by Meg Harris
“I can’t do it,” he said hoarsely. “I wish I could, but I am not strong enough.”
“You must, Barrak.”
Barrak shook his head and spoke with something like despair. “I can’t stay away from her, Ama. I can’t. May the Gods have mercy on my soul.”
* * * * *
Tiryl lay staring at the ceiling. Barrak had summoned the doctor, a female, to fix her broken leg—a matter of a few minutes’ work—and then he had tied her wrists to his bunk with strong, coarse rope. “So you know how it feels,” he had said, although a gleam of lust in his eyes suggested he had an ulterior motive.
She didn’t like it in the least. Women ought not to be bound this way. But she supposed she deserved whatever might happen to her now, deserved whatever indignities Barrak chose to heap on her. She had put her own pleasure above her duty, and as a result many of the people who depended on her had been killed.
It was ironic, really. Her duty to her people had been paramount in her life for years. And the one time she had put herself and her own pleasure first, she had paid an enormous price. Her instincts had told her Jaya was not to be trusted, and yet she’d let her infatuation with Barrak blind her to the need to keep a close watch on the communications officer.
The women of her crew were dead or captured. Her flagship was space dust, blown to bits by the Yawtans.
And her harem. Innocent, helpless men, almost certainly dead. All because of a morning of foolish self-indulgence.
She pictured the faces of her three favorites. Pel, so sweet, so willing to please; Hab, so light on his feet and graceful; and Saq, dark and brooding.
She hadn’t shed a tear at the sight of her dead crew, or at the sight of her glorious flagship being blown apart. But at the thought of her three favorites lying on the deck, dead, and then blasted to atoms, she was shocked to find tears rising to her eyes.
Ridiculous. A woman didn’t give a thought to the men in her harem. After all, one man was much like another.
And yet the tears flowed down her face, unchecked.
She heard the door iris open, but she didn’t open her eyes. Her shoulders jerked spasmodically as she tried to hold in her sobs. Booted feet stepped in, hesitated, then walked across to the bunk.
“Weeping because you’re a prisoner, Leader?”
She heard the sarcastic drawl in Barrak’s deep voice and opened her eyes. “No,” she whispered, hearing her own voice crack. “I was crying for my favorites.”
“Your favorites?” He sat down on the bunk next to her and stared at her. “Do you mean your men?”
She nodded miserably. “I brought three of my harem with me on this mission. And now, because of my incompetence, they are—d-dead.” Her voice broke on the last word, and fresh tears flowed down her cheeks as her chest heaved.
Barrak reached out and brushed her tears away. Through her blurred vision, she noticed he was clad in Terran robes of a dark green shade that matched his eyes, heavily ornamented with long-legged birds worked in silver and gold thread. Terran clothing was apparently far more ornate than the simple jumpsuits the Zytellians favored.
“You weep for men, Leader? I thought the women of your society cared nothing for men.”
“We are not supposed to,” she said thickly. “Indeed, I believed I did not. But I have discovered…I was wrong.”
He was silent a long moment. “If you were wrong about that,” he ventured at last, “is it possible you were wrong about other things as well?”
Before she had met him, she would have scoffed at the idea. But over the last two days, he’d forced her to think in ways she’d never thought before, and the way she looked at the world had somehow changed.
Or maybe it was simply that the world looked different when one was the prisoner rather than the captor.
“Perhaps,” she acknowledged softly.
He continued to stroke her tears away, offering comfort, but she sensed he was becoming aroused by her nearness as well. His breath came faster, and his pupils dilated as he gazed at her. His obvious desire served as a balm for her wounded spirit, and suggested to her a way she might yet escape from what appeared to be a hopeless situation.
“You want me,” she whispered. It was the only power she had left, her only chance of controlling this situation, and she clung to it like a lifeline.
He nodded slowly. “Yes. But I will not take you against your will.”
“It is not against my will.”
He closed his eyes, looking as if he were struggling to keep his lust in check. “Then you hope to use my desire to control me. I will not allow that, either.”
“You will not deny yourself release,” she said softly. “Do you remember how it felt when you entered me?”
He drew a shuddering, spasmodic breath and nodded.
“You begged me to fuck you, Barrak.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “I did.” He stood up and stripped off his boots and heavy robes, looming over the bunk. She saw his rigid erection and felt a warm blossoming of lust mingled with a heady sensation of power. At least in this, she still exerted control over him.
But that certainty faded as he looked down at her with hard, cold eyes and spoke.
“This time,” he said, “you’ll be the one that begs.”
Chapter Eight
Barrak sat next to her on the bed and began to slowly stroke his fingers over her nipples. To her dismay, they tightened to aching, hard peaks almost instantly.
“You have beautiful breasts,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ve longed to touch them ever since I first saw you.”
She quivered as he caressed her nipples, slowly, endlessly. Pleasure eddied through her, centering in her breasts and her lower belly, until she felt a trickle of warm moisture between her thighs. She groaned, and he chuckled.
“I think your nipples are even more sensitive than mine,” he said, sounding pleased. He continued to play with them, rolling them gently between his thumbs and forefingers. “When I first saw them, all I could think about was licking them, kissing them, then taking them between my lips and suckling on them.”
She gave a soft moan, and he smiled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She clamped her lips down against her automatic response. She was damned if she’d do anything, say anything, that could be construed as begging. She might be a prisoner, but she was the Leader of the Zytellian people, and she would not beg. Never.
“Let’s find out,” he suggested, and bent to her.
His tongue, wet and incredibly gentle, traced the areola of her left breast. She sobbed with the pleasure, and he continued to trace circles, teasing her as she had once teased him. Had he been of her harem she would have punished him for his insolence.
But he wasn’t of her harem. She hadn’t succeeded in taming him. And part of her was glad.
Because the obedient, gentle, dutiful men of her harem had never brought her the pleasure this man could bring with a single touch.
At last his tongue stroked over her nipple, dragging a sound of agonized bliss from her throat, then he slowly drew the whole nipple into his mouth and suckled hard, relentlessly. Her hips began to move in a steady tempo, echoing the rhythm of his demanding mouth.
A coil of tension gathered within her, spiraling tighter and tighter with each insistent pull of his lips. Warmth swelled within her, and a heavy, hot dew wet her thighs.
She shuddered as a totally unexpected climax rocked her. Her vagina throbbed and pulsed, her womb quaked with violent tremors, and venom gushed from her fangs as she cried out, over and over again.
At last she tilted her head back and gave a long sigh, utterly replete, utterly satisfied. He lifted his head and gave her a wry half-smile.
“I’ve never known a woman to come that way,” he said.
“It’s never happened to me before,” she admitted.
His eyes were intense, and she knew he was aroused by the powerful scent of her pheromones, knew he was longing for his
own climax. “All the better,” he murmured. “Now you’re soft and wet and ready for me.”
She shut her eyes, feeling a quiver deep inside her belly at his seductive words. Perhaps he had given up the idea of making her beg. He must be desperate to mount her and gain his own release, a release he had been deprived of earlier.
Opening her eyes, she looked at his erection, enormously swollen and rigid. She could see moisture glinting on the tip, and the memory of how she’d stroked him there, and of the way he’d responded, sent a surprising quiver through her, an aching desire to touch him again. Evidently she wasn’t quite as sated as she’d believed.
In fact, she was stunned to realize she wanted him inside her. She vividly remembered the way he’d felt, hot and incredibly thick, and the memory was enough to make her shudder with lust. She’d wanted him to come inside her as much as he had.
She expected him to mount her immediately, to crudely slam into her without any finesse, but instead he leaned over and began to kiss the flat planes of her stomach. His long, unbound hair fell forward as he moved his mouth slowly downward, trailing across her sensitive skin.
At last he began to lick her clitoris, in slow, sensual strokes, and at the same time he slid a finger inside her. She was so wet that his finger slipped into her easily, and her body contracted around him in a hard spasm.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Gods, yes.”
She felt a second finger join the first, and his hand began to move in an unhurried, leisurely rhythm. All the while he continued to move his tongue against her, in slow, torturous sweeps, until she began to gasp for breath, to writhe against his hand.
He slid a third finger into her, giving her the gratifying sensation of being stretched to capacity, entirely filled, and then he began to move his hand harder, thrusting his fingers deep inside her. Her body arched, straining against her bonds until the coarse rope cut into her wrists, but she barely noticed. All her attention was focused on what he was doing to her, the sensations he was bringing her. His tongue teased her to the sharp knife edge of orgasm, and all her muscles tensed, her breath coming in high, quavering sobs.
And then he stopped.
She shuddered violently.
“Do you want something?” he asked.
She glared at him, baring her teeth, so he could see her needle-sharp fangs, dripping with venom. “Finish it, damn you.”
He bent and ran his velvety tongue over the hard, aching ridge of her clitoris, once, twice, bringing her almost to the peak, and then he lifted his head.
“Is there something you want to say to me?”
The word please burned in her mouth, but she swallowed it back. “You want me,” she said instead, trying to regain the upper hand. “You’re so hard you can hardly stand it. You want it as much as I do.”
His penis jolted, proving her words. “But the difference is that this time I don’t have to beg for it. You do.”
Slowly he knelt between her legs, took his cock in one hand, and began to rub it over her hot, wet flesh.
“Gods,” he said hoarsely. “You feel so good.”
The feel of his rigid organ there, tormenting her, drove her wild, especially when he began to stroke himself against her swollen clitoris. Sweat beaded on her body as he teased her, bringing her repeatedly to the point of orgasm and then backing away. She arched against him, sobbing incoherently.
“Say please,” he whispered.
She shook her head wildly, and he sighed, then moved against her, so that the broad head of his cock slipped a centimeter or two into the entrance of her body, stretching her aching flesh and giving her just a taste of what she craved.
It felt so good that she could hardly bear it, and her body welcomed him with a fresh gush of moisture. She spread her legs, begging without words, but he refused to slide into her further, refused to satisfy her, simply moved against her in tiny, teasing strokes. She groaned with agony, unable to bear it any longer, and uttered the word he wanted to hear.
“Please.”
At her submission, he thrust into her hard, began to rock inside her in earnest, and she cried out with relief and pleasure. He leaned forward in order to drive into her more deeply, resting his hands on the mattress on either side of her, so that his abdomen brushed against hers. As he plunged into her in a relentless, violent rhythm, her Zytellian instincts took over.
She jerked her head up and sank her fangs into his shoulder.
* * * * *
Finally being inside her, letting himself slam into her depths as he’d longed to do, felt unbelievably good. For an instant Barrak had forgotten what she was. With the deep instinctual longing to get closer to her, to be part of her, he’d moved toward her, and she’d lunged at him with incredible swiftness.
And marked him.
The pleasure he was already experiencing was so intense that at first he felt nothing other than a small jab in his shoulder. But her venom rapidly started to take effect, and fire swirled through his veins, through his body, through his cock, in a conflagration of rapturous heat that was even more incredible than he could possibly have imagined.
He thrust harder and faster, vividly aware of the friction of her body against his, painfully conscious of the contractions of her vagina squeezing him as she climaxed. The pleasure was unbearable, too overpowering to be endured, and yet nothing in the galaxy could have made him pull away.
And then he came, so hard and so long that he thought he’d die from the ferocious intensity of his orgasm. He heard himself screaming as the scalding ecstasy rolled over him in inexorable, never-ending waves. Not just in his cock, but everywhere.
He was drowning in a golden sea of molten rapture, his flesh melting away beneath the shimmering waves of excruciating heat. Every nerve in his skin seemed to explode in a brilliant shower of sparks, and the fiery pleasure consumed him.
It went on and on, and when at last the sensations faded he collapsed to her side, soaked with sweat and gasping, totally exhausted, yet utterly fulfilled in a way he’d never experienced in his lifetime.
When his eyes could focus again he saw that she’d turned her head and was looking at him, a smile of triumph curving her lips.
Her triumph irritated him. It had been idiotic of him to get near enough to let her mark him, but he recognized that on some level he had wanted to know what it was like to be marked, to know if the pleasure was as intense as the stories suggested. He had wanted her to tame him.
She seemed to read his thoughts in his face. “And now you know,” she said softly.
Now he knew. He knew what it was that made the Zytellian males willing, even eager, to forgo their freedom and serve their mistresses. He knew that the pleasure was even greater than he could have imagined.
And he knew he’d be willing to do almost anything to feel that way again.
And yet he didn’t feel like a mindless zombie, as he had half expected. He was still capable of his own thoughts. He was still a person, not a lust-filled animal or a helpless automaton. He was relieved to discover that he hadn’t totally forfeited his own humanity. But he knew that he had sacrificed his freedom. He’d never be free of her again.
Based on what he’d heard, venom wasn’t addictive in the sense that he’d suffer physical withdrawal if she left him. But he knew he’d crave her every day for the rest of his life, and that he’d never gain any real satisfaction from another woman again.
He stood up and began yanking on his robes. Glancing at his shoulder, he saw that the puncture wounds had already disappeared. Apparently there was something in her venom that speeded healing.
“You will remain here,” he told her curtly.
Tiryl frowned, and he got the impression he’d surprised her. “I do not wish to remain here.”
“What you want is irrelevant,” he snapped. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that you are my prisoner.”
She looked at him, then smiled a feline smile that was disturbingly confident and spoke in a low, sultry voic
e.
“You are my prisoner as well, Barrak.”
He glared at her, then stalked from his quarters, locking the door behind him so that no one else could enter. Her smug words infuriated him, but he knew she was right.
He was bound to her, and he could never let her go.
Chapter Nine
Barrak sat alone in his dimly lit office, gazing at the stars. When the door chimed, he acknowledged the sound without turning his head. He heard the sound of booted feet echoing against the deck plating. They hesitated as they neared him.
“Sir?”
He recognized Ama’s voice, tentative and full of concern. He turned his head and saw that Ama was accompanied by Dr. Lascht, as he had requested. Swiveling in his chair, he faced them squarely.
“We have a problem.”
He saw the flicker of disappointment in his second-in-command’s eyes, followed almost instantly by wariness, but Ama said nothing. Barrak steeled himself and went on.
“I allowed the Zytellian woman to mark me.”
He saw Ama’s hand move almost imperceptibly toward his sidearm. Anguish was evident in his expression, but Barrak was certain his second-in-command wouldn’t hesitate to draw his weapon and throw him into the brig if he deemed it necessary for the safety of the ship. “Are you now under her control?” Ama asked in a harsh voice.
Barrak considered the question carefully. “I don’t believe so,” he said at last, with no little surprise. “I won’t pretend I wouldn’t like to bed her again, but I don’t feel any particular compulsion to free her, or to do everything she tells me to do. I rather expected to become her slave, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“That is not surprising,” Dr. Lascht put in. She had been following the conversation alertly. “When we received orders to head into Zytellian space, I began studying the phenomenon of marking, and I began to draw some interesting conclusions. When we returned to the ship with her this afternoon, I took a few scans, and they confirmed my theories.”
