“What is he talking about?” Dekalia wanted to know.
“It’s all lies whatever it is,” Marax replied, though he had a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach.
The wormhole bomb. The answer was staring him in the face but what did it mean? Was this man capable of changing time itself? Could he control events at will?
If so to what end? Why use him and Dekalia if he had such power already? And where did the bomb come from?
Narthians did not possess such devices. Thanks be to the universe.
“You can believe what you like,” said Martirus. “But you will play your part. And trust me, I am patient. It will happen sooner or later, if it takes a million scenarios to get it right.”
Scenarios. Was that what they were living through? But to what end?
“What is it you want from us?” Dekalia demanded.
Martirus laughed. “The same thing you always wanted from me, my dear. Good old-fashioned sex. You and Mr. Law and Order over here are going to have sex and make me a baby. A little girl who will grow up so I can marry her.”
Dekalia tensed visibly, as would any sensible modern woman when confronted with the prospects of making her own child. That was what the genetic computer banks were for.
“And why would even you do such a sick thing, Martirus?”
Martirus feigned shock. “Why isn’t it obvious? We can live happily ever after and have super-children to make a new human race, answerable only to me of course.”
Naturally.
“But they won’t be human, will they?” Marax saw no point in disguising the truth to spare Dekalia. “They will be hybrids. Bug hybrids like you.”
Dekalia turned to Marax. “This can’t be true. Tell me it’s not real. This is just one long nightmare. It has to be.”
“Unfortunately for you it is not,” said Martirus. “This is your reality and it’s about to run out. As soon as you do what I brought you here for that is, you and your perfect boyfriend, prom king to your queen.”
“There is just one thing I don’t understand,” Marax stalled for time.
“Only one? Oh, trust me there are a good many things you couldn’t possibly grasp.”
“When did the Narthians approach you? Or did you approach them?”
“Ever the interrogator, eh?” Martirus grinned. “Fine. I’ll tell you everything for all the good it will do you. But you’ll show me good faith first. I want to see you kiss.”
Marax turned to Dekalia. With his eyes he made it clear this was no time to fight. Dekalia seemed to understand.
“Not like that. I want you both naked.”
Marax clenched his teeth. So this was the game. Move them incrementally toward sex-making.
“And I want you to undress each other.”
Marax moved first. Dekalia stood, lightly trembling as he touched her shoulders.
“Trust me,” he whispered.
She relaxed slightly. Gently he slid the material of the gown down. When it would give no more he tore at the material. No great feat for a primale. He made it look precise. Even gentle.
The material pooled at her feet. The idea of this creature and his minions seeing her nude sickened him. His only consolation was the knowledge that the lot of them would all be dead soon enough.
“Your turn,” said Martirus.
Dekalia lifted her hands. She had to stand on tiptoes to take off his turban. Her eyes were moist as she reached for it. He put his hands on her waist to steady her.
“How sweet,” Martirus mocked.
Once his head was bared she moved to undo the clasps of his robe one by one down to his waist. He cheated a little, helping to pull the heavy garment up over his head. A man of lesser self-restraint would have been fully erect by now, his nipples hard and his balls tight and full of seed.
But Marax had his much-vaunted primale control.
Barely.
Dekalia was less fortunate. He could see her fighting, caught between disgust over being forced to do this at Martirus’ behest while at the same time feeling the intense arousal of proximity. Skin to skin, her breathing just a tick shallower with every passing second. Her pupils dilated.
If only they were alone.
“Dekalia, you always were an amazingly sensuous little creature,” marveled Martirus. “How easily I could have possessed you in those days. This will be better though. I always did have a voyeuristic streak.”
“Be careful,” menaced Marax.
“You think I’m afraid of you, primale?”
“Apparently not, but if I attack you,” Marax reasoned, “one of us will have to kill the other and that would ruin your plans either way.” The point was logical enough.
“Time for your kiss,” said Martirus.
Dekalia took his hand, interlacing her fingers. She lifted her head.
Their lips touched.
He pulled her closer.
Velvety smooth. Warm. Their bodies in perfect contact, fitting together, her contoured breasts against his hard muscled chest, her smooth belly against his rock-hard abdomen.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” Martirus rasped.
Marax broke the kiss for Dekalia’s sake. He would not sacrifice her modesty. Not any more than he had to.
“Your turn. You owe us a story.”
Martirus tossed his sword onto the carpeted floor of the tent. “Oh, goodie, story time.” He clapped and signaled for the two of them to sit down across from him, forming an impromptu circle.
Dekalia exchanged a glance with Marax. Yes, the look in his eyes agreed.
The man holding them prisoner was stark raving mad.
Dekalia was sitting hip to hip beside Marax. Her heart raced. She ought not be thinking how hot the kiss was and how incredibly much she wanted to shut out the world to be with him. They were in serious bloody danger.
The two of them and the whole human race to boot. Assuming there was any reality to all of this. Was there still the chance she might wake up in her sleep chamber and find it had all been some dream?
Or had she been killed in that first explosion back on Earth, which would make everything since a dream including Marax himself.
Grabbing for his hand, she squeezed it tight. She refused to think he wasn’t real. He was too amazing for that. Way too aggravating and stubborn. Too primale. Yes, he was way too primale to allow himself to be someone else’s dream.
So what about Martirus? What was his deal?
They wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.
Martirus began by signaling for his men to fetch wine and dates and dried meats.
As if she could swallow a thing.
He proposed a toast. “To the end of life as you know it and the beginning of life as I want it.”
“Just get on with it,” said Marax.
“Party pooper. Fine. It all began while I was in school. There was a certain teacher who had been thrown out of the university. Professor Pixandor.”
Dekalia remembered him. “He was a lunatic. He spouted off about linking DNA and star-making processes.”
“In layman’s terms, yes,” said Martirus. “What it really came down to was engineering harnessing the power of the stars and with it the capacity to make black holes.”
“Which led you to the wormholes,” Marax guessed.
“Yes. As it turns out our DNA patterns contain receptors which allow us to connect to a universal grid. And the amazing part is that humans are not alone. Every creature is represented.”
“Including Narthians.”
“That’s correct, Marax. You are bright for a storm trooper.”
“Don’t call him that,” said Dekalia.
“Sorry if I offended your boyfriend.”
“Just get on with it,” she snapped.
“Not very patient, are we? You must be anxious to get down to the sex-making. At any rate, I was hard at work determining the exact patterns needed for specific travel. You have no idea how amazing it all is. Think about it. Ar
en’t our memories a collection of sensations? Doesn’t the past live inside us? And to the extent we perceive each other don’t we overlap each other’s gravity?”
Marax shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
“Lost us,” Dekalia corrected.
“Think back to Dendritus the Lame and before him Einstein of Old Earth. Both of them predicted a universal field theory that would link time and space and every other facet of reality that includes memory and thought. Pixandor was the first to work out the formulas.”
“I don’t see what all this has to do with bringing us here.”
“The bombs were a cover, don’t you see?” Martirus was growing more animated as if he were genuinely proud of his endeavors. “The first one was to throw off the guardians. The second one was designed to get you two into my special world.”
“It’s special all right,” grumbled Dekalia.
“Oh, it is special.” His eyes were shining. “Because you see I saved you both. I pulled you from death’s jaws and now you belong to me.”
“I belong to no one,” said Marax.
Martirus laughed. “But, my dear fellow, you died at Three Comets. Hadn’t you realized that? What exists now occupying the time and space that was once you is an antipode, a collapsed point of space-time engineered by me.”
“You’re a liar,” said Dekalia, feeling her heart rip open. How could anyone be so cruel to Marax? Didn’t the man have enough to deal with being the only survivor of the battle?
“That’s an interesting theory,” said Marax.
“It’s more than a theory. And you, Dekalia. You died in the crash landing.”
She did some quick thinking. “But Marax was already dead. How could he have been with me? Surely we never traveled to that planet at all.”
“That’s clever,” he conceded. “But you’re thinking in black and white, being and non-being. Pixandor’s Theory of Universal Linkage speaks of probability. Every creature and every condition of space and time surrounding him or her represents a certain set of odds. Everything that is can only be contingent on what is not.”
“So you can manipulate the odds, so to speak,” Marax said. “You can live and move from one reality to another, affect things at a bigger scale.”
“By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Martirus exclaimed.
“Frankly I don’t even know what I said,” Marax admitted. “But I know I am alive because I can think and move. And I can also kill you.”
“If you do you will disappear. You and Dekalia both.”
“You haven’t explained the Narthians,” Dekalia tried to calm the situation.
“They were at the end of one of the roads I followed. There’s a filament of space-time that goes directly to them. Although, in a sense, I didn’t have to go anywhere. I simply found the probability sphere in which they were already all around us—which is exactly what would have happened if they’d won the Battle of Three Comets.”
“And you’re all too happy to give them that victory, aren’t you?” said Dekalia.
“No, Dekalia, that’s where you’re wrong. I intend to keep the Narthians right where I want them, at the end of my leash.”
“You won’t get away with this,” Dekalia declared.
She looked to Marax for support. Marax said nothing. Was he giving up?
“Tell me this lunatic can be stopped,” she begged. “Please?”
“It depends,” said Marax after a long pause.
She didn’t need to hear the rest. The tone of his voice said it all.
The chances of victory were not good. Not good at all.
Chapter Nine
Marax had no wish to discourage Dekalia but he didn’t want her to be overly optimistic either. Especially considering that his plan was suicide.
What else could you call both of them attacking Martirus together by running headlong into the blades of Martirus’ warriors at a time in the not-too-distant future when his guard would be down?
Would Martirus dare to kill them, assuming death had any meaning here? Or would he bump them to another reality?
Could he trust his senses at all? Was Martirus right? Had he really given up the ghost back at Three Comets on the hive ship?
Only one way to find out. If nothing else they might end up with a fresh shake of the dice. Better that than allowing Martirus to control their fates.
Much as he would love to make sex with Dekalia he would do so in his own time for his own reasons. No man would force him into the role of breeding stock for a demonic would-be galactic overlord.
If they had a child, not that such a thing was possible, it would be on their terms.
The trick was going to be cluing in Dekalia to what was going to happen. If he could make it look as if he was cooperating he could get her into his embrace long enough to whisper his plan. From there it would be a matter of her nerves.
She mustn’t waver. Not for a second if they wished to have any chance.
“Come now, Marax,” Martirus was saying. “You don’t want me to make her suffer, do you?”
Marax frowned. He had to make it believable. “If we make sex for you then you’ll guarantee she won’t be harmed?”
“Until the baby is born certainly.”
Dekalia looked justifiably nervous. “No Earth female has had a baby for millennia. What makes you think it’s even possible?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing. Once the act is done I will accelerate the process, allowing the birth of your child. You won’t have to feel a thing. I will incubate her myself in a star chamber I’ve designed for this very purpose. She will be a girl and will be called Nyssa. Fitting, don’t you think?”
Nyssa was the name of the sun around which the Battle of Three Comets had taken place.
It was a striking and beautiful name. Maybe they would use it one day. After Martirus was long dead and vaporized.
Marax looked Dekalia in the eye.
“We can’t fight him any longer.”
She narrowed her gaze. “What are you saying?”
“We have to make sex. He’ll kill us otherwise. He’ll kill everyone.”
“That’s nonsense. Since when do you give up that easily?”
“Maybe I’m tired of fighting.”
“You? Never.” Dekalia tried to back away. “Or is it even you I’m talking to now?”
“You’re about to find out,” he said, taking hold of her waist and pulling her tight against him.
“You will do everything I say,” he commanded.
“No.” Dekalia squirmed to free herself. “I won’t.”
He silenced her with a kiss. Hot and hard and bruising. His tongue probing every corner of her open and surrendered mouth. His hands clamping her waist like steel.
“We have only one chance,” he whispered in her ear. “You will submit to me. You will take my seed.”
“You’re as crazy as he is,” she hissed.
Marax grabbed hold of her ass. “I’m going to take you while your old flame watches.”
“He’s not an old flame, you idiot.”
Marax cared not one whit for the truth. He had a single purpose in mind and that was working himself into a full sense of primale possessiveness.
It was the only way he could become fully aroused.
“Your insolence is at an end. You will give yourself just as you’ve wanted to. You will stop pretending you are aloof to me.”
His hands molded her breasts. His grip fit perfectly, caressing the perfect globes.
Dekalia moaned. “Don’t…not with him…watching.”
“There’s nothing to hide. I own you, Dekalia. And I am claiming you.”
She melted against him, sighing and shaking her head.
“Didn’t I tell you to trust me?” he murmured as he nibbled at her neck.
Dekalia shivered. “Y-yes.”
“Then that is what you need to do.”
She nodded.
Marax lowered her to the ground. Tu
rning to Martirus, he said, “You and your minions will wait outside. That’s not negotiable.”
Martirus pursed his lips as if considering. “All right,” he decided. “But we will be right outside the entrance of the tent. There is no other way out or in so remember that.”
Actually I’m counting on it. “Whatever you say, Martirus. Shall I holler when I am done?”
Martirus chuckled. “Oh, I think we’ll know.”
Indeed he would.
“Marax, you aren’t really going to give him what he wants?” Dekalia looked at him in disbelief, her body helpless as he pinned her wrists.
“We don’t have any choice. Besides, haven’t you heard the old expression ‘be careful what you wish for’?”
She moaned as he parted her thighs. “So you still have…a plan?”
“Right now I plan on enjoying this.”
This was his cock sliding deep inside her, filling her hot, wet sex.
“There’s no way we can…make a baby,” she breathed, her voice coming in sharp stabs.
Marax lifted her bottom, pressing her pelvis against his.
They were connected. As much as two people could be. Regardless of sub-gender.
“I have no idea of his powers,” Marax said as he bent to take her breast in his mouth. “We can only try.”
Try what? Dekalia tried to imagine. Nothing made any sense.
Oh, stars, now he was pulling out of her, teasing in preparation for another thrust. He kept her hanging on the edge of oblivion.
“Please,” she whimpered.
Marax slammed his cock home. “I want you from behind,” he growled.
He had to help her turn over. Positioning her on all fours, he gave her ass a crisp slap.
“Ready?”
“What do you think?” she retorted.
His answer shocked her.
“I think you are the most adorable creature I’ve ever met. And also the most irritating.”
Dekalia arched her neck. Her knees and palms pressed against the rug. She could smell the rustic oils in the tent and the scent of her own pussy. It was primitive and barbaric and delicious. She imagined chains encircling her body and a tight collar around her neck marking her as Marax’s property.
“Take me,” she cried as he clenched his fist in her hair. “Take me please.” With his other hand he spanked her bottom. Crisp blows one after the other.
Dominating Dekalia Page 12
