  “Any chance of snagging their surveillance feed?” Mal Ton asked. They would only get one shot at this. Once Max learned they were on to him, it would make any rescue attempt that much harder. “These scans aren’t giving us much to go on.”

  Sean activated a holoconsole directly in front of him, allowing him to access several systems simultaneously. “There’s nothing to jack. They’ve gone completely low-tech. I might be able to amplify their voices, but we’d do better with one of my bugs.”

  A smile quirked one corner of Mal Ton’s mouth. Sean loved his tiny contraptions, spent hours improving and modifying the miniature, remote-controlled spies. “Send its signal to the main vidscreen.”

  Sean hooked the control strap over two of his fingers and adjusted the thin pad across his palm. His thumb animated the bug with smooth, almost imperceptible movements. He launched the device through one of the munitions tubes. The image bobbed and bumped as the bug zipped toward the shabby building. A warped window frame provided a gap big enough to facilitate the bug’s insertion.

  Water-stained walls and the dim glow of a portable light source filled the vidscreen. Mal Ton heard muffled voices but couldn’t make out their words. A rhythmic hum pulsed through the transmission, lending a surreal quality to an otherwise gloomy scene. Presented from the perspective of Sean’s newest invention, the image shifted and panned as the bug turned its tiny head.

  “I’ve got to take a piss,” one of the men announced. He pushed to his feet and ambled toward the door.

  “Thanks for the update,” one of his companions muttered. He was dressed in threadbare garments and his face was smudged with dirt. The unconventional unif
orm would help him blend in with their present surroundings.

  “See if you can locate the women,” Mal Ton suggested. According to their intel all the captives were female.

  Sean maneuvered the bug along the perimeter wall and down one of two adjacent hallways. The first three rooms were snugly sealed, but Sean managed to slip the bug under the fourth door. Mal Ton caught a glimpse of a windowless cell before the bug abruptly ascended, causing the scene to blur.

  “I need him, Lorelle,” a slender blond woman cried. Mal Ton’s nanites allowed him to assimilate any language to which he’d been exposed. His recent interaction with humans had given him a rudimentary understanding of Earthish. “My head is pounding. If I move, my muscles cramp, but I can’t stand still. I have to do this.”

  The blonde faced a dark-haired woman dressed in a khaki uniform. The insignia on her sleeve identified her as Protarian militia, but her ivory skin and the shape of her eyes assured him she was human. An odd sense of awareness stirred within Mal Ton as his gaze settled on her full-lipped mouth. Had he met this woman while he was on Earth? Surely he would have remembered someone so striking. Shaking away the disconcerting thought, he tried to assess the situation objectively.

  The brunette finger-combed her hair out of her eyes and gestured toward the door. “Those bastards did this to us.” Filled with compassion and fury, her gaze was more violet than blue. Unique yet familiar. Where had he seen her before? “Do you really think they give a damn how much we suffer?”

  “He helped me before,” the blonde argued. “You didn’t see how bad it got. I can’t go through that again. I’m not as strong as you are.”

  Three agitated steps took the blonde from one end of the room to the other. Two simple cots and a composite food tray were the cell’s only furnishings. The blonde was alone with Lorelle, so where were the other two humans?

  “He didn’t cure you.” Lorelle slipped her hands into her pants pockets and took a hesitant step toward the blonde. “The hunger came back. For all we know, giving in to him is what’s making you sick. Maybe humans are incompatible with their… Oh, my God, maybe this is why we were taken. They could be trying to impregnate us! You have to fight through the urgency, see if you can break the cycle for good.”

  “You don’t understand. It gets worse each time. I have to have him now!”

  Sean carefully maneuvered the bug out of the room and resumed his search for the other humans.

  “It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what that was about.” Sean’s tone was heavy with frustration and regret. “Is she infected?”

  “They both are,” Mal Ton admitted. “The guards have been treating them.”

  “Why weren’t they given the vaccine? This doesn’t make sense.”

  Even if Mal Ton hadn’t been able to understand their words, the symptoms were unmistakable. Anxiety, muscle cramps, and sexual frenzy. If Max had infected these women intentionally, Mal Ton would—He needed to focus on the mission. Max would pay for all his wrongs, but rescuing the humans took top priority.

  “I can’t get into any of the other rooms.” Sean sent the return code to the bug and deactivated its transmitter. “How do we proceed?”

  “Get into position and wait for my signal.”

  “The blonde was pretty far gone. We better wait until after her next treatment. I’m not sure she’ll make it back to headquarters if we don’t.”

  Mal Ton tensed. He despised abuse in any form. Seduction had his wholehearted support. He even stooped to deception from time to time. But this was different. Like a chemical addiction, the lentavirus created an uncontrollable urge, an artificial hunger that robbed its victim of choice.

  “She has to have it, sir. The virus has seen to that.” Though his tone was firm, compassion softened Sean’s expression.

  “If they harm her in any way, we move in.”

  “Understood.” Sean unfastened his safety restraints and stood in the narrow aisle between the two seats. His eyes clouded then flashed with amber light. He spread his arms as visible particles of energy swirled around him, building in speed and intensity. The light expanded, encompassing his face and then his body. His corporeal form disintegrated, leaving only mist.

  * * *

  Lorelle pressed the back of her hand against Karla’s forehead. “You’re burning up.” Carefully schooling her expression, Lorelle hid the dread twisting inside her. Had the other captives developed this bizarre illness? And how much longer could she ignore the burning inside her own body?

  Karla moaned and tossed her head. Crossing her arms over her chest, she pressed her thighs together, shaking. The nature of her distress was more apparent with each movement. “Make it stop. Please make it stop.”

  “If you… relieve the pressure yourself, will that help?” She’d never felt so useless in her life. Fourteen years of military life hadn’t prepared her for a sexual crisis. Karla was the youngest of the captives and her easygoing demeanor called to the protector in Lorelle.

  “I’ve tried,” Karla wailed. “Nothing works. I need Luke!”

  Despite her determination to be difficult, Lorelle pounded the heel of her hand against the locked door. “Hello! Luke, get your ass in here!” she shouted in Standard. Even these imbeciles understood the intergalactic trade language. “We need your help now!”

  The guards refused to reveal so much as their names, interacting with them as little as possible. So Lorelle had assigned them names, starting with the oldest and meanest. Matthew ignored them for the most part, delegating their care to Mark and Luke.

  Luke burst into the room, weapon drawn. Mark was half a step behind. Taking up a defensive position in the doorway, Mark let Luke take the lead.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Luke snapped. “You made it sound like someone was dying in here.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Lorelle indicated Karla with an angry sweep of her hand. “She’s climbing the walls.”

  The men exchanged knowing glances but said nothing for a long, tense moment.

  Luke took a step toward Karla and Mark caught him by the arm. “We can’t.”

  “Will—he be angrier if we fuck her or if he returns to find her feral?” Luke’s expression echoed the challenge in his tone.

  “Who said anything about fucking her?” Lorelle wasn’t as surprised as she sounded. Karla hadn’t spelled out what happened on the ship, but Lorelle knew it had been sexual. “She needs a doctor.”

  “She needs our seed,” Luke said bluntly. “The urgency will continue to escalate until she gets it.”

  Lorelle’s stomach clenched and her chest burned. “How convenient.” Wrapping her arm around Karla’s shoulders, Lorelle offered what comfort she could. They’d been kidnapped, drugged, and terrified. They’d been fed a steady stream of half-truths and outright lies. Before they reached their destination, their ship was shot down. And now they were imprisoned in this slum, waiting for only God knew what. Scrubbing a hand over her face, she tried not to lose control.

  Karla twisted out of Lorelle’s hold and threw herself against Luke’s chest.

  Mark aimed his rifle at Karla’s head and ordered, “Back off.”

  Driven by instinct as much as anger, Lorelle snatched Luke’s pistol out of his hand and jump-kicked Mark’s rifle. The weapon clattered against the far wall as Mark lunged for her. She spun around and kicked him in the head with all the force she could muster. He swayed then sank to one knee, clutching his head between his hands.

  “This is pointless.” Luke wrestled Karla’s hand away from his crotch. “We haven’t reported your outbursts because we knew you’d be disciplined. Is that what you want?”

  Why would they care if she were disciplined? His vehemence made her pause. “I want my life back.”

  Karla sobbed, clutching the front of Luke’s uniform with both hands. “Please. I can’t wait.” Her meaning easily transcended the language barrier.

  Lore
lle crept back, covering both men with the pistol. “Will fucking her make this stop?” Tension gripped her belly, spiraling down between her thighs. Where was Matthew? Why hadn’t he responded to this ruckus?

  “It doesn’t matter.” Mark managed to look at her, but his voice remained tight. “Luke already fucked her once. He can’t risk it again and I’m tempted to let you both rot after that little stunt.”

  She deactivated the safety and aimed the gun at his face. “Answer the question.”

  “Yes. Fucking her will send the virus into remission—temporarily.” Mark revealed each word with obvious reluctance. His eyes narrowed and he struggled back to his feet.

  “Are you trying to get her pregnant?”

  Her hostile gaze was fixed on Mark, but Luke replied, “I don’t think we could get her pregnant even if we wanted to. Conception is a lot more complicated than what’s going on right now.”

  “What happens if you fuck her more than once?”

  “Some people absorb our—”

  “It’s forbidden.” Mark shot Luke a scathing glare. “That’s all she needs to know.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Luke stressed, ignoring Mark’s hostility.

  Lorelle shook away the unanswered questions and focused on the crisis at hand. “Karla, are you sure this is what you want?”

  Karla nodded. Tears streamed down her cheeks even as she rubbed against her captor. “I can’t… I can’t go on like this.”

  “This is not your fault,” Lorelle insisted, terrified that she was watching a preview of her own fate. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Luke took Karla’s face between his hands and whispered into her ear. Karla didn’t understand Standard, but it didn’t seem to matter. Of their three captors, Luke allowed them the most dignity. It was Luke who had seen they had clean clothes and were allowed to shower.