Variant: A Sci-Fi Romance (Variant Trilogy Book 1)

by J. Q. Baldwin

  I peeked out as he grabbed his pants up roughly over the dips at his hips, threw on a shirt I remembered sleeping in many times and left the room again. He took with him a stream of my strength. By the time he’d settled in the kitchen I realised how much he’d been gluing me back together only to collapse again now. Just like he anticipated.

  He was a poet with his manipulations; subtly moving tectonic plates.

  In a heap, curled in silk, I almost cried, pining for a connection he now slowly starved. Oh, how I yearned to knife it out.

  Eat.

  I’m not hungry. I said honestly as I brushed my mind over the plate of pasta.

  He tilted his chin in my direction, away from the holo-doc dissecting the properties of decellularized organs.

  “The heart looks plastic, it’s no wonder they call them ghost organs,” I said to push his attention back to the GMT sale item Ven had come upon. Ceretide Biologicals had their Annual General Shareholder’s meeting in the city this week and on the agenda was the loss of newly paid for advances in organ growth. If you asked me -

  “I didn’t.”

  He inspected me from his seat at the breakfast bar. How did he pull off ‘rugged’ eating at a canary yellow bench-top? It was the fatigues, maybe. And his obliques, they defined every time he raised his spoon.

  “Innocuous thoughts Delilah. Are you hiding something?” his top lip peeled back just the tiniest bit.

  “No. Why do you still pursue every and any intel we get on GMT? Its practically a myth now. It’s been eighty years since anyone has had any real access to it except for us. My sister’s kidnapper is Gen 2. But he isn’t new. There is no new tech, someone has been testing Variants again, not breeding them.”

  He ignored me and went back to his holo-doc.

  Now, he ignores me!

  I ignore you because it is a soft fucking question. Why do I do anything in life Delilah?

  I walked into that.

  I pushed away from the bench and made to stand.

  “Eat, please Deli,” he impeached as he laid a hot hand over mine. His thumb traced the edge of mine.

  “Will you ever get over this obsession you have with my strength?” I asked sincerely, looking down at him.

  “Doubtful. Indulge me?”

  I plopped back down. Did I indulge him out of fear right now? No. Sadly, I did it because it caused him such worry.

  Did he let me feel that worry to sway me? Yes.

  I’d had months without questioning whether my every decision was moulded by Carne and I’d slipped back into that mould so seamlessly.

  Time to change Delilah, I promised myself. Time to choose for my family instead of Carne, even if I couldn’t manage it for myself.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Carne fell asleep in stages. He’d always been slow to sleep. He was consciously ‘aware’ of so much more than me. From my spot in his mind it was confusing to understand the extensive synapses working in correlation to each other so cohesively.

  A normal brain would never have the neurons interacting simultaneously unless using synthetic lysergic acid or other mood altering psychedelic drugs that caused a ‘feeling’ of connection, though manufactured and false.

  Generally once he’d dozed long enough, he’d reach for me.

  He did.

  “I’m sorry,” he promised on his last conscious breath. Too far gone to even move the hand he desired to pet me with. He was only sorry I fought his hold. Sorry he had to force me to his side. His ‘sorry’ was akin to ‘I love you’.

  I knew then he fell finally to a deeper rest.

  “I love you Carne,” I breathed, haunting us both.

  Escape. I pushed the word away, not the action.

  I eased slowly to the other side of the bed. Inched and shuffled, using my clawed hands to clutch the doona cover with my progress.

  His sleeping mind roved over the scenery inside. It panned over my quiet presence in there, warmly coveting me.

  Painstakingly, I eased toward the cold. Toward a truer reality than the one he was capable of brainwashing me into believing.

  Another minute.

  I scrunched the downy soft fabric between my ever grasping, hopeful fingers.

  I’d commando roll, leap gently from the pads of my feet, round to my hands in a soft cart wheel. Maximise the distance and decrease disturbance. Down the hallway. Hand print the door. Out. Six seconds, max.

  I could hear the Pshht already. Planned my route to my first cache of supplies. I’d have to cut the data chip from my arm when I got there. I’d not stop to do it. Lay low then, for a day before shifting gears back into the life of a dead man and his employer.

  GMT: it was the bane of our existence, and our great creator. ‘The Subject’ became a genetic windfall for someone but I hardly believed after all this time anyone had the resources or history available to reincarnate our beginnings.

  If my trail skated along Onyxeal’s I’d have to adopt such a measure of stealth I’d never anticipated.

  Was I now against my own family? The only ones who could stall me?

  I hesitated. Had it come to that?

  Yes, I answered my self just before I flung my plan into flight.

  A shred of fabric tore as I rolled.

  Had I not let go? Not yet - I was only in mid roll. My shoulder rounded with my momentum, but suddenly tugged back like a whale on a harpoon.

  The force flung me equal parts back around, silk tangling me in a web as it tore. I kept a handful of it even as he wound it around the back of my head and lashed it over my throat. I just managed to shove an open palm, wrapped in the same mandarin colour, over my trachea before the silk pulled taut and a weight fell upon my legs.

  I almost slipped Delilah.

  I sucked in thin air and fright at his confession.

  He didn’t mean he’d almost lost me. He meant ‘lay still, Honey. I almost crushed a decade of your trust and am even now considering if it would be worth it.’

  He could steal my soul, and bury it so deeply within, his commands would be all I I could answer, all I’d even contemplate - for as long as he deemed necessary. He’d done it once when I was young. I had a whole year missing. Just gone. He wouldn't even let me remember why.

  The ceiling shared my blank expression. The silk wrung a little tighter in his whitening fist, pressed against my décolletage. It sent a shiver rippling under my skin to my toes.

  Warm lips feathered the underside of my chin. Sharp points scraped up my throat.

  “Are you a traitor to us all? Or me, Delilah?” he forced the use of my name from his lips. His mind was a gnashing scary animal trying to tear off its own leg.

  “The scent of two men linger in your apartment, one from lust. If he’d been in here -” He broke off. Not able to finish the threat in words, but the threat swept the perimeter of the bedroom.

  The moment was far more dangerous than I was prepared for. I could almost swear his personality had completely split, so different were his hands on my neck.

  His eyes weren’t wild like his thoughts, they were staid and chilly. I’d seen the look, deathly and ready to act. Separating soul from body before committing horrific acts that could never be rescinded. I apprehensive for Jobe.

  I’d be smart not to rise to the bait. Was I a traitor? Or a prisoner?

  I kept my gaze away from direct contact, gasped slowly even as his fingers swept across the silk to my jaw, down to my pulse point. He pressed the panicked vein down.

  I submitted. My entire demeanour submitted to him on a primal level.

  The bed shifted. His elbow came to rest beside my head, his fingers toying with my bottom lip and I twitched in a spike of fear. Torn strands of fabric trailed over my tightened nipples. Carne’s fingers slid inside my mouth and stretched it wide.

  His taste was toxic in its biological control. Just that tiny sweep of my tongue and my eyes rolled backwards before my whole form undulated upwards pulled on strings toward him. Need strung
me up and starved me.

  Enamoured, he lent down to kiss the tip of my nose. And damn if I didn’t strain harder to get to him. The frayed silk suddenly fell in a billowed heap over me and a rough palm grazed up heavily over my breasts. Moulded to them in a perfect warmth. I moaned.

  “If you can use Telekinesis to throw me off, do it now. Do it now and I’ll let you keep your pursuit for the week while SkyHwakI is here.” He grazed the length of me with the heat of his possessive gaze. Waiting on my answer.

  Drunk, I curled my tongue over the taste of his thumb, ignoring the request until he relented and tormented.

  I deflated.

  I couldn’t push him off. Not with my mind. Physically I could escape his hold but the physical had never been the risk I couldn’t take. His control was. My freedom too precious to gamble upon wasn’t it?. The Tk was so new it was a fawn toppling and prancing but as foundling and as inexperienced it did offer a new chance. A teasing chance. I could try.

  I could be an equal.

  His retaliation might even be sweet enough to warrant my captivity, if for a small time.

  But - he’d almost slipped.

  He hadn’t done that for so many years it’d almost became an urban legend in our relationship. It was a very real threat. He was a threat. The moment was feral, me, coiled in his sumptuous gift of bedding and I was truly afraid. I was not without strength I knew that, but I simply could not combat the power of life that Carne controlled with such intricacy, I’d never untangle the threads fast enough while mounting an offence.

  Try Deli.

  My bottom lip plopped away from his taste. I tried talking to the newborn predator inside me, coddled it forward. My skull tightened as it crawled on its belly toward me. It wiggled it’s bum and poun –

  Carne knocked it down sharply!

  Pinned, he patrolled the perimeter.

  I should have known he was simply experimenting. The promise of freedom, harrowing.

  If I had pushed you off would you have let me on my search?

  No.

  Stele! You’re cruel Carne.

  I know Deli.

  I didn’t sleep after that, and neither did he. Our bond was battered and trust singed holes within its tendrils, the holes widening as the night wore on. But he never left off me. His fingers kept a tight vigil across my wrist, four fingers over my pulse point all night. It pleasured him to touch the electricity of my life.

  Against my will it pleasured me to be so close to another and be blocked from their intensity. His protection in that role of anchor was comforting in a way nothing else I’d ever encountered. Until tonight Carne’s intensity had never become mine. He could and would steal me from myself but he saved me from the worry of becoming his feeling. Whatever I felt close him was mine, he focused me on that entirely, constantly. Lessoning me on separating they way he had mastered.

  A wound formed somewhere inside me, gruesome and sore from the broken trust. I ached with it. He was the cause of it, and yet, I pined for his touch to soothe it. I just wanted the hurt to fade, just -

  “Carne, can we… please just be us for tonight. Hide the hurt for a while?”

  “Hiding from it wont make it leave. I wont leave.”

  “It makes me hate you,” I whispered against his chest. Looking upon the hold on my wrist laying limply across his chest. “And, just now, in this moment I don’t want to hate.”

  His hold slipped. I wasted the freedom. My length sliding along his. Leg breaching the two of his to rake along his muscled thigh. The heavy caress lining my spine in appreciation was the permission I waited upon.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Carne

  Delilah ground down, pressing down and eliciting a fiendish, playful arousal that touched me. I grabbed handfuls of her arse, spreading her so the cool air swept against the barrier we made - pressed so firmly together - before letting her back to her enjoyment.

  She lapped at my shoulder, willingly drinking in the poison emitted to coerce her. Her skin offered me the same but to me it was sacred. To her, a deceit that violated, changing an act of passion into an untruth. Tonight, she held to the fantasy as our scents melded and knotted. Inside her, I missed nothing, knew her as no other ever could, even as she promised herself terrible lies: Tonight was all I’d allow. Tomorrow… Tomorrow.

  Her neck had healed but the mark was deep seated and my roving lips found it’s scent, distracting her from morbid thoughts. She found my wrist and roughly lugged its weight to her décolletage as she rose above me. Her back bowed, gathering momentum to glide forcefully over my ribbed gut, encouraging me to be rougher - hold her the way that satisfied both our natures. My fingers slid higher. Her throat closing as my hardness became a massive throbbing playground for her to glory upon.

  “You and me D.”

  My thoughts became unguarded and potent. We were too young the first time her heat came, if it ever comes again I’ll chain myself away... I wont share her, not for at least a hundred years, two hundred, not even for my spawn.

  My thoughts weren't new, though her breath hitched in surprise. Surely she’d be more surprised if I used words like ‘love’ or ‘cherish’. Ten years ago had been an intense deprivation, one that forced our joint compliance. Me more than her. I’d have killed to possess her, driven to exponential heights of desire and carnality that blurred reality. All I’d known was her pain, her slick, her cunt. It burned me down to my profane base nature. And just the wisp of the same scent now, rammed me back there - to obsession.

  Rolling a nipple with my free hand I teased her. She rasped under my secure hold, the bud stiffening even as she moved too far back for my liking; I followed her up so that she sat cradled in my lap. She didn’t curl around my body and fight to smother close - she met my gaze and brazenly planted her feet either side. I was alive with satisfaction. My mate pleased me. Met me.

  I fisted my base and dared her to continue. My girth was a hurdle no matter the arousal slipping from her folds but I got a perverse pleasure from watching between us as she fed my length in. Sliding inch by inch deeper, soothing our hurts as she stretched and created us anew.

  The friction built and my death grip around the back of her hips lifted her even as she fought to slam back down, working in concert to reach our mutual climax. Delilah was so close, wailing, just shy of climbing that peak. Sweat dotted the valley of her breast, tiny pearls that I devoured. Lathing as those beads convinced me to spend inside her.

  We didn’t sweat like that naturally; it was a consequence of sexual stimulation. I tilted my head, licking away withdrawals, feral with just the thought that she’d have the enmity to take it away again.

  On the cusp, the storm built. Heat raced up my nerve endings.

  “Not fucking yet!” I demanded, biting down a hardened tip, pawing the weight of her breasts. The sting bordered pain and only pushed her further and I knew it, so I did the only thing she didn’t even think of me to do: I kissed her. Almost sweetly - moreish and unwavering before I consumed her mouth and shared my air as my tongue breached the seam of her lips and stroked down her throat. The connection imprinted on her. Kissing her so deeply, devotedly, stole her from a dark needy place and asked her to give.

  And she wanted to give everything.

  We slowed our pace, undulated close, secured against one another, grasping holding, communing together in a harmony such as she’d never allowed. And it had taken such a discordance to bring it forth.

  She tried to distance herself from it - question it - and I could only believe it was for sentimentality’s sake. It wasn’t because she wanted to stay. Right then she willed herself to forget, only momentarily. Long enough to catch this feeling. Something that was hers, ours, to hold on to tightly.

  I witnessed tomorrow in her eyes, and mine hardened, grew brutal and I thrust until rabid.

  I snarled at her, affronted, provoked! She shouldn't be thinking of tomorrows without me. Our union - couldn’t she see how she belonged?

>   Her petite weight was nothing to throw off me. I OWN her, MINE! She should feel it, know it irrevocably, without fail and I would prove it to her.

  My Mate hit the mattress with a bounce and had no time to recover, gasping angrily as she turned her face, swiping hair from her moist forehead as I thrust her head down from the scruff of her neck and muscled her up by my forearm around her middle so her arse was displayed higher than her head.

  I breached with cruel strength, reaching the end, filling her, truly filling her, every spare space within. My vein pulsed as I hardened further and it warmed her entrance, burned.

  “Say it, tell me, Delilah,” I growled at her, gritting my teeth as I refused to abate.

  Her breath was stolen with each thrust, but it wasn’t for that reason that she held her tongue. She knew I wanted her admittance, her submission, again, not just bodily.

  Yes - Say it. Tell me who owns you, this, us!

  I cant. I wont. I am my own.

  The viciousness in my rhythm was dangerous but enticing her and mind-bendingly distracting, she was back on the edge of starburst so fast her head spun. She wasn’t receiving enough oxygen, enough of me either.

  I stopped. Heaving. My hips grazing though I stayed my movements and wedged myself deep.

  “Move!” She yelled in frustration.

  I grew arrogant.

  She grew wild. Tried to shove off me.

  Fucking bastard, move, she sobbed even in her thoughts. Desperate.

  She tried to go limp, to roll but I held her steadfast. I growled back and reefed her back harshly, slid her forward then slapped at the back of her thigh. It wasn’t a punishment. I wasn’t trying to introduce something playful. I was angry, infuriated and ready to take her submission. That was never a game, never something so simple as a punishment. It was a shock meant to convey my waning patience.

  She clamped down on me in retaliation, dragged me into her with just the strength in her core. I groaned and pumped once not able to prevent the slip.

  She did it again.

  “You want to come? I want you to submit. Lift that pretty arse high and beg it of me. Or I’ll keep you here all night. Under me, wet for me, spread for me…”