Breed: A Dark Alien Romance

8. Stranded Prey

Lettie

So this is what it felt like when Sullivan was sent off the Mare and consigned to wander space until she crashed on this planet. We are castaway. We have nothing, and nobody. And we are now absolutely miles from the ship, so far that there’s almost no chance of my crew ever finding us.

“Don’t worry,” Shan says, sounding worried. “I will protect you.”

“And I will protect you,” I say, returning the offer.

He gives me a brief look, then laughs. “Very kind of you, but the types of predators out here are beyond your scope for handling.”

“You shouldn’t have taken my proper suit. It had all sorts of tools and things for survival. We would have been in much better shape. But it doesn’t matter. When it comes to predators, the best protection is avoiding detection, and that’s my speciality.”

“Is it?”

“Well, theoretically. Prior to landing on this planet, I was good at stealth. I haven’t gotten on my feet yet in that way, but I think I will on account of I don’t want to die being eaten by a beast.”

“If I put you down, will you follow me? Or will you run off after the hostile saurians with weapons, who, I assure you, are more than happy to shoot you?”

“I’ll stay with you, but we can’t stay here. We can’t. We have to get back to the city, and we have to find the captains, and we have to get help from…”

“We are going to do what I say,” he says. “This is not the worst thing that could happen. We may very well return to the city, but we need to ensure that whatever we do, we are not entirely predictable. Tonight, we make camp in one of the caves, and tomorrow we make a move.”

“You want to go back to the city too, right? Because I have to find the captains, I have to get everybody together, and I… we all need to get off this planet, because this is awful.”

Shan looks at me with his dark gaze. He is so nonreactive to the situation. It almost feels as though he was prepared for this eventuality.

“Did you know Wrath was going to do that? Why did you come and get me if you did? Why didn’t you leave me safely in the city? I could have been under the alpha’s protection. I could have gathered the captains. Now I’m stuck in the stupid fucking forest…”

“Enough!” He snaps the word. “This is not the time for temper tantrums, Lettie. We are in this situation, and we will survive it. Do not worry. I forbid you to have any concern whatsoever.”

“You can’t stop me worrying.”

I know those words are a mistake as soon as they are out of my mouth.

“I believe I can,” he growls. “Let’s find our first place to sleep, and I will show you just how effectively I can stop you worrying.”

Shan leads us to a cave. I don’t know why he picks the particular cave, and he doesn’t explain. It’s set not quite at the bottom of the hill, but not at the top. There’s a wide, sandy entrance to it, at which he builds a fire. I watch him work, feeling a certain sense of numbness. I want to rage, scream, and cry. I want to make it clear how very unhappy I am with this terrible situation. But I know Shan doesn’t want to hear it.

“We are going to go back, right?”

I risk the question again once he has the fire going and has stared into it silently for what seems like a reasonable period of time. There is something terribly hypnotic about the way the light dances off his eyes, their shimmering black surface giving nothing away. He must be feeling something. We were just abducted, threatened, and stranded. He must be…

He lifts his head to look at me, and his expression alone tells me that I am not going to like his answer.

“We’re not going back.”

“But…”

“We go back, we face all of the same problems we faced before. We act as pawns for powers who use us for their own ends. We get used, and we get sacrificed and we get nothing. We’re going to stay here, Lettie. We’re going to move far enough away from where they left us that we won’t be found by Wrath or anyone else, and we’re going to start life over. You and I, out here. Free in a way we will never be in the city.”

My heart sinks. He doesn’t understand.

“I have to go back. The crew…”

“Damn your crew. And damn my loyalties. Damn everything we’ve pledged ourselves to because we were once too weak to support ourselves. We’re not weak anymore. We don’t need them anymore. We need each other. That’s all.”

I don’t want to hear what he’s saying. I’m not really even listening. All I can hear is the fact that I am not going to get back to my captains or to my crew. He’s taken me from everything, and he’s going to keep me out here, stranded, captive, alone.

I know better than to argue with him. Shan doesn’t care what I think or what I want. He’s a dictator. He’s no better than Wrath, or Thorn, or Avel. He’s a just another big male who thinks he can stand in the way of my goals. I’ll show him that he’s wrong.

I have already decided I am going to make my own way back. I have some idea where I am. And I am sure that the city itself will act as a landmark at night. The lights from it will be visible in the dark if I just get high enough.

Shan is asleep when I creep out of the makeshift camp. We do not make love that night. I don’t even cuddle with him. He knows I am angry, but he does not do anything to entertain my anger or to assuage it. He lets me sit and bristle and think furious thoughts until finally I pretend to go to sleep.

The second I am sure he too has gone to sleep, I start heading for high ground, further up the hillock in which our cave is located. The starry sky is obligingly bright, which is very nice. All I have to do is find a point from which to see the world around us. This is almost too easy. Wrath is going to regret sending us here once he sees me again. I’m starting to develop an appetite for vengeance, I think.

I get to the top of the hill and look around. Something is immediately wrong. Not only can I not see the lights of the city as I assumed I would be able to… I can hardly see anything. The entire world appears to be silver-tipped forest. The undulations of the canopy almost look like waves in the silver of the night.

Something is moving through it in the distance. Something that looks to my untrained and all too naked eye like a massive tanker moving through an ocean. Then it stops and it extends out of the canopy, and I see a head larger than any I have ever imagined existing thrown back. A roar rumbles out across the wilds, an ancient sound that sends a tremor to the very marrow of my bones. That is a sound my very cells know. A sound all creatures who descend from prey must recognize.

We have not been dropped into the wilds in an amusing and harmless way. We have been left in a place dominated and inhabited by predators that I thought only existed in the collective human consciousness. Whatever I am looking at is bigger than my mind can easily comprehend. It makes the trees look like toys. It makes the whole world seem infinitely smaller. But where is the city? How far out are we really?

I am caught between awe, fear, and a deep disappointment. I have only known myself as part of the crew of the Mare. I don’t want to know myself any other way. I find myself putting my hand on my lower belly, and becoming aware that I might already be more than I was when I lived safely on a ship of thieves. I might already be a mother. And Shan, as much as I am angry at him for daring to tell me I don’t get to go back to civilization, is already my mate.

Is that what’s making me so furious? The fact that so many changes have already irrevocably happened, and there’s no way back from any of them?

I suddenly become aware that I am standing in the open with no armor of any kind, just barely dressed. My scent is being picked up by the wind and carried to the nostrils of every nocturnal hunter in miles. I am less a person and more a stinking piece of bait.

The bushes below me rustle, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that something is coming for me. I see a powerful, narrow head. I see slitted animal eyes. I see silver flashes of razor-sharp teeth and claws, launching toward me on powerful digitigrade legs that act like bands of expanding steel rocketing a predatory beast toward me.

I can’t outrun it. It is moving much, much faster than I can move. I can’t hide from it, because I am exposed on this ridge. And I cannot fight it because it is a weapon designed by nature, and I am a snack designed by nature. I am food, and I am about to be eaten.

The only thing I can do, the only thing I do do, is drop to the ground and cover my eyes and hope that whatever happens, it is over quickly. I give up on life completely. I surrender myself to the inevitability of oblivion. As the rough ground meets my stomach, chest, and legs, my mind runs back through my life, and I wonder if there weren’t some choices I could have made to avoid this moment. I could have listened to Raine. I could have stayed on the ship.

But I didn’t.

I’m going to die because I didn’t follow orders. Not Raine’s and not Shan’s. I did what I thought was right. I tried to follow my instincts. That was a mistake. It’s going to be my last mistake.

The creature emits a shrill sound of what I can only imagine is carnivorous excitement and anticipation. I hear its teeth snapping, big, sharp bones sliding together with fury and hunger. This is what happens to people like me who think maybe they might be special after all. This is what happens when I try to reclaim my family. I should have paid attention to the lesson the man in the shiny boots taught me when I was small. Blind obedience and cowardice are the only ways to survive. Trying to be something, do something, that’s for other people. I’m small, and I should have stayed small.

The fetid, wretch-worthy breath of a predator gusts across me as the beast opens its mouth and…

Chokes?

At the very last moment before lunging teeth catch me and start tearing at my flesh, a shadow comes flying over me. I see a flash of green and gold scales as Shan propels himself over me with unparalleled athleticism. The predatory beast attacking me is as large as I am, but Shan is bigger than us both. He grips the creature by its neck, wringing the beast that would have easily eviscerated me like nothing more than a troublesome rooster. There is a snapping sound, and the dinosaur flops in his grasp.

Shan turns to me, holding it in one hand, staring at me with the full force of his dark gaze.

“I told you not to leave the fire,” he says, his tone dominant and disappointed in equal measure.

Before I can say anything — before I can think of anything to say, he sweeps me up over his shoulder with the arm that is not holding the dead animal.

He strides back down the same hill I just spent so much time climbing, back to the cave and to the fire. He drops me down next to it and sets about gutting then skinning the creature that was about to eat me. Seems like it will be our first fresh-caught meal in the wild. Shan says nothing while he works, and I don’t dare say anything at first. Then, even when I do start to feel a little less shaky, I also start to feel quite tired. Almost being eaten alive after being abandoned in the wilds is a very tiring experience.

He lets me sleep. I wake later the next day with the sun high overhead, the embers of the fire low, and the creature who tried to consume me prepared for my consumption in chunks of charred meat skewered on thin pieces of branch.

“Eat,” Shan says, handing me one.

It is an order, there is no mistaking it.

I do as I am told, because I am hungry and because I want to appease him. In the clear light of a new day, with some sleep in me, and my mind having had some time to adjust to all I have seen and been through, I understand what a fucking idiot I was.

“I’m sorry I ran off in the night,” I say. “This meat is really good.”

It actually is. It has a smoky char to it that’s nice, and there must have been more fat on that hunter than I imagined, because there’s a soft tender fleshy part of the meat and then an even softer more flavorful part that has very nearly caramelized above the flame. It is a delicious breakfast, and it lifts my mood.

“Finish your breakfast,” he says.

Apparently, the meat has not had the same effect on his mood. He seems very displeased with me. I get the very uncomfortable feeling that I am in a serious kind of trouble now. Maybe moreso than ever before. I finish my skewer, and I attempt to explain myself.

“It’s just that I really do need to get back to the city, and…”

Shan turns to me with an intensity that makes me wish I hadn’t tried.

“You don’t need to go anywhere, Lettie. You are already home. You are already with family. You belong to me, dammit. Me!” He stabs his finger toward his chest, and I hear more than his anger and his disappointment. I hear his pain. I didn’t just almost get hurt. I hurt him by making him watch that almost happen to me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice small in this very big place.

He doesn’t understand what I’m sorry for, mostly because I haven’t said it, because saying all of the apology would make me feel even more guilty for what I just did. My loyalties are split, between Shan and the life we are on the verge of creating, and between the Mare and the captains, and the family I made. The family of choice.

Shan never gave me a choice. Maybe he never felt like he had one either.

There is a desperation in both of us, a need we have tried to meet again and again in all the wrong places. We have given our loyalty to places and people that hurt us because there was a taste of that need being met.

“You won’t disobey me again,” he says. “You won’t put the life that resides inside you at risk. You won’t put your own life at risk. You’ll obey me in all things, and you will tremble at the very idea of acting otherwise.

I notice that the skewers are not the only thing he prepared while I was sleeping. There’s also a branch nearby, a long, whippy thing that has had all the leaves and smaller extensions broken off from it to make something that I know is not for cooking — though it might roast my ass.

“Shan…”

“Get on your hands and knees and bare yourself,” he orders, his tone brooking no dissent.

I swallow, trying to decide which would be worse, to do as he says, or to make him force me. I know the answer, though it comes with a side of extra humiliation. I have to show him that I do understand what is at play here. I have to demonstrate that I can do what I am told from time to time, or what are my words worth?

So I do what he orders. I get on my hands and knees, but not before I unzip the suit he so sweetly got for me. The problem with this kind of garment is that if you want to bare your butt, you have to bare everything else as well.

“Take it all off,” he says. “You don’t deserve clothing after the way you behaved.”

His words make me blush with embarrassment, even as I obey.

I find myself naked, kneeling in sandy soil, my hands in front of me, my body exposed as though I am nothing more than an animal the way all the other animals in this region are.

Shan steps up behind me, swishing the switch through the air. I hear it and I know that it will be painful when it…

“OW!”

I squeal as he snaps the tip of it across my left cheek, making me arch and swing forward away from the implement.

“Stay still,” Shan growls. “Take your punishment with some dignity.”

There’s no dignity in this. There is only humiliation as he starts whipping me with a stern and intense pace. Snap! Snap! Snap! Again and again the lash lands on my ass.

“Don’t you dare ever disobey me again!” He lectures me roughly as he welts my bare bottom with his handmade lash.

I know I deserve this for my recklessness. I know I almost got myself killed with my need to return to the captains, the ship, that ever increasingly chaotic organization that has been falling apart in slow motion since I came aboard.

Every time the switch lands across my skin, I let out a wail. I am sad for so many things. I am sad for myself. I am sad for what was, and for what is. I am very sad, and I am very sorry.

Shan

Lettie’s rump turns pink and then red, with little bright spots rising against her otherwise smooth flesh. I am giving her a kind of scaling all of her own as I do my very best to speak with her in the one language she seems to understand: pain. She is strong-willed, and she is impulsive, and I know she will keep disobeying me until I force her not to.

I love her more than I have ever loved anything, but I know, even as I punish her, that my love is not a good love. It is a love of possession and jealousy. It is a love that craves the use of and dominion over her soft interior. I want her to be safe, but I want her to be safe so I can keep my possession.

I want her as mine. I want to make more of myself through her. I want to see new life, a blend of us both. I want to watch over her, and the young we have. I want to follow the selfish drive of almost all masculine things.

“You’re mine,” I growl down at her. “And I want you to be safe. At all costs. Under any circumstances. We can stay in the wild for all I care. I’m going to keep you for my own. I’m going to make you mine forever. You are going to swell with my seed and you are going to birth my babies.”

Now she is writhing and groveling on hands and knees, her hips making her ass sway back and forth, the tender petals of her sex expanded with desire. Every time she is in trouble, she gets wet. I think her arousal comes as a result of being mastered and punished and made to subjugate her will to mine. She might be an independent creature, but when I handle her, she is a helpless little wretch begging to be fucked.

I drop the switch and I free my cock. All I want now is to be inside her, to feel that hot, sweet connection.

I pick her up and I plunge her down on my cock with a near casual motion. She is a thick little handful, always has been, but she fits perfectly in my hands, and she easily slides down on my dick. I’ve trained her for this over time. I have taught her body how to relax and respond when the thickness of my body enters hers. This might be the only time she submits, and it is because she has absolutely no biological choice.

She envelops me, her tight, wet inner walls gripping me in that way that has become so familiar and so perfect. Her hands cling to my shoulders and she emits little whimpers and grunts as she is used the way she was made to be used. I can feel the marks on her ass as my fingers splay over her punished flesh and draw her up and down the long the length of my cock, taking her alien cunt and making it mine.

“You’re being bred,” I remind her. “You’re being bred because your body is a vessel for my seed. Remember that, next time you get any ideas about running away.”

Lettie

Shan fucks me until my pussy is once more awash with his seed. I am sore from the thrashing, but the pain only serves to heighten sensation overall as he uses me precisely as he said he would. He fucks me until he fills me, holding me down on his big alien dick as he fills me up. All I can do is hold onto him, squirming my sore ass and pussy in a repetitive writhing motion that my body insists on because it too wants an orgasm.

“You’ve been a very bad girl,” he growls, pulling me from his cock, letting his seed run free from me in a hot gush. “And I am not done with you.”

He puts me back down on the ground, face down, and he follows me to the soil, hiking my hips up between his hands to put my ass at a perfect angle for penetration. Orgasm is close. So close that I feel myself shaking with the need to release, but I know better than to take my pleasure when he sounds like that.

Shan spreads my cheeks and proceeds to run his thick fingers from my pussy to my ass, scooping up the lubrication of his seed and my arousal to begin the conquest of even newer territory. Again, I almost come. I am so close to it, squirming and wriggling, hips humping back against his fingers. But they do not delve inside my pussy. Instead, they press past the tight bud of my anus and find their way inside my butt.

I’ve never had my ass fucked before. I know some women like it, but I also know others hate it. I don’t know what camp I am in yet, but I know that it feels terribly wrong to be touched this way. There’s something twisted about it that only intensifies as he pulls those digits free and replaces them with his cock.

“There’s no part of you that doesn’t belong to me,” he growls as he presses me into the ground and slowly starts the slow, brutal claiming of my ass. “I want you to know that. To feel that. I want you to understand everything you are to me, and everything that will cost you. I am a selfish, brutal creature, and I have no loyalties to anything or anyone besides you.”

I squirm with his cock inside my ass, feeling that thick, scaled intrusion go deeper and deeper, making everything more and more wrong. His words are much harsher than his actions, and much rougher. He is taking so much, but he is giving more. He is making me his, but he is also giving himself to me, and something new is coming. Something that never existed before. Something that will not only make new life but will change mine forever. We are making an us.

“It hurts,” I whimper.

“Good,” he growls back.

That single word triggers my orgasm. It is so fucking wrong. I shouldn’t be treated this way. I should be free to make my own choices. I shouldn’t be whipped like a recalcitrant beast of labor, then bred with his alien seed, and then fucked painfully in my ass — but that is what is happening. I have lost my freedom, and I have become Shan’s whimpering, crying, coming fuck toy.

I feel him grip my hair from behind as I squirm out the aftermath of our rough mating. Both my holes ache in the best way, and I feel a peace and contentment that only ever comes after Shan has taken total control. He slides himself from me, and I feel both doses of his seed leaking from my well-used body.

“Do you understand?” He growls the question in my ear with an affectionate lilt in his saurian tone. “I am not giving you a choice here. You are mine.”

My answer comes in a little whimper.

“Yes.”