Dekalia wanted to throw up in the worst way.
The Narthian was yellow and purple and green, semi-winged. The thing was molting and had an even more horrible red coloring underneath.
Dekalia focused on what Marax was doing. She had to keep inside his head. The bugs were attacking left and right.
His finger never left the trigger as he pumped and pumped, one Narthian after another trying to grab the men and tear them limb from limb.
Those would be the lucky ones. The others would be taken alive.
This Marax would not allow. He’d kill them himself first. As would any man as an act of mercy toward his fellow man.
Three of the bridge crew managed to make it out in one piece. A fourth had an arm lost, a fifth was blinded. They begged to be killed but Marax wouldn’t give up yet.
If they got to the pods they would be fine, the restorator would heal them up well enough, though it couldn’t grow arms that fast, it would at least stop the pain. And the tiny ship’s computers would serve well enough as fresh eyes.
Then they would take the battle outside to the swarm. A handful of Earth fighting capsules against a million massed bugs.
Talk about your fair odds.
Dekalia felt the sweat on her own brow, the tingle on her skin. Then she felt something like a punch to the stomach. Marax had been hit.
But by what? Not a Narthian bug bite. That would have torn him in two. It was a stinger, a bit more elegant, but just as deadly.
Stingers contained venom. Some killed outright, others drugged the victims into the somnambulant state needed for them to be dragged off to a hive where they would be wrapped up and suspended live over the pit to be slowly fed on by the queen for about a thousand years or so.
Not exactly the kind of immortality the old bards sung about. In Guardian parlance it was called getting a makeover. Narthian style.
“You’re hit,” said the man to his left, no emotion, just the statement of fact.
“Eliminate me,” Marax concluded, equally passionless.
“No,” said the man to Marax’s surprise. “We can make it.”
Marax was about to belay the order when fire erupted. Not exactly normal fire because there was no oxygen from the ruptured ship to feed it. This was Narthian fire, the light and energy of a swarm. They were about to be engulfed.
“Kill me,” Marax growled. “That’s an order.”
The man refused. Unthinkable.
He grabbed Marax’s arm, threw Marax over his shoulder and dragged him. Two others gave supporting fire. The deck was slick with bug juice, the blood and guts and venom of gutted creatures. Searing insect noises scraped the edges of their brains, the bristling of antennae sent such deep chills their nerves nearly froze.
Talk about portents of hell.
We’d better die here, thought Marax, because if we live, I will see this man tried for insubordination.
The harshness of Marax’s attitude startled Dekalia but she did her best to remember she was not in her own world, nor was she in her own fem brain. This was primale reality. This was the Guardians’ world. She’d had no idea.
The man supporting Marax shoved him into the one-man pod and closed it before Marax could do anything further to resist.
The rescuer’s action proved to be his last as it only took a second for the unseen bug behind Marax’s rescuer to impale him with its spiky appendage.
Horror and agony shown through the man’s mask.
“Gortal,” shouted Marax, finally naming him.
Dekalia no sooner learned his identity than she saw Marax reach out with the pod arm, thick and bulky with energy discs.
“No,” screamed Dekalia as the arm lopped Gortal’s head clean off. Was this his punishment for disobeying an order?
No, it was mercy.
The Narthian venom had gotten him, he’d have become a feed sack, only dimly aware of his own life, his consciousness bizarrely extended, merged with the being of the swarm. Damn, these creatures were a blight. Every fucking last one of them needed to be wiped out.
Them or us, that was the way it was going to have to be.
Marax cleared his head, thereby clearing Dekalia’s. Within the pod, which was really little more than a glorified rescue suit with the power of deep-space motion and robotic combat, he worked feverishly now to fix his wounds, link in his brain cells with the others, ascertaining who was left.
There were three of them.
And the swarm was knocking at the door, nothing between it and the Earth’s solar system except the wreckage of the ship and these pods. The combat had managed to delay the swarm however. At present it was regrouping.
Opportunity.
Marax checked the scan data. It was a bit like chess. Looking for openings and vulnerabilities. In this case any potential checkmate involved finding the queen.
He drew a sharp breath. Living stars and planets, it couldn’t be, could it? Could the queen have left herself exposed?
Indeed, in the flurry of the battle she’d been forced to abandon much of her personal retinue to avoid the powerful Earth blasters. Her own ship had anti-spacecraft defenses but a small pod might be able to sneak past.
So the ships that have gone down have not done so in vain, he thought.
Humanity might as yet win the day—and with it another year or so of respite. Talk about opportunity falling into one’s lap.
Marax and his men had a chance to kill the queen.
Dekalia celebrated at the prospect along with him and just as she was about to buckle down for the real thing she felt a ripping sensation across her brow, like an enormous strip of old-style Velcro were being torn away.
The sense memory was disappearing. She was being returned to her own reality.
“Dekalia, what the hell are you doing?”
Marax loomed above her. She blinked twice, hoping it was yet another holo she could pull out of.
No. This was the real Marax and he was pissed. To the extent primales can look mad. Mostly he seemed focused, his eyes like lasers that made her feel ashamed and foolish—and defensive.
“What are you doing? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to interrupt a pill pop?” she sought to change the subject.
“Not as dangerous as it is entering other people’s experiences you aren’t equipped to handle.”
She opened her mouth in readiness to challenge this but he might have a point.
What if the rest of the holo showed Marax in some kind of mind flux, what if he was in such deep pain from the encounter with that Narthian queen that her own sensory system went on overload?
Not all holo pills were cleared for general use.
But why leave it lying about? It hadn’t exactly been lying about, though had it?
“I didn’t mean anything by it, I was curious, that’s all.”
His lips remained flat, indicating he wasn’t buying it. “What am I to do with you? You remain intent on finding a way to destroy us both.”
“You’re exaggerating,” she insisted, though she had no real idea what he meant. “But if you insist on spanking me again, have at it. At least I’m naked to begin with.”
Something flashed in his eyes. “No, that’s too easy.”
She watched him put down the clearing wand, which was what he’d used to pull her from the holo. One wave across the forehead and the subject was returned to reality. Next she observed him touch the tiny button on the sleeve of his uniform, releasing the smart zipper. Slowly the material parted from neck to waist.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to teach you a lesson, the kind a fem ought to understand.”
Dekalia scooted backward. “I forbid you to touch me, unless you want a rape charge.”
“I will do nothing you don’t ask for explicitly. That’s the beauty of it, Dekalia.” The uniform fell away, baring him to the waist. “I am going to make you want and want without giving you satisfaction.”
The prospect chilled and thri
lled her. It opened a chasm in her belly and made her insides and her entire psyche drop through. “What kind of damn fool idea is that? You really expect me to believe even Tragaxar would tell you to fuck me?”
“I am to keep you under discipline. Sexual discipline is one form.”
Something occurred to her now. “But if you make sex with me, Marax, won’t you bind with me or whatever you primales call it.”
He narrowed his gaze. She watched his biceps, his pectorals and outrageously defined abdomen flex as he worked the uniform down past his waist and over his thighs. “Binding can only occur when the primale consummates inside their mate.”
“So you are not going to come?” This got more absurd by the second. “You really think you can manage that?”
This drew a slight smile, barely detectable. “You have an inflated ego, don’t you?”
“An inflated ego? Why, because I don’t want my body plowed so you can make a point or because I’ve observed firsthand that you have the hots for me?”
“Any reactions you see in me are nothing personal. It’s no different than if a gust of air stimulated me.”
“You say the sweetest things.” His penis was enormous, just as she’d remembered from their arrival here, though that had been largely the result of a dream state or perhaps the lingering bond of their crash-landing mind meld or whatever it was.
One thing was sure, they were dealing with a whole lot of history packed into a very short period of time.
He touched his cock now, outrageously moving his fingers up and down the mouthwatering shaft.
Whatever. Did he expect to impress her by making his cock hard? Well, he was.
“This is what your primale order comes down to, isn’t it,” she taunted. “It’s a cockocracy, all those without one please step to the rear of the galaxy.”
“You know,” he observed, grabbing her ankle to prevent her from sliding any farther backward and away from him. “Considering how I don’t understand what in blazes you’re talking about half the time I find you remarkably easy to read.”
The feel of his hand or her ankle was so firm and decisive, as if to say this was what he wanted and it was simply going to be. And he would make sure she enjoyed it.
Hah. Over her dead body.
“You said I would consent to all of it, well, I don’t,” Dekalia said.
Marax lifted her leg. His next move caught her completely off guard.
The man nibbled at her left toe.
Dekalia gasped.
“What the—?” Wasn’t he supposed to be dominant, just taking what he wanted?
Now he was licking, just the tip of his tongue on her instep.
“S-stop!”
He did.
She panted, squirming. Already he felt like a drug habit she couldn’t kick if she tried. “I know what you’re doing, Marax.”
“Do you?” He ran his hand along her calf along the inside of her thigh. “And what is that?”
“Trying to make me beg for it, but I won’t.”
“You want me to stop?”
One finger to the ball of her helpless foot was driving her to distraction. It made her think of his cock exploring her pussy, getting ready to enter her hot, needy opening.
“That tickles,” she managed.
“Yes or no? Should I stop?”
“No, yes, I don’t know!”
He put her ankle down.
“We are done,” he said.
She sat up. He was serious.
“Just kiss me on the lips,” she suggested. “We’ll take it from there.”
He arched a single brow. The expression was pure primale. “You think you are ready for that?”
Dekalia laughed, hiding her nervousness. “I am pretty sure I know how to kiss.”
“A mem maybe.”
“Do it, then.” Another stupid challenge on her part, oh, goodie. “Kiss me.”
Marax moved with a smoothness and deliberateness that indicated her will no longer existed, at least in his mind.
Crawling over her, brushing her hip with his cock, hot to the touch, he breathed in the scent of her, making her tremble as she waited, his lips grazing her cheeks, just brushing her ear.
“You’d like a kiss?”
“Yes,” she rasped, trying to sound in control.
“Are you sure?” His teeth bit down light but firm on her earlobe.
“Damn it, you know I am.”
“Say it.” He tugged at her hair, bending back her neck.
“I want…a kiss.”
“‘Kiss me, Marax,’” he corrected.
“Kiss me, Marax.” As she whispered his name she felt the power exchange, the implications hanging in the air, pure unstoppable possibility.
She wanted to keep her eyes open just to see him as he took her but it was impossible. It didn’t even feel right, actually. She was to receive this in darkness, the veil slipped across her face. Before she closed her eyes and opened to him she saw his own eyes closing.
Interesting.
His face was a study in concentration and something else too. Dare she say devotion? Was it something personal toward her or was it his blasted ever-loving duty?
And what made her care? What was her interest in the situation other than getting away from the man and back home?
The primale’s kiss was deceptively light at first, almost like the brush of a wing, impossibly thin and gossamer. Behind it was a buzzing though and the transfer of pure energy building and building.
Quickly they became as two magnets all the opposites in their polarities suddenly reversed. She could sense his history, his need, complicated, alien to anything she’d known but startlingly human.
Oh stars, she had forgotten how lonely she was. Fems weren’t built to go overly long without a man’s touch.
Their mouths became one as the remembering continued, everything that had gone on between them, the complications of his role as protector and punisher and the mixed emotions of her position as prisoner and object of sexual desire.
Dekalia knew there was no compromising and no negotiations. This man would have what he wanted. Whatever he desired from her and more.
She tried not to move underneath him. The last thing she wanted was to signal availability or desperation. Her body betrayed her, her nipples peaking against his bare chest and her belly pushing against his stomach.
Dekalia moaned.
Marax chewed at her lips, light and teasing. With a single hand he gathered her wrists and put them over her head.
“Please, don’t…”
“Is that your desire?” He suckled at her left nipple, making a mockery of her protest. He knew bloody well what her desire was.
“We can’t…you can’t take me like this.”
“I can and I will.”
The floodgates opened. Mems did not talk like this. Mems did not just take without asking. Mems were polite and passive. They liked fun and games. Primales played for keeps.
And playing with them was all about inviting fire.
She arched her back.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Please,” she said in a small voice.
“You want me to keep going?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t hear you say anything. Perhaps my ears are clogged.”
As if. “Keep going, you bastard.”
“Watch your tone, fem.” His tone was gentle but firm. With his free hand he moved to separate her thighs. She accommodated eagerly, both terrified and ecstatic over what was coming next.
Marax immediately found her clitoris, something most mems had to be coached to attend to time and again. His finger brushed the tiny swollen blood, sending surges of pleasure up and down her spine.
It didn’t take long. Mercilessly, he worked her to a state of immediate near-climax. Never had she felt pleasure forced on her. No refusing though the tone was set entirely by him.
“Wait, Marax.”
He continued.
How could it be? How could he expect her to grasp what made no sense to her kind?
“I need…more time.”
Marax moved his hand in and out, blatantly working her.
She flushed, shamed at how easily her body was revealing its secrets.
“You need to come,” he said. “But you won’t until I tell you.”
Her moans turned to whimpers. She thrashed her head. “This isn’t fair.”
“Neither is having one’s privacy violated.”
“I get it. I was snooping and being rude. I learned my lesson.”
“What you need to learn is to mind me, Dekalia. When you hear my voice you should instantly crave to obey.”
“Like a fucking dog.” She couldn’t resist that one.
Marax got her attention by pinching her nipple. Somehow with what was going on in her deep, pulsing canal it made for a freaky combination of pain and pleasure.
She cried out. “I have to come!”
He said nothing as he continued to play her body, working her cunt and her breasts simultaneously.
Dekalia felt like weeping and melting and exploding all at the same time. All of a sudden his hand disappeared from between her legs. Was it over?
No.
It had barely begun.
He was shifting positions so he could move on top of her.
His cock was directly above the throbbing and dripping lips of her sex. The tip of his shaft barely grazed the pink flesh.
She was going to go out of her mind. “Fuck me, fuck me, Marax.”
He held himself perfectly still. The sheer discipline was maddening.
“Do not move,” he commanded.
Dekalia tried to keep from arching her back. She wanted to go up on her heels and push his cock inside her. Dangerous as it was to make sex with a primale she was ready to do it.
If he should climax inside her he might bond…and then she would never be free.
But this was no time for long-range thinking or any kind of thinking at all.
The only thing that mattered was getting release and ending the pain. The pain of waiting. The pain of feeling empty and sucked hollow as if that wormhole bomb had really done its job and beamed her soul to parsecs unknown.
Dominating Dekalia Page 8
