Fierce Enchantments

by Janine Ashbless

  OH

  YES

  ♦♦♦

  Lammergeier Squad reaches the basement without loss and without having to toast more than a couple of wandering Spiders. The acrid stench of the burned aliens is new to Peyton, and even experienced through Brannon’s senses it makes her sneeze.

  —ARE WE CLEAR CORPORAL?

  She stares at the security door through the sergeant’s eyes, alert to the spike of precog dread. Clear, Sarge.

  They have to use plAcid to burn out the fused lock. As Hayes shapes the putty the others take cover and keep watch.

  Spike.

  Eriksen—behind you! Above aboveaboveabove!

  As Eriksen swings round she sees a glittering blue Spider crawl out from the gape of a ventilation shaft, legs aglow like neon tubes. The surge of Eriksen’s ire is scarlet in her mind, indistinguishable from the roar of his flamethrower. The Spider falls, curled in a crispy ball.

  —GOOD CALL, the sergeant tells her. From Eriksen there’s no word.

  Alone in her drop capsule, Peyton bites her lip and smiles.

  ♦♦♦

  She kept Rialto’s cock in her mouth even after sucking it dry, even as it started to flag. She didn’t want to let it go. The afterbuzz of his orgasm was like a bonfire.

  “Holy shit, girl,” he said faintly. “That’s not bad. You got a talent there.” They’d been right; Rialto did roar as he climaxed.

  Then a hand seized her braided hair, pulling her off his fat length. “My turn,” said Hayes.

  Rialto bristled. “Fuck, man—you don’t interrupt!”

  “You’re finished. I’m having her now.”

  For a moment the two men glared at each other over her head. Peyton could taste Rialto’s atavistic instinct to keep possession. His hand was heavy on the top of her head. Then suddenly he laughed and withdrew that hand, slapping Hayes on the shoulder.

  “You go for it, Hayes. Bang her good.”

  Hayes grinned. “I’m gonna bang her brains out.” He used her plaited hair to lift her to her feet. “That’s what you want, isn’t it, pslut?”

  “She’s a Corporal, Hayes,” said Sergeant Jomoa lazily from his seat. “Address her properly, marine.”

  Hayes didn’t even blink. “That’s what you want, isn’t it—Corporal Pslut? You want this,’—he rubbed her hand over his hard hard cock— “to fill your ass with hot Lammergeier lead, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whimpered, as her hand automatically caressed his shaft. And it was true. She wasn’t afraid anymore; all that had been swept away by the tsunami of orgasm. She was nervous still—nervous of what these big rough men were going to do to her—but it wasn’t a blinding, debilitating fear. She wanted, now, to know.

  Hayes glanced down at her little hand grasping his big cock. “Oh yeah,” he said happily. “I think you’re going to fit in here, Corporal. Now, let’s see where I can fit in.”

  Towing her over to the nearest bed, he turned her and pushed her onto the mattress, spanking her rear. “Hands and knees, let’s see that … Oh. Yeah.”

  Hands and knees, ass presented to him, thighs apart. Nothing hidden. The blanket was rough under her knees. She heard the other men shifting position to get a good view. Hayes ran his fingers down her crack, prodding the lubed pucker of her anus and raking through her open, puffed-up sex. She knew she must be glistening and shiny all over. He touched her clit and she quivered, moaning her gratitude.

  “Now, this is a hell of a choice,” Hayes mused. “Pussy or ass. They both look pretty fucking fine from here. Pussy or ass.” He climbed up on the bed behind her, his thighs hot and hairy where they rasped against her own. “Pussy …” He dipped his cockhead into the well of her cunt. “Or ass …” He nudged up against her whorl, pressing to find the point at which she yielded.

  “Ohhhh!” she groaned, her splayed thighs trembling.

  “Pussy …” Back again.

  “Hey, fucker, don’t be dirty,” Brannon muttered. “You ain’t the last to go. And I like a clean ship.”

  “But it’s so hard to choose! So …” Hayes sighed, and then suddenly seemed to commit himself—sliding his cock full-length into her sex. But he hadn’t abandoned her rear entirely. She felt his fingers press to her anus, inveigle their way in, and then straighten to become a manual phallus. It was two fingers at least, judging from the girth of his invasion.

  Peyton made a desperate squealing noise as he shoved all the way in.

  “I think she likes me,” Hayes announced.

  Peyton certainly liked anal. She could come and come if her rear passage was being stimulated, and she knew that right now she didn’t stand a chance against Hayes. Gripping her hip with his free hand, he began to piston into her ass, driving his fingers in as deep as they’d go. She was desperately grateful for the peppermint lube the doctor had pumped her full of that morning. And it might sting her pride, but she was grateful to the boorish, boyishly-cruel Hayes too. His big fingers spread and flexed and curled, sending shockwaves of unbearable sensation all the way from her ass to the top of her head. She began to make uh-uh animal noises, unable to voice in any other way the feeling of delicious violation. Her body felt like it wanted to split in half. His cock ground into her pussy, though without the vigor he was devoting to her ass.

  “Please!” she cried, breathless. “Not so—not so—oh—oh—Please!”

  “Please what?” asked Hayes, but his voice was drowned by her shriek as she climaxed.

  His inner voice too, it turned out, was disinclined to articulate anything sophisticated. —FINE FUCKING ASS OH YEAH OH YEAH LETS DO THIS THING BITCH!! I’M GONNA UNLOAD FILL YOU WITH JIZ TIL IT RUNS OUT YOUR FUCKING EARS were the first words she heard, and he kept on repeating the Oh Yeahs as he thrust harder and harder with his cock and eventually forgot to thrust with his hand at all, just holding on to her from inside and out as he slammed home. Peyton had to grip the blanket and bury her face in its scratchy fibers to stop herself being shoved down flat and crushed. But his hand in her ass kept her coming and coming; four or five times before he found his own tipping point. His orgasm was bright and came in discrete staccato pulses, like tracer fire against a night sky.

  He came down from his high faster than she did.

  —HUH ONLY THREE FINGERS SHE’S NO ORIEL. I USED TO BE ABLE TO GET MY FIST UP ORIEL.

  She felt inexplicably hurt.

  ♦♦♦

  Scan. Fire. Move.

  Spiders fall, skitter and thrash across floors, burning as they writhe.

  Eriksen watches Hayes’ back. Brannon is shifted forward to pair with Rialto.

  Peyton is losing touch with her own body, more there with her men than here in the drop capsule. She hardly registers the coffined interior of the craft, the glow of the monitors, or the tick-tick-tick of probing claws on the outside of the craft. She pslides from mind to mind, circling the group, feeling everything. The pinch of minds narrowed down to points of watchfulness. The smell of unburnt fuel and burnt Spiders. The itch and soar of adrenaline. It’s almost a game: points scored for each hit, allies and enemies, no room for anything but winning. But it’s a game with death as the stakes.

  They love it. This is what they were made for. They don’t think of home or family or what will happen when this is over. They don’t notice the discomfort or the effort or the ache of their muscles. In fact they hardly think at all. They want to kill Spiders. They want to protect the man next to them. They want to win. Above all, they want not to let their squad down.

  They’re in the zone.

  ♦♦♦

  Brannon came to her while she crouched on the bed, her front end collapsed onto the blanket and her butt stuck up in the air, her asshole and pussy now plumped and blowsy like blown roses. He lifted her effortlessly, pulled off the sleeveless shirt still rucked up under her armpits—Am I still wearing that? she
wondered, as it was taken from her—and used the garment to mop Hayes’ semen as it oozed out of her split. He threw the top away.

  “Don’t hurt her too bad, Brannon,” said Rialto. He sounded jocular.

  “Hh.” Brannon waved his hand in front of her eyes like a stage hypnotist. “Look at her—she’s in the endorphin zone. Flying. She’s up for anything.” Then he sat down on the bed and pulled her into his lap, straddling his thighs. His cock was as thick and hard as ever, but it slid into the juicy depths of her sex with so little friction that she only sighed.

  The others gathered in a loose circle to watch.

  “Pass me my bag of tricks, guys,” Brannon said, looking down at her breasts with such cool appraisal that even through her fog of arousal Peyton felt some apprehension. He wasn’t leering, despite the stiffness of the length he had up inside her; he was calculating. She could almost hear the cogs turning in his mind.

  Someone dropped a bag on the bed at his right. He rummaged inside, and she stared at his averted face, trying to guess what lay behind the cropped fuzz of his hair, the blue vein at his temple.

  He found what he was looking for. It was a can of sanitizing gel. He squirted some into his left hand and then sploodged a large dollop onto the wet, flushed slope of her breastbone. It felt icy cold and had the same familiar peppermint scent as the lube they’d stuffed up her ass before all this started. She squirmed as he used both hands to massage the goo over her breasts, paying particular attention to the puckering halos of her areolae, and twisting her nipples until they were drawn out into hard points again.

  I am flying. I am. Oh please. Keep doing that.

  He couldn’t hear her yet, of course.

  She had just about gotten her breath back after the previous round with Hayes. She found it coming short and shallow once more, the pleasure heady but spiked with nervous anticipation. There was no mistaking that he was preparing her for something.

  “D’you know what these are?” he asked softly, holding up two objects from his bag. They were identical: black plastic, almost small enough to hide in his palm, with open jaws.

  She shook her head.

  “They’re piercing crabs. For putting in piercings. Rings, bolts, whatever you load them with. They’re very fast and they’ll punch a hole anywhere. One snap and …” He smiled, and Peyton felt the blood drain from her cheeks. “Just so you know: every time we come back from a mission, I’m going to put a little silver ring down there on your pussy lips.”

  Oh … shit! She crashed down from her cozy high into chill, shivering dread.

  Brannon brushed the back of one finger over the point at which their bodies joined, sending a thrill through her clit. She squirmed, trying to draw back from him, and she felt the cock inside her give a kick and swell a little bigger. “Pretty soon you’re going to have a whole row of rings down either side,” he said, his voice husky. “That’s if you’re any good as a Pslider Op, of course.”

  She bit her lip. She wanted to look away from him, to look to the others for help, but for once they had fallen silent and she could not break free of his gaze, any more than she could escape that big cock impaling her core. And she did not dare pslide into any other head and find out what they were really thinking right now.

  “You got a problem with pain, Corporal?” Brannon asked, gently. She knew now how deceptive that gentleness was. “You won’t make much of a soldier if you’re scared of pain.”

  She couldn’t answer. She nodded convulsively, in acknowledgment.

  “Still, you don’t have to worry about these just yet.” He laid the piercing crabs aside on the bed. “First things first. You need inking up.”

  “What?” she whispered, as he produced something else from the bag. It looked like a big fat pen.

  “Lammergeier Squad. You’ve got to wear the crest.” He caressed the top of her breastbone. “We all wear it.”

  She whimpered; and though nothing showed in his expression, she felt again the throb of his cock.

  “Now, I’m fast—but you need to hold still. This burns a bit. You wriggle, and it’ll fuck up the art. I don’t want that to happen.” His gaze flicked to the men behind her. “You guys better hold her still.”

  Hands gripped her shoulders. One slid over her throat, pulling her head back. She found herself pinned, leaning back in Brannon’s lap, braced against someone’s hairy body—Rialto of course—Brannon’s cock like a stake inside her. There was a very faint buzz, like a moth burring against a lamp. Someone took her right nipple between thumb and finger and began to pinch and tug the nub of flesh. She couldn’t see who. She could only see the top of Brannon’s head, his scalp shiny through the fuzz of hair, and Rialto looking down on her. In desperation she pslid into his mind.

  —SHH BABY HOLD STILL IT’S OKAY

  She was shocked. She wanted to tell him she was scared, that pain horrified her, that she didn’t want this. But she didn’t dare. She was their Pslider. She wasn’t allowed to be scared.

  —ITS ALL GOING TO BE OKAY BABY FUCK YOU LOOK HOT

  Someone else took her other nipple and began to roll it skillfully, sending sparks of pleasure cascading through the fog of fear. Then Brannon began pressed the pen-tip to her skin, and began to ink.

  He’d told the truth about two things: that he was fast—almost as fast as someone drawing with a pen on paper—and that it burned. As the sting hit her, her whole body jerked and quivered, taut as a bowstring. She clenched her teeth and didn’t cry out, but she felt the rush of sweat to her skin as the pain marched into her head like an occupying army, huge and jagged, blotting out Rialto’s voice. Somewhere she was dimly aware that Brannon’s cock was swollen still further, and that her jerking hips must be encouraging that, but she couldn’t care. She strained against the hands holding her, glad of their strength, glad that she couldn’t ruin everything.

  The pain was fierce, but it wasn’t actually unbearable. As the inking went on she had time to come to grips with that thought. It was pain, but it was other things too. Her whole body seemed to catch fire from the heat of the ink, burning and soaring. Her nipples in particular—she knew her nerve endings there were artificially enhanced for optimal pleasure responses, and the stimulation to her captive buds took the edge off the agony and seemed to transmute it.

  So when Brannon began to sketch down the slope of her right breast, closing on her nipple, everything was somehow changed. The pain was a ladder now, something she could climb rung by rung toward a numinous goal. She arched her back, pushing her breasts up instead of trying to pull away from her tormentor. She began to keen in her throat, and Rialto’s hand tightened. Her whole chest felt as if it were being lashed by black fire.

  And then it stopped. Brannon had reached the border of her areola and halted, lifting the pen. Peyton opened her eyes, astonished and bereft, and for a moment he raised his head and looked deep into them, as if searching for something. Her panting was loud in the silent barracks, as if everyone else had ceased breathing.

  Then he looked down and started again, on her left breast.

  This time there was no stopping her. Inch by inch he worked his way down to her nipple, and rung by rung she climbed that dizzying ladder. The black fire lashed her aching breasts. His engorged cock slithered in her churning cunt. As he reached that most sensitive apex of her flesh she began to come at last, juddering wildly and screeching; riding the pain with joy.

  —WHAT A LITTLE FUCKING BEAUTY LOOK AT THAT SHE’S HIGH AS A FUCKING KITE SHE LOVES THE RUSH I COULD DO ANYTHING I WANTED SHE’D LET ME GOTTA BE CAREFUL HERE SO EASY TO BREAK HER

  It was hard for Peyton to grasp it all at once; Brannon’s raging erection inside her coloring everything crimson with lust; the oblivious, instinctive focus of his cool hands; his analytical inner voice with its terrible underlying need.

  Then:

  —YOU CAN HEAR ME NOW CAN’T YO
U? CAN YOU HEAR ME? CANYOUHEARME?

  Yes. I can hear you. He must have latent Pslider genes, she thought; his inner voice was astonishingly clear and assertive. She opened her eyes. He nodded.

  —WANT TO SEE WHAT I’VE DONE TO YOU?

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He just called out for a mirror, and while he wiped her burning sweat-slicked chest down with an antiseptic towel, someone brought a steel-backed shaving mirror and held it over Brannon’s shoulder so that she could see his handiwork.

  There was the lammergeier emblazoned across her breastbone, wings fanned in beautiful detail. Just like the tattoos they all bore, except for this one difference: in the vulture’s claws was a taut chain, one end stretching down her right breast, one down the left, as if pulling upon her nipples.

  “There. You belong to the Squad now.”

  The other men made approving noises.

  —YOU’RE OURS said Brannon’s private voice. WE OWN THAT ASS AND THAT CUNT AND THAT MOUTH. THAT PRETTY LITTLE BODY. WE OWN YOU.

  She shivered, watching tears slide down her cheeks and drip on her reddened breasts, but feeling no sorrow. Just relief.

  “There’s one last finishing touch,” Brannon announced. He held up the piercing crabs again. “Gotta get it looking right.”

  Hayes whooped.

  Peyton shuddered, but lowered her lids, accepting.

  —YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE DON’T YOU?

  You like pain.

  —OH YES

  His excitement was vast, like a thundercloud. She could feel the clench of the ball-sac between his legs, the pulse threaded up the length of his cock, his orgasm massed and teetering. None of it showed to anyone outside their shared headspace. When he placed the crabs over her nipples and thumbed over the safety so that they caught and pinched the stiff points, his hands were rock steady. He looked from tip to tip, making sure the alignment was correct.