Instinct: A Dark Sci-Fi Romance

by Loki Renard

  “I have to go.”

  I try to gently disengage from him. When that does not work, I push away more forcefully. His grip tightens just a fraction and the panic starts to rise. I can’t stay down here. I have to get away from him. I have to call my ship down. I have to get off this planet, and I have to wash all traces of this encounter off my skin. I’m going to have to explain what happened to the shuttle, but I can say there was a fault and it detached. It will take months to edit the computer’s logs to reflect the lie, but I’ll have nothing but time once I get back up into orbit.

  “Mine.”

  He repeats the single word.

  He is handsome and wildly attractive, but he is not intelligent. I am almost certain that what I’m mistaking for speech is nothing but vestigial grunts. They seem to correlate with basic desires, but that doesn’t mean he knows what he’s saying. There are parrots who can mimic speech, it’s very possible that’s what he’s doing. He certainly doesn’t seem to acknowledge or understand anything I am saying.

  “I go!” I exclaim, pointing toward the sky. “I go now!”

  “Mine.”

  I take a deep breath. I am not going to be able to break his grasp. He is too strong. I have to somehow reason with this creature who looks like a man but is almost certainly nothing like one mentally.

  The hand that was on my jaw moves to my hair, pushes strands of it back from my face. He repeats the word in a soft rumbling tone, his expression almost gentle.

  “Mine.”

  “Mine.” I try repeating his word. Maybe that will work. I point to myself when I say the word, indicating that I belong to me.

  “Mine,” he growls. The word is starting to sound meaningless now, and it may as well be for how far it is getting us.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I’m not supposed to be down here. If I get caught on this planet, they’re going to freeze me. So you have to let me go. Please.”

  He stares at me blankly and I could cry. He doesn’t understand. He’ll never understand. He’s not a person like me, he’s a devolved form of human, a dumb animal. The sheer despair hits me with great weight. The connection I thought I felt with him in those moments of pleasure must have been an illusion.

  “Home,” he says, sliding his hands away from my body, but keeping his grasp on my arm.

  “My home is up there!” I point up at the sky.

  “Home,” he replies more firmly. He starts to walk in a direction that would take us away from the remains of my shuttle. I can’t allow this. I start fishing in the remnants of my clothing. The legs of my suit are still on. The waist is flapping about my upper thighs, and the belt that holds my zapper is still there. I fumble for it and somehow find it. Fate pushes it into my hand, and I grasp it, knowing that if I get him a second time, there will not be a chance for a third. I can’t take another one of his whippings.

  I jab the little device toward his back, but this time he sees my hand moving toward him. He slaps my hand hard enough to make me drop the device, then bends to pick it up himself. For a moment, he is distracted, his grip loosens. I break free and I dash away from him as quickly as I can—but not quickly enough. He is on me in a matter of strides, grabbing me up again.

  I try to cover my ass, anticipating the pain he will unleash on it, but this time there are no slaps. He simply hauls me up over his shoulder, and I am done for. I don’t have the energy to contest his possession. I am nearly entirely naked, my suit only held on by my boots.

  Sticky with his seed, covered in his sweat and cum, I am abducted. He takes me away from my ship in big long strides, heading into the forest where the women emerged earlier, and where they fled thereafter. This is very, very bad. I need to get back to the shuttle, call my ship down and get back into orbit. I need to resist him. I try pushing up off his shoulders. His musculature is absolutely unyielding.

  “Let me go! Put me down! Please! You got what you wanted! Let me go!”

  My pleading has no effect whatsoever on him. He carries me shrieking and crying from the smoldering vestiges of everything I have ever known.

  Chapter Three

  Zion

  We saw the star girl come in a blaze of fire across the sky, just as the elders foretold. Her light made the world bright. She appeared as a new star in the belt of the hunter—and we saw her fall.

  The stories say the girl from the stars will bring war and death. She is a danger. I was not sent to mate her. I was sent to kill her. But when I saw her, I knew I could not do it. The females would have. The same features that made my desire strong were the ones that made them ferociously angry.

  If I take her back to the tribe, they will call for her death. If I let her go, she will be hunted down. I know that there are others coming with spears sharpened, rocks ready to crush her tender extremities. She would be sacrificed to the red moon and the crimson sea atop Mount Ion.

  Her screams have to stop. She will alert the hunters to our position.

  I take the knife at my waist and use it to cut the curling vine that hangs from the tree. Its sap is sticky and will bond the broken ends well enough once I finish wrapping the lengths around her open squalling mouth. Her shrieks are indignant, but this must be done. The girl from the stars has to be handled according to the ways of this world.

  Putting her back over my shoulder, I keep walking. There are paths rarely taken. Places the tribe are afraid to walk. That is where we must go to be safe.

  It is a long walk, but it has to be. I carry her up the ridges, toward the mountains. I find the narrow paths, the crumbling rocks. I traverse the crevasses that swallow entire hunting parties and leave them to haunt the hills. I can feel my ancestors here, the cool passing of their breath on my chest as I take my prize high.

  She settles down after a time. Her struggles become less frequent, but never really cease. As we pass over a fallen tree that spans two cliffs she becomes very still. Fear makes survivors of us all, even girls from the stars.

  There is a cave on the western side of the mountain, just within the tree line. It is hidden from the gazes of most besides the predators that roam these lands, and it is well prepared for occupation. Our ancestors used this place for their rituals. There are many chambers, recesses filled with artifacts. The one I take her to is the warmest place, where a fissure in the rock creates a natural chimney. A fire can be lit here, the smoke rising and drawn out of the vents above to be lost among the clouds.

  I cut more vine than was necessary for her mouth—and for good reason. She will not be an easy captive, this little star female. I set her down and pull the remnants of the odd garment that covers her frame free of her body, stripping her entirely naked.

  She makes muffled complaints through her gag, but I am not listening. I am looking.

  She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  Her hair is silver like the stars. Her wide eyes are a pale gray, the hue of mist rolling over distant hills. Her features are small, neat. Her mouth, when it is composed, is a soft pink bow. Her body is soft, unaccustomed to work. She is no hunter. She is no gatherer. She has not interacted with the mud of the world, and she is weak in my arms, her struggles barely detectable even when she fights at full strength.

  I wind the vine around her body, gentling her with soft murmurs as she wriggles. The vines will keep her contained, but they will not make her uncomfortable. I could sling her up like an animal, but instead I treasure her. I slip her hands to her sides and wrap them in place, use the vines to make a supporting cradle for her breasts. This is a long tradition of our tribe, handed down from the ancients. I wrap her as she needs to be wrapped, create a harness that keeps her arms to her sides, her breasts and sex exposed, her legs together so she cannot walk or part them, but her holes remain accessible if I bend her over.

  Her sex is delicate, much softer and more tender than the females I am used to. When I was inside her, I could not believe her heat. She gripped me like she was made for me, her pussy tight and melting a

round me... the thought makes my cock hard again.

  Now that I have her contained, and we are far from where the hunting parties will dare go, I release the vines about her mouth and allow her the use of her tongue again.

  “You have to let me go,” she gasps. “I have to get back to my ship. I have to get out of here. You don’t understand. Please, just let me go...”

  As she babbles, I work to start a fire. I suspect she will not tolerate the weather of our world very well. She has almost no pelt to keep her warm, and she is already shivering, little bumps appearing on her skin where her body is trying to raise those little fine hairs that would make her coat puff up if she had one.

  I gather moss and small sticks, take the fire stones from their place and strike them together, kindling a flame that swiftly grows as it finds the moss and twigs. She is quiet, watching me. I can sense her curiosity and her intelligence, but her hysteria has no place here. I will not tolerate it.

  I sit beside the fire and take the device she used to drain my consciousness out of the pouch at my waist.

  “Careful!” she calls out. “Don’t touch that button.”

  I glance at her and turn it over in my fingers. I know it is dangerous. I also know it is powerful. A little device capable of rendering a beast many times her size completely unconscious. It reminds me of the tales from our ancestors. They had stories of many marvels of Teknolge. All those marvels have been lost. There are artifacts, but they do nothing besides sit like shiny rocks, adorning the ancestor’s caves.

  “It’s dangerous,” she repeats. “Don’t knock yourself out and fall into the fire and burn yourself! Be careful! Let me show you how to use it!”

  I quirk a brow at her. This is her weapon. Alone she could never best me, but with this? It is as if the heavens opened and struck me down. And she is willing to show me how to use it so I don’t hurt myself? What a strange creature she is.

  I put it away in my pouch and turn my attention fully on her. She looks at me with wide, welling eyes and she asks me the question I know she has been eager to ask.

  “You can understand me?”

  I nod.

  “Then speak to me.”

  I hesitate. Words are not the primary means of messaging in our world. A man speaks as little as possible, and only when necessary.

  “I know you can. Please. Talk to me. Tell me why you’ve taken me. Tell me what you’re going to do with me. Please. Let me go. I have to go.”

  She babbles words like a river flowing. Words are precious. Should be used sparingly. She wastes her breath, repeats herself, makes endless senseless sound.

  Chapter Four

  Tselia

  “Stop.”

  The word leaves his lips in a heavy grunt.

  I stop, in vain hope that he will say more. He doesn’t. He just sits next to the fire and lets the terrible silence wash between us. The plants he has strung me with make it impossible for me to flee. He has propped me naked against the cave wall, left me to sit and stew in the hopeless misery of my situation.

  He gets up. I follow him with my eyes, hoping he will say something, do something, but he just... leaves.

  I call out, whimpering after him, but he takes no time to tell me where he is going or why. The fire crackles in the stone circle and I am left alone and bound, a prisoner inside an alien mountain.

  I draw in a deep breath to try to stop myself from panicking. There has to be a way out of this. The Patron will check in on my ship at some point. Probably not right away. Not even he believes I can mess things up this completely in such a short period of time.

  If I can get out of these bindings, I may be able to find my way back to the crashed shuttle. That’s all I need. My clothing is lying nearby, my boots discarded on the floor. I yearn for the touch of clothing, to escape the vulnerability of this position.

  All these thoughts mean nothing, because I cannot escape the ties. I try wriggling. I try rubbing the vines against rocks. They hold firm, surprisingly resilient. I try to shimmy out of them, but my captor knows his craft and there is no way out.

  In the end, it is all I can do to get myself into a comfortable position nearer the fire and simply await his return. I am still sticky between my thighs where he spent his cum, and I am certainly aching with the effects of his discipline and the rough thrusting of his cock, plundering my innocence and virginity, showing me what it is to be a human female.

  I wonder if it is always like that, between a woman and a man. I wonder if that is how it was for thousands of years, before we became too advanced for the act of love and wore implants that made procreation impossible. There was pain, but there was pleasure too—a kind I have never felt, not even when imbibing the best of our stimulants.

  He has changed me forever. There is no returning from what has taken place. I will have to hide the fact that I know what intercourse is, in the truest sense. I will have to return to a chaste state.

  Already, I can sense that will be troublesome. He took me without regard for my desire, but I was soaked with it, and now that I know what it is to be fucked, properly, truly taken by a male who has no qualms about spilling his seed inside me, I do not know if I can go the rest of my life without ever feeling it again. Perhaps I can program a simulation to re-enact it. Maybe I can find a toy to... no. There is no way I can recreate the experience I had with some inanimate object. He was so fully, entirely alive. He made me feel alive.

  Footsteps herald his return and interrupt my thoughts. I let out a small scream of horror as I realize that he is holding a small, dead, furry creature in his big hand. It dangles limply, its little black eyes glazed with nonexistence. At first, I have no conception whatsoever of what he is doing with the animal, but then he holds it high, gives me a big white-toothed smile and declares:

  “Food!”

  My stomach turns. I forgot this part of the old ways. They used to eat animals, not protein grown in trays, but actual living creatures. It is disgusting and base, but I cannot look away as he plunges his knife into the skin and begins to slice into it.

  I let out a whimper and turn away, unable to watch the barbaric dismembering of the recently living thing. I do not dare look back until a smell fills the air. It is rich and it calls to another one of my hungers, that which dwells in the pit of my stomach.

  Onboard the ship, I quite often do not eat for days. A quick shot of vitamins and minerals keeps me going, and a protein amino slurry provides the rest of the energy my physical form needs.

  I know what I am smelling is cooking flesh. I know that it is wrong, but that he does not know any better. I do, so I cannot partake. I try to quell the rumbling in my stomach. I try to block out my reaction to the very old way of making food. He has no choice but to do this. Primitive humans ate meat all the way up through the thirtieth century before the practice finally become utterly obsolete in the total loss of animal life on planet Earth. For thousands of years now, we have been recombining essential aminos and proteins from amoeba. I was raised on such fare. My body has never known animal food. I don’t know why it is suddenly reacting this way. My mouth is watering.

  And then he tempts me.

  “Eat,” he says, holding a sliver of meat out to me.

  “No, thank you,” I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Must eat,” he grunts.

  I keep my mouth closed. There is no must when it comes to eating. I choose what goes into my body. I choose...

  He pinches my nose and when my mouth opens in protest, he slips the food into my mouth. My first thought is to spit it out, but I have already tasted it, and it is delicious. There is a richness and a fullness to the flavor, a satisfaction to the texture that makes me salivate and chew. Before I know what I am doing, I am swallowing—not only swallowing, but opening my mouth for more. My stomach is suddenly growling, as if it has awoken from a very long slumber and realized what it is for.

  He feeds me patiently, cutting strips off the animal and letting me consume it one piece at a time. As I begin to get fuller, I close my lips and shake my head. What am I doing? What is it about this man creature who makes me give up all my principles, throw the very tenets by which I have sworn to live my life out of the window?

  I am full. I am sated. Two desires that have been consuming me for years are now suddenly gone and I feel a sense of peace that is only disturbed by my growing guilt. Eating animals, having sex. I have done both things within hours of being on this planet’s soil. I am contaminated. I am...

  I burst into tears of confused misery, and on some level, relief. There were parts of me that needed these things, even though I knew I shouldn’t have them. Maybe it was those parts of me that brought me to this planet, to the one person who could give me what I needed because he didn’t care what I thought I wanted.

  Suddenly, big arms are around me. I am being pulled into his large lap and he is holding me so close, so tenderly. I nuzzle my face into the crook of his neck and I take deep breaths of his masculine scent. He smells like so many things my existence has been devoid of: sweat, dirt... and sex.

  He comforts me with rumbles that aren’t words, but might be, soothing sounds that make me feel safer than I ever have before. All those many days and nights alone in my exploration craft have come to an immediate end, and it is because of him.

  I don’t know if he is truly intelligent. I don’t know if he is capable of speech, but I know how he makes me feel. There are emotions and sensations running through me that I have not ever experienced in life. I was raised to believe that touch was unnecessary, that the desire for companionship was weakness. I was taught there were two options: solitude, or the frozen caskets that hold our species in stasis for another time. I chose exploration and solitude. I chose to make the Patron proud, to resist all calls of the flesh and become a cataloger of life, a lonely librarian among the stars.

  This beast has changed all that. My tears become sobs. It feels so good to be held, to have his arms around me, holding me so close, to hear his heartbeat against his chest and to know that he will not let me go. The same thought that has caused me so much anxiety now brings a rush of joy. There is someone in this endless expanse of existence who wants me. Maybe he’s a dumb animal, barely above banging rocks together, but his desire changes me.

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