Текст книги "Alien Tyrant"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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I still held my axe in my other hand, the hand not busy keeping my mate under control. With the flat of the blade, I patted my irkdu’s back, letting it know it could go graze for peet grass, the tough stuff that sustained it. It curled tightly in the cramped space then moved back through the crack we’d come through. I knew it would not go far from its master.

The creature bucking wildly against, me, though, was another story entirely. I had no doubt that she would do anything in her power to get as far from me as possible as soon as given the chance. What I couldn’t understand was why. When a warrior visited the Lavrika Pools and saw a vision of his mate, it awakened the bond within his mate, too. At least, that was how it worked for the people of the Sea Sands. But my mate was not of the Sea Sands.

I positioned us so that I was between the crack, the only exit, and her, and finally let go. As predicted, she ran from me, turning and plastering herself against the cliff wall across from me, her back to the rock. Though every drop of blood in my body longed to go to her and touch her again, I let my hands fall to my sides, hooking my axe back into my belt.

Finally, I got to take in her face. Her real face, solid and pale and perfect before me, lit up by the shining Zaphrinax sun. Her eyes were even more brilliant than they’d been in the pools, and her laughably slim, flat brows were turned down in fierce anger, her small pink mouth open and panting. Her eyes flitted from me to the crack, then around the space, looking for an escape. My strangely pretty mate had not yet learned that there would be no escape from me.

A growl built in the back of my throat, but I forced it down, adjusting the tight fabric at my groin. Though everything in me raged to take her, take her now, I would not. Not when displeasure was so plain across her face.

Her face...

My heart clenched as I noticed how much paler she looked than she had in the pools. There was an odd blue substance coating her skin. Blood? Her skin was pale, so maybe her blood was strangely pale, too. I crossed the space between us in one easy step, caging her against the wall with my body, bringing my hands to the sides of her tiny jaw, examining her scalp, her face, for injuries. I found none, and some of the blue-white stuff rubbed off on my hands. Some kind of war paint perhaps. I snorted. Though she’d fought me with admirable spirit, she did not seem to be much of a warrior. Not a properly trained one, at least.

She had frozen totally still, her breath coming in short, quick puffs through her funny raised nose. I kept looking, moving aside her hair, my eyes sweeping over her skin for injuries when I saw it. What looked to be a small gash, just below her tiny, low ear. I hissed as a small red pearl of liquid slipped out, joining the scarlet trail that ran down her impossibly thin neck. A neck that could be crushed in an instant. For a moment, I felt sick at my mate’s fragility.

I moved my fingers up, gently probing the wound, being careful of my claws. Her skin was incredibly soft, delicate as the petals of a rindla plant. One wrong move would shred her. My lip twitched, and she gasped as I brushed the wound, her blood seeping against the pads of my fingers. I’d never seen blood this colour – this exquisite scarlet, the same colour as axrekal berries, one of Zaphrinax’s most potent poisons. I raised my fingers to my lips, tasting her, the sharp, intoxicating flavour exploding on the three segments of my tongue. The growl returned at the back of my throat, this time less easily quelled, and my cock ached. I held her gaze as I licked my fingers again, her soft pink eyelids widening around the white part of her eyes. Then, though I knew it may make her angry, though I knew it may make her try to flee from me, I groaned and lowered my mouth to her neck, gently lapping the stuff from her soft skin.

What a strange and sublime creature fate had chosen as my mate. A creature with skin the colour of milk. And blood the colour of poison.

Never had I known, in all my war-filled life, a poison quite this sweet. So sweet I’d gladly let it kill me. Over and over again.

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CHAPTER FIVE Cece

Fuck me sideways. Apparently these aliens were vampire aliens. How had no one figured that out yet, with all the data we’d collected? I didn’t even know I was bleeding until this guy/alien/thing had collected the blood on his fingers and fucking licked it. And now his tongue – a tongue forked into three freaking parts, was working steadily away at my neck. I was completely frozen, scared that one wrong move would change this interaction from one of tongues to one of teeth. His gigantic hands were on me, one holding the side of my face, the other at my hip. There was something undeniably sexual about the positioning of our bodies, and when his very, very hard cock (at least, that’s what I assumed it was) pressed against my abdomen, I sucked in a breath. I’m in trouble.

I had to get out of this situation. I had to do something. I was about to be fucked. Or food. Maybe not even in that order. Oh, God.

His tongue, or one part of it, at least, caught the edge of the cut on my neck and electricity shot through me, arching down my spine. I cast my mind about for a way to get out of this. There was no way I could escape or physically overpower this monster. I gave a small cry as his tongue moved lower, exploring my collarbone beneath my jacket.

Tongue. Tongue! Language!

What words had I learned? My brain seemed to have gone completely blank. Come on, come on...

“Ablik!” The word exploded out of me, and the alien froze. “Ahbluhk? Oblique?” I couldn’t remember the exact pronunciation now. But it seemed to have worked either way. The alien slowly drew back. My skin was hot where his mouth had been, and instinctively I reached up, my hand smacking against the flesh and staying there. I felt the slow ooze of blood and the dampness of his saliva against my palm as I stared at my captor, taking in his form, in detail, for the first time.

His skin was a deep copper, fading to brown, and even as dark as black at certain points, like his shoulders, his feet, and the end of his tail. Yup. A tail. It was long, but not skinny like a cat’s. It was as thick as one of his massive thighs at the base, tapering to a dark, firm point, almost like a kangaroo’s, but without fur. His feet, too, were oddly kangaroo-esque – long and dark, with one long central claw and two smaller ones on the sides, his ankle high, strangely bent, and strong. His hands seemed mostly human-like, with four fingers and a thumb on each, but with black claws that looked like they could rend my flesh without even trying.  From his shins to his shoulders he looked mostly like a man – a massive man, though, packed with hard muscle and easily seven feet tall. I craned my neck to look at his face. The bottom half – the strong, sharp jaw, and the mouth, were mostly familiar, besides the fangs and tongues, at least. But the top half of his face was where things got... weird.

His nose was largely flat, flaring open and down like a cat’s. His brows were heavy, raised, and dark, the skin fading from bronze to black as it met his dark hairline, his hair falling in one thick, black braid down his muscled back. At the top of his head, on the sides, his ears stood tall and pointed, like a doberman whose ears had been cropped. And his eyes. What the actual fuck. Those eyes. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were large, with no white to speak of. Huge and black, with a shimmering collection of copper-coloured sparks in the middle that swirled, expanded, and contracted. It looked like tiny metallic galaxies existed in those eyes, the stars moving outward and inward, called by some strange gravity. If I weren’t worried about having this guy, or animal, or whatever he was, kill me and bury my bones in the desert, I would have admired the foreign beauty of them.

But as it was, I was worried about getting killed and dumped in the desert. So I latched onto the one thing that seemed to have caught his attention and slowed him down.

“Ablik!” I said again, my voice squeaking. His ears twitched, and he cocked his huge head, stepping back and letting me go. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he pulled a knife from one of the leather-looking straps tied across his torso.

Oh, shit. Had I offended him? What did ablik even mean, again? Was it stick? Weapon? He hefted the knife – more like a machete, though it looked small in his hand. Uh oh. Maybe he thinks I’m threatening him. Great work.

“No, no, sorry. I didn’t mean ablik. I meant... Um... God, I can’t remember any other words. Maybe you could put the knife away for a second, eh? Nice alien...”

He cocked his head again, his brows contracting, the copper specks and swirls drawing in tightly towards the centre of his eyes. It seemed like he was trying to focus in on something.

He held the knife up between us, and I flinched back, my eyes squeezing shut. But no pain came. Instead, his deep, growling voice boomed in the small space, reverberating throughout my body.

“Ablik.”

I opened one eye, then the other, lowering my hands as I realized he was pointing at the shining black blade of his knife.

“Ablik,” he said again, then he took out his axe, which seemed to be made from the same black material. “Ablik.” He pointed to the axe’s black blades.

“Oh,” I said, relaxing somewhat. So maybe our interpretation had been right. Ablik was weapon? Or maybe the dark material the weapons were made of.

I tentatively reached forward, brushing the flat of the axe with my fingers. The material the blades were made from was incredibly smooth and hard.

“Ablik?”

He gave a thrumming sort of yip, which I imagined must be some kind of confirmation.

OK, cool. We have one word in common so far.

What other words did I know? As long as we were talking, he wasn’t licking me or doing any other weird stuff. And that was probably good. I ignored the electric thrill that ran under my skin, everywhere his bizarre tongue had touched me. I would have to analyze that feeling later.

“Um... Um... what about valok?” If I remembered correctly, that seemed to be a small ground-dwelling animal that the aliens picked up and ate raw.

His dark brows raised slightly, the shimmering sparks of his eyes moving outwards. He took a step, turning from me, but still keeping himself firmly planted between me and the crack in the wall. Damn. But then again, where the hell did I think I was going to escape to? I’d seen what those massive crab things had done to the pilots and soldiers. At least, so far, all this guy had done was lick me. And I’d noticed, in the chaos, the way he’d even managed to take a couple of those creepy crawly bastards out with nothing but his primitive blades, almost like he was protecting me. That is, assuming he wasn’t just trying to beat the spideys to a tasty Earth girl meal. My eyes drifted over his slab-of-muscle body, the massive pecs, broad, rippling shoulders, the tree trunk thighs. The loincloth that was still pulled suspiciously tight. Yikes. Well, as long as he kept that area under control, we’d be golden. Guess I’ll take my chances with kangaroo gladiator dude. For now.

He replaced his axe at his belt, then bent, using the knife he still held to saw off what seemed to be a plant along the rock wall near my feet. It was small, greyish-green, and looked a heck of a whole lot like an Earth cactus of some kind. He handled it carefully, avoiding the nasty-looking black barbs on its smooth, dry surface, standing and holding it up between us.

“Valok,” he said. Then he took his knife, splitting the cactus thing with the blade and pulling the plant’s skins apart, revealing a sticky translucent goo on the inside. Ah. So that’s what we’d seen in the footage. It wasn’t an animal, but a plant getting split open and having the insides sucked out. Like an alien juice box.

He held the plant out to me, indicating that I should have some, and I shook my head vigorously.

“No thank you, Mr Alien. I have no clue if my human stomach can handle whatever that is.”

Speaking of stomachs, mine immediately fell when I remembered that I had no human supplies at all. No water. No food. No sunscreen or backup clothing.

Maybe I can get back to the ship somehow...

Maybe all those crab spider things were gone now. But what about the other women, my friends? I’d been so focused on fighting this guy off when he’d grabbed me, that I had no idea what had happened to the others. Panic rushed through me at the thought.

“We have to go back!” I said quickly, pointing wildly at the crack we’d come through. “Back!”

The kangaroo gladiator guy was looking at me like I was nuts. And maybe I was, to go back there. I’d be putting myself in massive danger, not to mention him. Even though he seemed like he held his own pretty well before. At the very least, if things went really badly, maybe I can bury them. The thought of Theresa, Melanie, Kat, and the others, lifeless and alone in the sun, made my stomach clench with nausea.

I shook my head, gritting my teeth. Whatever had happened to them, I had to go back. To get supplies. And see if there were any other survivors.

“Back, let’s go back.” God damn it. How could I tell this massive wall of body what I wanted? I didn’t know a single verb or preposition. Just a random dabbling of nouns that, so far, had proven to be kind of off-base. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted him to take me back there – I still wasn’t clear on his intentions. The massive pull at his loincloth told me whatever his intentions may have been, they were definitely not entirely honourable. But there was no way I’d survive two seconds out there without him.

Well, Cece, you’ve got yourself in quite the fucking pickle.

My English, combined with the wild gesturing of my arms, wasn’t getting us anywhere. Neither were the phrases in Japanese, French, or Spanish that I tossed his way. The alien had tossed the valok plant down and sheathed his knife at his back once more, and was watching me with an unreadable expression. His hands hung loose at his sides, but his entire body thrummed with energy. I knew that the second I tried to make a move, he’d react. How he’d react, I had no idea.

No other way to find out...

I took a sharp breath, then faked movement to one side before sprinting around the other, aiming for the crack we’d come through. I hadn’t made it two steps before a rock-hard arm shot out, snaking around my waist, drawing my back hard against the alien’s torso. A ripple of guttural language ran through the air, and I was pissed to realize I didn’t recognize a single word. What the fuck kind of training did I get? How they did they have a hope in hell of me communicating with these guys?

The alien said a bit more, and I shivered at the feeling of his breath against my ear and neck. And there was that erection, pressing into my back.

“OK, OK, my dude. This is not time for... whatever it is you have in mind.” His hands ran down to my hips, and I felt his mouth brush along my neck once more, sending heat bursting below my skin and, absurdly, between my legs. A deep, warning growl emanated from him, the sound a strange, primal call that was answered by something deep within my body. I squeezed my thighs together.

For a moment, nothing else happened. I had to admit that, if he’d wanted to kill or eat or rape me, he would have done it by now. There was literally no way I could have stopped him, yet so far he’d done nothing to harm me. Sure, he’d licked the blood from my skin like a weirdo, but he’d also saved me from certain crab-clawed death, and had tried to feed me from the spiky aloe thing. He has tools, and language, and some kind of domesticated animal he uses as a mount. And there was no denying the deep, almost unsettling intelligence I’d glimpsed in his strange eyes. I wish I could talk to him. Fuck you, Colonel Jackson, for all of this.

But when his huge, hot hands moved, slipping under my jacket and moving up to my waist, it seemed very clear that talking was not what this guy was interested in at the moment. I spun in his grip, placing my hands flat against his pecs, my fingers splayed against the impossibly tough skin. I remembered when he’d first grabbed me, and I’d bitten down as hard as I could, barely making a dent. What the hell is he made of?

It wasn’t just tough. It was smooth, and warm, and the way it faded in places from copper to brown to black was strangely appealing. For a moment, I forgot what I was meant to be doing, to be saying. That is, until his hands descended to grip my ass.

I yelped, jerking, then smacking my palms against his wall of a chest.

“Stop that!”

His brows contracted, and he said something in his deep, growly voice. His hands moved back up to my waist. But then, a moment later, they were gripping my butt again. He was staring hard at me, the metallic specks of his eyes completely blown apart, turning his whole gaze into something shimmering and uncentred. There was a mischievous sort of curiosity in the angle of his head, the slight uptick of his mouth. Oh my God, he thinks my reactions are funny.

Anger bubbled up in my chest, and I gave him my best fuck-you face.

“No.” I did my best to inject my voice with a dangerous tone, and it sort of seemed like it worked. The metallic glimmers of his eyes immediately contracted inward, and the beginnings of a grin that had been pulling at his mouth disappeared. He said something to me again, something I could not for the life of me understand. I could tell, though, that he was asking me a question. What that question was, was anyone’s guess.

“Sorry,” I said softly. “I don’t have any answers.”

His face darkened, but a moment later, he let me go. And this time, he stepped aside, allowing me access to the only exit. I faltered, wondering if this was some sort of trap, but he just seemed to watch me impassively, tracking every my every movement.

Alrighty, then.

I moved forward, following the path back out the way we’d come -

– and came face to face with a monster.

I reared back as the thing snarled, and raised my hands to protect my face, just as Mr Kangaroo Gladiator made a clicking sound at the back of his throat. The monster snuffed, then turned and moved away, and I watched it warily, my heart in my throat.

It was the thing we’d rode in on, of course. But I hadn’t realized how truly creepy the thing was when I’d been on its back.

Its hide was a deep, dusty purple, and its head and body vaguely resembled an Earth alligator, if alligators from Earth had, like, twenty eyes. And instead of four legs, it had what looked to be hundreds, sweeping over the sand like a centipede. It was huge, bigger than any alligator on earth, more like the size of a small whale. With really, really big teeth.

They don’t have alien horses where this guy comes from? We have to deal with the dino-centipede?

Despite the heat, I shivered, watching its many insect-like legs move in a horrible ripple. At least it seemed to listen to the alien guy’s commands.

I turned back to see said alien guy right behind me, his dark eyes fixed on me. I swallowed, the intensity of that gaze penetrating me.

“I guess I should stop calling you alien guy, eh? What’s your name?”

Idiot. Like he’ll understand that question.

It was time to pantomime, just like some stupid Tarzan role play. Only instead of role play, this was my real life.

I placed my hand to my chest.

“I’m Celia. Cece. Cece.”

I pounded my chest each time to emphasize my point. I was worried I’d have to do this dance a few times, but he seemed to catch my drift pretty quickly. OK, he’s definitely a pretty sharp guy. Or, er, alien.

He imitated my gesture, placing his own clawed hand against his chest.

“Gahn Buroudei.” He, paused, then said a bunch more, the syllables going in one ear and out the other.

“Sorry, I didn’t get all that. Got a nickname? I’m Celia, but people call me Cece.” I gestured to myself again as I said, “Cece.”

He paused, the bright parts of his eyes pulsing, then placed his hand on his chest again.

“Buroudei.”

Then he did something strange. His tail curled around the front of his body, the black tip reaching up to cover his eyes for a moment. It was just for a second, and then his tail swished back into place. Not sure what to make of that, I focused on what he’d said.

“Buroudei... OK, yeah, I can handle that. I hope that’s actually your name, and you didn’t just try to tell me your word for chest or heart or something. Do you even have a heart? Nevermind.”

My sentence fizzled. Still he watched me, something dark and deep and unnameable in his alien eyes.

Then he opened his mouth, his voice somewhere between a growl and a purr, and said,

“Zeezee.”

My name in his mouth was terrible and gratifying. Bizarre and enticing. It sent heat down my spine and goosebumps over my skin. It felt like he was recognizing something deep inside me. As if he knew something about me that even I didn’t.

And, frankly, I didn’t like it one fucking bit.

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