Instinct: A Dark Sci-Fi Romance

by Loki Renard

  “Apologize.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me you’re sorry and this stops.” He pushes his fingers in deeper and makes me writhe and moan. I hear his voice closer to my ear. “Maybe you’re not sorry. Or maybe this is what you want.”

  His fingers twist and my pussy responds with another clenching flood of desire. Is this what I want? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, except that I am both angry and aroused and neither one of those feelings are going to go away until he makes them go away.

  * * *

  Zion

  She needs to be mated. I can smell it again, that sweet scent that makes her almost seem virginal. Every time I touch her, her body responds. Every time I drive inside her, she opens herself for more.

  My cock is as hard as it has ever been and I have to be inside her. Leaving my fingers in her ass, I hoist her hips, line my cock up with her sopping slit and drive in. Immediately, I am engulfed by her cunt. Her molten heat wraps around my dick and draws me in.

  I held back the first times I was with her. I was careful not to hurt her. I could tell her pussy was not used. I knew it needed care. I have not taken her as deep as I can, but this time I will hold nothing back.

  I thrust deep inside her, opening her all the way up from the lips of her pussy to the harder resistance where her womb hides. She squeals with shock and desire, and I hold myself there, making her feel all that I am inside her.

  Stopping, I realize something is wrong. There is something pressing against the head of my cock. It’s not soft and pliant like the rest of her body. It’s hard and foreign.

  Pulling out of her pussy, I slide the fingers of the hand not occupied in her tight little ass into her cunt. She is grunting and moaning against the ground, taking this for granted, just another vile animal act that makes her cunt drool.

  The tips of my fingers find what my cock did—a pair of little stringy fibers inside her, they feel like machine parts, totally separate from the clenching wet walls of her greedy sex. I pull on them gently and I hear her squeal, but she is not tense with pain, so I pull a little more firmly. I feel the strings start to move and then...

  “No! You can’t! No!”

  Something comes free inside her. I pull it out and find that it is a piece of star material, white and shaped with a cross on top.

  “What is this?” I toss it down on the ground in front of her and use my pussy-slicked fingers to wrap her hair around my hand, pull her up for questioning. She turns her head to look back at me over her shoulder, her silver gaze wide with sex and horror.

  “That was my implant. It stopped me from getting pregnant.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not allowed!”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s against the rules!”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, my god, stop asking why!”

  My head is full of whys. None of this makes sense to me. Why would anyone deliberately neuter a beautiful girl like this? Why would they take away her most beautiful, most essential function?”

  “You’re such an idiot!”

  Those words seal her fate. Her attitude is rebellious again, and that I will not tolerate. There will be time for questions later. For now, she is getting fucked. I toss the thing aside and I plunge my cock back inside her. Her cunt grips me and this time there is nothing between us.

  * * *

  Tselia

  He is taking me completely bare. His cock is plunging inside me, spreading my walls, reaching the depths of my cervix, which is no longer blocked by the device that kept me pure.

  This time, when he comes, I will be filled with his seed. I will be at risk of impregnation. My body will be vulnerable to his seed and I could commit the greatest sin in the eyes of the Patron and those he serves.

  “Please,” I moan. “Don’t come in me.”

  His breath rasps in my ear, his cock surging inside me over and over. He has no intention of pulling free. I know he will flood me with his cum. I know he will fuck me near senseless, leave me weak and writhing in his arms.

  He pulls free—for a moment. And then I feel his cock push back inside my pussy, spreading my inner lips once more. He pulls all the way out again, and then lets his cock push deeply forward. He is making me feel what it is to be claimed over and over. His fingers are still deep in my ass, two digits keeping my anus spread. I barely notice that lewd intrusion now that he has made my vulnerability even more complete.

  My pussy is eager for him, wants him deep. Every time he slides out, I feel my inner walls clenching, wanting him again. I need this. I need him. He is punishing me. He is making me feel pain and shame and still I cannot stop craving him.

  My ass burns, my inner walls clench and quiver. I tremble in his arms, lost to his lust.

  He ruts me long and hard, his hips slapping against my ass as his cock plunges inside my tight pussy. My hands are grasping at the dirt, clawing up grass and earth, my knees staining as I am rocked back and forth on his dick.

  “You will show respect. You will do as you are told. You are not in the stars anymore, star girl. You are here. With me. In the dirt.”

  He pushes my face down toward the ground, my cheek smearing across the soft earth and I come, screaming a broken orgasm into the core of this planet. I expect at any moment to feel his cum inside my pussy, to know that he has claimed me in that final, immutable way.

  At the last minute, Zion pulls his fingers and his cock free and the cum does not fill me up, but splashes over my seared cheeks. He growls his orgasm, rubbing his cum into my bottom, leaving me sticky with his seed yet again. Of all the things I need, a bath is fast becoming the most urgent.

  “I thought you were going to come inside me...”

  I make the comment as he pulls me up from the ground and wipes a smear of mud from my cheek with the palm of his hand.

  “You haven’t earned my seed, girl.” His blue eyes glint down at me.

  “So now I have to earn it?”

  “You were just begging me to spare you. I did, and now you want it.”

  “No, of course I don’t want it!”

  He laughs and I curse him, but it makes no difference. He pulls me up over his shoulder and carries me down the mountain, two of my holes still pulsing with the energy of his lust, and one proclaiming my deep and abiding loathing of him and all things on this damned planet.

  I hate the things he does to me, but most of all, I hate the things he makes me crave.

  Chapter Nine

  Zion

  We do not immediately return to the village. I have left my mark on this girl and my scent is beginning to ripen. She slept adorned in my cum last night and now I have covered yet more of her in it.

  There are hot springs not far from here, a place where the villagers go to bathe. She doesn’t deserve a bath, necessarily. She has not behaved herself at all well. She has put herself in danger, she has been disrespectful, and she has gone out of her way to anger me. But I will look after her even when she doesn’t deserve it.

  She swears in her star tongue all the way to the rock pools where the water bubbles from the core of the world. Some of them are dangerously hot. Others are comfortable. It is important to know which is which.

  “Don’t ever use the baths with the red paint at the rim,” I say. “They are the baths we use to cook and clean. They will boil you alive.”

  She curses at me as I set her on her feet and take her by the arms. She must listen to me. She must understand. This world is full of dangers.

  “Tell me what I just told you.”

  “The baths with the red paint will boil me. If I’m stupid enough to jump into hot water,” she repeats after me, adding more than a little attitude to her response.

  “You have done nothing but throw yourself into hot water since I met you.”

  “Word play, Zion? You hardly ever speak to me and now you’re throwing out puns?”

  I rarely spoke to anyone before her,
but this star girl swims in a sea of words, and to reach her, I have to use them too.

  Before she has another chance to argue, I toss her into the nearest pool. She sinks like a damn stone. Her head goes under and it is a second before I realize she is not coming up again. Cursing, I throw myself into the water, find her flailing form and pull her up out of the water’s embrace.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you can’t swim?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to drown me!” She throws the accusation right back at me. “You threw me in, you idiot!”

  “I thought you would float.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she complains.

  I like the way she’s holding on to me, her fingers clutching at my shoulders. I’m not going to let her go again, and I’m not going to assume that she can survive something just because others in this world could survive it. I’m going to hold her close and protect her no matter how mouthy she gets.

  Standing in the pool, I keep her in one arm and use the other to swish the water lightly over her body. There are strips of bark placed around the edges. When slipped into the water, it produces a lather. I use the bubbly residue to wash her body, my seed slipping from her skin.

  She is cute and pink and heated from the water. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are bright, and the silvery skein of hair flowing from her head is more dramatic than ever catching the light of the day. She shines not like the stars, but like the sun.

  Chapter Ten

  Tselia

  Being clean is an incredible sensation. I have not bathed in years. Ships don’t contain baths. I used to wash myself with a vibrating cloth. This is pure luxury, steaming water lapping all over my body.

  The momentary panic of finding myself submerged is fading as Zion holds me in his arms, his body a shield and a support as the filth of the chaos of the past few days is washed away.

  He caresses where he slapped me. He washes the same parts he invaded. His fingers stroke my sex and circle around my bottom. He is washing away my sin, all the traces of the way he used me, the way he had me at his mercy.

  Water beads over his skin, rivulets coursing down his chest and over his shoulders. He is like the rocks that line this place, the water of the spring flowing over them and into these baths, which are the most beautiful places I’ve seen in this world.

  The sun has risen and it is bathing the world in its glow. It’s beautiful. The valley rolls out beneath us. The village is below and then past that a river, and past that, fields and forests and more creation than I can take in.

  This world is big enough to contain me. It is a beautiful prison, and this warden is a handsome one. It is better than the cold grip of stasis.

  If I stay here, submit to him, and allow him to take me as he pleases—not that I have a choice—I still have to worry about that. My ship is up there. The Patron knows where I am, and even if he doesn’t find me right away, they will look.

  “My father is going to come for me.”

  “I would like to meet him,” Zion says. “I have so many questions.”

  “He won’t talk to you. He’ll have you knocked unconscious and he’ll take me and freeze me for a hundred years at least. When I wake up, you’ll be long dead.”

  I tell him the truth, even though there is no way he will understand.

  “Why would he freeze you?” Zion cocks his head and fixes me with that brilliant blue look.

  “Because,” I say. “I’ve been in trouble before. This was my last chance. Stasis—being frozen, it’s a good way to keep people out of trouble.”

  “Hmm.” His lips quirk. “I don’t blame your father for being at his wits’ end with you. If you can find a way to disobey, you do.”

  I cut my eyes at him. “Don’t argue my father’s side of this. You keeping me down here puts my life in danger.”

  “If what you say is true, this is just another way you’ve put your own life in danger,” he says. “I don’t think your father is going to hurt you. I think you’re going to hurt you, and he’s going to try to keep you safe.”

  “He doesn’t want me safe. He sent me across the universe to this backwater! He told me to stay in my ship. He was going to make me stay here for three years. Alone.”

  “A time out I bet you earned.”

  “Don’t argue his side!”

  “I’m not arguing his side. I can understand how frustrating you must have been to have as a child. Strong-willed, rebellious...” He holds me closer as I start to squirm.

  “Shut up! I didn’t come all this way to hear that the Patron is right and I’m wrong.”

  “You blame someone for shooting you down. That little mount. Was that your ship?”

  “No, of course not. That was my shuttle. It’s a much smaller version of my ship.”

  “And you were doing... what in that shuttle?”

  “I was looking...”

  “At?”

  “At the people down here. I wanted to see them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was curious...”

  “Curious, or lonely?”

  Truthfully, maybe both. Years of solitude take their toll on a girl. Long distance holo-conversations didn’t cut it. They were nothing like this, being held, being touched, being able to look in someone else’s eyes, feel their voice rumbling through their chest—even if I don’t like the words.

  “You shouldn’t take the Patron’s side,” I say. “You don’t understand what he’s really like.”

  “And you don’t understand what trying to look after you is like,” he says in turn.

  “Neither does the Patron. Never looked after me once in his life. Left me to maids and instructors, shipped me off to the academy when I was old enough to hold a pen. You don’t know me, and you definitely don’t know him. Now put me down. I want out.”

  I’m upset. Zion wants to paint the Patron as a misunderstood father with a misbehaved child, but that is not what this is.

  “You’ll get out when I say you do,” Zion says.

  I splash water in his face to try to convince him to drop me. It doesn’t work. He hoists me out of the water, my hips emerging just enough to give him the chance to slap my ass hard then plunge me back down into the water.

  “Stop it,” he says sharply. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you either. You don’t know what you think you know. You don’t know anything. You’re an anima—oww!” I scream as he pulls me up and out of the water, his big palm slapping my cheeks again and again.

  “Behave yourself,” he growls at me. “I am not your Patron. I will not send you away. I will not freeze you out. I will lash your bottom. I will make you hurt. I will use you. You will not run from me. You will not hide. You will bear the pain. And you will learn.”

  His eyes are locked on mine. His voice is even, not angry. He is firm and he is calm and I know he means what he says. For that reason, his words do something to me his hands haven’t. They touch me somewhere deep inside. They reach me in the very core of my pain, the part that has sent me careening across the sky, made sure that I never obeyed a single order I was given.

  His palms cup my ass and he pulls me close, kissing me deeply. I let him. I give in, because despite everything, I know my time here is short.

  Zion doesn’t know what he is up against. He doesn’t know the power and the rage that will be vented when I am discovered to be lost. He was right when he said the Patron might not find me. That doesn’t mean he won’t look. Hard.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tselia

  Zion takes me back to the tribe and I do my best to fit in. I truly, actually do. I fumble my way through their customs. I even learn to sew so I can make the skirt he says will celebrate our mate-ship. Our togetherness.

  We have been intimate many, many times, but in spite of the fact he tore my protection from me, he has not come inside me again. He holds back. He spends it anywhere, everywhere besides inside my sex.


  I should be grateful. I am grateful. I did ask him not to and he has respected that. He hasn’t respected much since I met him, but he has abstained from impregnating me.

  Zion is not my only problem. Fitting into a village of prehistoric humans is difficult. Their customs are strange, their ways of communicating are subtle and I often miss them because they are nonverbal. A look, a flicker of a lash, a raise of the head, can communicate thousands of words. I find myself physically illiterate in their world, clumsy and rude and often left out.

  It is made worse knowing that in the past, Zion was intimate with the huntresses. When I was in school, there were popular girls. I was not one of them, even as the daughter of the Patron. Now, I find myself in a similar situation. The huntresses preen and strut and make great shows of themselves around the village—and they mock me. I don’t understand what they’re laughing about, but I know when mean girls are talking about me. No matter how advanced the species gets, or how much it regresses, some things stay the same.

  I did not like the huntresses before. I like them even less now. They have lain with my man, and judging by the reception they gave me, they would do so again if he would allow it.

  Zion has no interest in them. He makes that just as clear to them as they make their disdain for me obvious. Most of our time is spent together, but he has his responsibilities to the tribe. The huntresses hunt, but it is the males who guard. Zion must take his turn at being on patrol and that leaves me alone sometimes.

  I am supposed to stay in the hut, but the walls are oppressive. I am used to wider views. I know what will happen if I leave the village without his permission, and I know I don’t want it to.

  So I sit outside, take in the evening air and try to work on sewing the skins that will give me something to wear. Running about utterly naked doesn’t do it for me. I want to be covered, but I am obliged to be nude.

  “Nice skirt. Not.”

  It’s Tyna the huntress and she has some of her friends with her. She emerges out of the shadows in near silence, an impressive trick that makes me jump and poke myself with the needle. A bead of blood appears on my thumb. I stick it into my mouth and suck, saving myself the trouble of replying right away.