by Zora Jorel
“A number 4 special, with a large sweet tea,” I say to the disinterested young Earthan at the counter, who likes to call me “Big Man”.
The simple truth is that Earthans are rutting oblivious. They see what they want. They ignore what doesn’t fit their worldview. And a 8 heads tall Duqaanian in their midst completely escapes their notice. Sure, my clothing is equipped with a perception filter, but nothing to should fool a truly perceptive eye.
Earthans deceive themselves until the very moment their world crumbles beneath them. This is the battle I wage with Brea’s propensity to hide from the burdens of her present and the horrors of her past.
Until that changes, she deny the truths lying within her head. She’ll face dangers she can barely comprehend.
“Put some extra sauce in there for you, Big Man.”
“Appreciated, pard-ner.”
He chuckles and shakes his head like always, moving on to the next customer. I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m messing something up in the translation.
Walking away, my intuition goes into overdrive. There’s a girl, no more than eight cycles, walking along the sidewalk with an frozen dessert in her hand. I note an Earthan male casually observing her and following. His movements would be imperceptible to the naked eye, but my many cycles of training clue me in as to his dark intentions, the sick thirst lurking in his heart. It’s clear as day as to what’s about to happen.
My stomach twists and my face heats with anger.
When I arrived on Earth, I promised I’d observe and never interfere. That pledge lasted all of a single cycle.
I’m a Protector. Fighting my nature is futile. From the moment the Protectorate took me in as an orphan pup and fitted me in my first uniform, my life has been to protect the weak and bring pride to the Sholqua.
That duty defines me. I’ve only relented in it once, and because of that I’ll never live down my dishonor.
I follow at a distance, utilizing stealth skills which have been largely unused use since arriving on this planet. The little girl turns into a park.
The Earthan male follows.
It takes everything I can not to roar with rage. My muscles tense with anxiety.
He picks up his pace as the girl approaches a portion of the park where there are not any others. My heartbeat pounds in my ears as I finally give pursuit.
Just as he’s about to snatch the unsuspecting child, I pounce on him, pinning him to the grass covered ground. The girl turns around, eyes wide, shocked at my presence. I stand in full Duqaanian glory on top of her would-be attacker, my perception filter dislodged by the pervert’s struggle.
“What the hell? Let me go—ooomph!” I force his mouth shut with my hand, forcing myself to not break his jawbone. I look up at the girl, and in my softest, most reassuring voice, speak.
“It is okay now. You are safe.”
For a moment, there seems to be understanding. She takes off. Beneath me, the prevor slime struggles and fights. He’s a squirmy little worm, and I’m tempted to snap his neck and put an end to his existence.
No. Kulan taught me better. Being a vigilante killer would be an insult to her memory and the Duqaan she dreamed of helping to create.
“You will never harm another.”
I am not a murderer. But I am no saint. The pervert’s eyes bulge a sickly red as I take his crotch in my hand and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, until I hear a soft pop. My hand muffles his gruesome screams.
“This is more than you deserve.”
He shivers for a while before all movements cease. I check his vitals.
Still alive.
Only passed out from shock. There’s a release of tension from within. I’ve risked a lot to be here, and it feels good to finally do some good.
Maybe this slug won’t be jailed, but he’ll be hard pressed to ever think of harming another child.
I adjust my perception filter. I turn to leave and there stands the girl. She raises her spindly arm to give me a handful of freshly-picked flowers. My mind suddenly drifts back to when I was a child, hungry and orphaned, on the steps of the Protectorate. The little girl in front of me morphs into Kulan, a young girl around the same age, shortly after her mother had risen to sholqua. She reached out for me and took my hand, and from that day forward the Protectorate became my life.
Kulan saved me from certain starvation and death. I will not fail her memory and everything she stood for by failing in my duty again.
“Thank you.” I take the flowers and tip my hat to the Earthan girl in front of me. She gives me a hopeful smile and skips away.
For all that is wrong with this planet, there is reason to hope. Earth deserves better than subjugation and tyranny that would result from a new invasion by my people.
Brea, her memories, and the spirit within her is the key to keeping that from happening.
My mission must not fail.
“Release her! Now!”
Brea jumps from my cot, startled. Just a moment earlier her fingers dug ferociously through her scalp, as if fighting an invasion in her hair . She raises her hand in surrender. My finger sits firm against the trigger of my LX4 pistol aimed squarely at her head.
“The fuck, Markuz! Have you lost your mind?”
I glance the sides of her head, looking for any signs of an assailant. “I thought you were under attack. A shovian head mite perhaps, or one of the translucent egg beetles of Thorania”
She half-laughs, half-scoffs, rolling her eyes. “I was scratching my scalp, you jerk. I need my braid oil. I’d have it if someone wouldn’t have abducted me.”
I slowly holster my pistol. The near-mysticism of feminine grooming is a mystery even this decorated Protector has failed to solve.
“You have crust on your face.”
She blushes before checking her reflection in the sink mirror. Even dried drool on her face is adorable. While we wipes herself clean, I stack the food onto a table and pull out a chair.
“Sit. Eat. Your strength must be diminished from our earlier meeting. You exerted yourself mightily while nourishing yourself on my cocks.”
Brea’s brown skin tints a shade of crimson. She eyes the cartons of food suspiciously.
Hells. I open one of the cartons, take one of the larger buffalo wings, and pop it whole in my mouth.
“There are much easier, more pleasurable ways to get you to do what I want without poisoning you, Brea Stone.”
Mmmm. I can scent the sudden rise in moisture between those thick, brown legs.
“Stop acting like I’m not a prisoner, Markuz. If you really want me to trust you, you’d let me go.”
“Is that what you really want?”
She hesitates, I think surprising even herself. “Yes. I need to get back to my life. To my family. My cousin…”
I brush my thumb against her cheek. She freezes, but through half-open eyelids she looks at me with lust. Fire.
“Eat, and then we’ll discuss it.”
She bites her lips in protest, but there’s no fighting her biological need. Her body shakes with hunger. She sits, eying me sheepishly, before digging in.
“Is…is this Poko’s?”
“Yes. Poko and I are on a first name basis. I often obtain food from there.”
She smirks. “This is the best chicken in the city. How the hell does an alien cop know about Poko’s.”
“I’ve learned quite a lot from following you the past couple of weeks.”
“Stalker.”
She squints her eyes and continues to eat.
My cocks swell watching her appetite in action.
“What, do I have something on my face?”
“Just imagining the many things I could do with such a talented mouth,” I respond in Duqaanian.
In spite her attempt to mask it, there’s recognition of the language. Her eyes never leave me. “So now you’re going to pretend you don’t speak English anymore? How do you know my language, anyway?”
“I have a natural di
sposition towards languages. A byproduct of genetic engineering. I believe specifically from an ancestor five generations past.”
“That’s…amazing. So is your entire race genetically engineered.”
“Not all. Just a select few from royal houses and in specific occupations.”
She scrunches her lips. “Oh, you’re one of those societies. Classist and elitist.”
I chuckle at her insult, because she’s right. “Most gene-therapy began for survival as much as enhancement. What used to be the Great Empire consisted of many worlds, and to move from one to the other required an ability to adapt. But yes, after a while, certain groups tended to be more enhanced than others, creating an inequity. However, we are slowly moving away from such delineations of our people. The Duqaan I dream of will give everyone equal footing at birth, irrespective of genetic engineering or wealth.”
I lean in close. “This is what Kulan believed. Do you remember?”
She continues to eat, her eyes processing me. Brown, curious eyes, yet haunted, like a siren’s song.
We eat in silence. I feel the fire exude from her pores. No, her eyes never leave me, but as she chews I catch them moving lower and lower, analyzing my torso and slowly moving down to the region of my pelvis. Blinking rapidly, they move back to my face.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed, Brea. The scent of your arousal is palpable. It’s clear you’d like to mate here and now.”
She coughs, sputtering on her wing. “Good god, you’re mighty full of it, aren’t you? I don’t have the least bit of interest in mating with you, or even being around you any longer than I have to.” The moment she says it, her body jerks. Confusion washes over her.
“That’s not the way you acted earlier.” I brush my thumb against her leg. She shivers and bites her lip, desperate to suppress expressing her emotion.
“You’re crazy, Markuz.” She jerks away to stand. “And I’m tired of this. You said you’d let me go if I eat. So let me go.”
“I said we’d talk about it.”
Her teeth grits, more emotion than she planned to convey. “Then let’s talk. What’s the purpose of keeping me here? You’ve kidnapped me and interrogated me. You got what you wanted from me and lot more. Yes, I admit to enjoying a bit of it, but I need to get back to my life. I’ve already gone through with your little torture.”
“You didn’t seem tortured while messaging my cocks with your throat.” I should be more professional, but I feel the need to goad her.
Bubbling anger makes her rigid, and I relish it. The more passionate and riled up she gets, the easier my job becomes. “What. Do. You. Want. From. Me?”
I stand. “I think you know.”
For a moment, just a moment, she backs up a step. She more than makes up for it with a strong stride forward, invading my space as much as I’ve invaded hers.
Tug and pull. She knows what I want and I know what that thick body needs.
“I want to peek inside that beautiful little head. I want information.”
“I’ve already told you what you wanted to know.”
I chuckle. “No. You haven’t even begun. Our little trial session was merely to establish a baseline. To calibrate the machinery. Now the real interrogation begins.”
Her eyes widen. “If you think you’re going to put those starfish from hell back on me…”
I grip her arm. “I won’t need to. The venom courses through you, more potent now than when the tetlu were actually attached. You WILL tell me what I want, what I need to know, or your body will punish you. And not in the way you want me to.”
There’s panic. Fight or flight. She can’t run but oh, she tries. Admirable. But ultimately futile. I lift her onto my shoulder, enjoying the sheer weight of her.
“Markuz! Let me down! Please!”
This time, I don’t wait for her to elbow me in the ear. I smack that sweet, round arse of hers, the reverberations sending thrilling vibrations to my cocks.
I think the feeling is mutual. Her scent? Maddening. I can practically taste the cream on the tip of my tongue. It’s pure insanity that her sweet cunt is only inches from my face, yet all I worry about is duty. DUTY!
She claws my back. There’s time for that later, when she’s on her back and I’m pummeling her from above.
I kick open the interrogation room door and plop her into the chair. The way her tits bounce almost gives me pause.
“Let me go!”
I strap her in, holding her body in place with one hand while securing her bindings with the other. The temperature of the air between us is burning. Searing.
She strains against the metal and rubber bindings. I have to take a step back to gather myself. There’s so much I could do to her in her current position.
“Markuz, you bastard!” she screams as I prepare the equipment and connect the electrodes to her sweaty body. “I’ve told you everything I can. What more do you want from me?”
I kneel before her, staring into those beautiful eyes. They’re wet and vulnerable, and it pains my heart. But duty.
Duty.
“What I want is to find out what happened to Kulan and the sholqua five. I need to know…to see…what happened in…what do you call it…Brazil?”
She tightens her lips and shakes her head. Her tension and reluctance has an immediate effect, the venom in her blood punishing her with pangs of pain I can deduce from her gooseflesh. Through the mesh, her nipples harden. There’s nothing I’d like more than to reach out and pinch the sweaty mounds.
She likes pain. She enjoys it rough, just like Kulan. It feeds her arousal, which stokes my need.
My cocks strain in fury, begging me to rut her.
No. She couldn’t handle it. This is too much for her. She’s not Kulan, who prided herself in knowing herself and living life in truth, out of the shadow of fear. Brea lies to herself, and refuses to even acknowledge the fact.
Her self-denial tears her apart.
“Your pain will only increase the more you fight me on this. Believe it or not, I do not want to see you hurt.”
She looks at me, wounded, but defiant. A cornered animal. “I’m supposed to believe that, alien? If you truly don’t want to see me hurt, you’d let me go and leave this planet. What could you possibly want with us?”
“Humans? Nothing. But you?” I press my thumb against her plump limps. “I’v come a long way for you, Brea. You will tell me what I need to know. You will see and accept the truth that’s buried inside of that brain of yours.”
“What truth?!” The question is full of exasperation.
“As I said, about what happened that day in Brazil.”
She grunts in frustration, pulling at her restraints. “There are thousands of articles written about that. You know how to read our languages. Find out for yourself!”
“No, not the sanitized version that’s been fed to the media by your government, or even the first person accounts detailed by you and your team. I’ve seen those. I’ve read them. No, I need to know what happened from different eyes.”
“What?” She still doesn’t understand.
“Kulan’s. Through her memories that reside in your head.”
Her pupils dilate. “I know you think your dead girlfriend’s spirit is in my head, but you’re wrong. I can’t help you.”
A lie. Her body jumps.
I reach and stroke her pendant, igniting a fire, a spark, we both can feel. Brea moans. “This remnant of her says otherwise.”
Her eyes water. So much fight over something so obvious. “Markuz, please. I can’t do this. Just let me go. I need to get back to my family. My cousin…”
“Yes, again with your kindling.” I tap my wrist comm and pull up data. “21 Sol cycles of age. Intermittent run-ins with local authorities. Detained after his mate was found deceased from a blunt trauma attack. No alibi, and witnesses overheard them fight earlier. You arrested him, as I would have. You did your duty. You should let it go.”
A fury b
ubbles beneath the wetness of her eyes. “He’s my cousin! He’s like a brother to me. I know in my heart he didn’t hurt that girl. Yeah, I did my duty, but I didn’t do what was right. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that, alien.”
Her words strike me like a viper. My mind flashes back to the final conversation I had with Kulan. I kneel, placing my hands on Brea’s.
“I’m…sorry. You’re right. There is more to life than duty alone. It was my duty to give the final authorization for the sholqua to leave for Earth. It was my duty to allow them this single excursion without official Protectorate conveyance. It was also my duty to come along, but I did not, because Kulan asked me not to. I failed my duty, just once, and now she’s dead.
“It’s been my duty to watch everything I believe in crumble in the sub-cycles since, as corruption has infected the very organization I’ve sworn my life to. I blame myself for the sholqua’s dying by your hands.
“Because of me, all is threatened to be lost.”
Brea’s expression softens. She senses my sincerity through the connection we share, the bond she still doesn’t understand.
“So how about this, Brea Stone? You help me make up for my dereliction of duty, and I promise to do the same for you. Deal?”
Brea looks at me for a moment, studying , before finally nodding.
“Good. Then let us begin.”
6
Why do I trust him?
Why?
Markuz looks up at me with those stormy emerald eyes, and I feel his loss. His pain. His guilt and desperation.
I understand it all.
If he didn't have me bound and strapped, I’d reach out to him, pull his head to my chest. I’d rub my hands through his low cut hair, scrape my fingertips across the stubble on his dark gray face.
Give yourself to him.
Shut up, disembodied voice in my head. Don’t ruin this moment for me. Not when I know things are about to get really, really painful.
“Brea, the tetlu venom can only do so much. You must allow your mind to open itself. Stop fighting what you feel and what you think and instead really see.”
