Chapter 13
Zil eyed the female, his skin prickling with awareness.
It had been several hours since he had last fed her.
He would need to feed her again soon, and ever since her enthusiastic response the first time several days ago, he could feel his own control slipping in dangerous ways that should have been impossible for a male as modified and highly trained as him.
That she seemed to become easily drunk and aroused by his offerings did not make it any easier for him. Quite the opposite, actually.
Her sweetness filled his nose, and he groaned.
She was impossible, and a perpetual thorn in his backside.
His tail twitched as her perfume slowly grew thicker as she came near him, her footsteps barely making a light scuffing sound on the stone, announcing every single step she took in her leisurely approach.
It was nothing short of torture—not only for the way it dragged along his senses, teasing him, but because he knew by the end of it his cock would be painfully engorged, and it would take some time before going lax again.
He looked up and stared at her purely because he knew that his red eyes unnerved her.
There was no reason for him to be the only one uncomfortable with this.
It was a curse that he could not resist shivering when her tongue dragged over her bottom lip hungrily, his gut clenching with surprising heat.
At this rate he was going to risk burning out his processors and all his circuitry.
He was half-tempted to consider that it was worth it for the momentary pleasure he experienced.
“McGillin—”
“Daisy,” she interrupted, then sighed. “It’s getting tiring hearing you call me that, especially considering that it’s oddly formal for someone who has their tongue regularly in my mouth.
” He froze at the shocking obscenity of her words, and the corner of her mouth hitched. “Do I surprise you, Daranthiki?”
“Zil,” he muttered with a flicker of annoyance. “And you are correct that formalities are absurd at this point, but you need not make it sound so—”
“Illicit?” she suggested with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
She sighed heavily and looked around, her nose scrunching.
“To be honest, you’re all I have here to keep me sane.
This place is definitely not going to do it when the landscape looks like something out of an eighteenth-century fever dream of hell.
” She rubbed her arms as if chilled, despite the fact that the TRS should be doing its job and keeping relatively warm despite her exposed hands and head.
She was uneasy. “I swear the landscape never seems to change when one rock tower looks a lot like another.”
He grunted in agreement but narrowed his eyes on her thoughtfully. “You are trying to distract yourself with me, then? To what end?”
Her brow furrowed in puzzlement, and he suspected that she was not entirely sure what she wanted.
She had been born into a position of wealth and privilege, something that he had never experienced even once in his life, not even after leaving the structure of Daranthiki society.
Before losing his ship, he was comfortable, but he could never boast of buying someone so easily as she had purchased his service.
He scoffed and slowly straightened from the rock he had been sitting on.
Daisy’s expression shifted to one of deepening confusion. “Where are you going?”
Planting his hands on his hips, his tail curled slightly as he slowly stretched his back before looking back at her. “The beacon tower is not going to come to us,” he reminded her as he gestured to the distant cliff-side.
She squinted at it and sighed. “We’ve been walking for days and it’s not getting any closer. Can’t we just rest for a bit? I could use a break.”
“You sleep for several hours every night,” he gently reminded her.
He was not unsympathetic. Their pace was necessarily grueling, and the terrain seemed determined to suck every bit of life out of them as the sun bore down on them for hours on end.
He would have suggested that they spare themselves discomfort and walk at night, but it would take even longer since he had seen for himself just how terrible her night vision was.
She started tripping on the natural obstacles protruding from the ground before the sun even sank completely beyond the horizon.
Their pace suffered enough as it was. Walking at night was out of the question.
Nor could he carry her the entire way, though he obliged her when the terrain became too difficult for her to navigate or if she became too tired to maintain the pace he set.
Human bodies were simply not designed for such endurance over unforgiving land without plenty of supplies, none of which they possessed.
“Do you wish for me to carry you again?” he inquired flatly.
Her nose scrunched again as she squinted at him, and she shook her head, her mouth falling into such a miserable expression that it made him ache for her in a way in which he was unaccustomed.
Physical discomfort was bad enough, but he should not be feeling additional... things, much less tender emotions.
“Just feed me and we can be on our way,” she muttered.
Inclining his head in acquiesce, he turned toward her and stepped closer.
She tipped her head back when he closed the space between them and focused on him with her green eyes, her pupils shrinking.
She quivered, and he wondered if it was in reaction to his eyes.
Surprisingly, the trace of anxiety that always rested in the depths of her eyes when he met her gaze was not there.
There was only hunger, and it ignited a ravenous desire in his belly.
Eyes locked with hers, he slowly lowered his head, his tongue slipping out from between his lips.
He wanted to hold her against him and mate his mouth with hers, to explore their mutual desire and pleasure.
And she felt pleasure too when he was feeding her, of that much he was certain.
He did not wish to be merely joining mouths just to sustain her.
He wanted to do so for no other reason than to share pleasure with her.
It was a dangerous thought, and one he brutally quelled as he lowered his mouth to hers, his tongue sliding between her lips.
The first tug on his tongue as she sucked it deeper into her mouth made his cock leap within his armored flight suit.
She moaned softly as she sucked eagerly, and Zil felt every sweet tug straight to his cock.
He could almost imagine her lips closed tightly around another part of his body as her sucking triggered the release of his sap.
The first release was nearly orgasmic, and he shuddered, his hands instinctively capturing her, holding her close as she drank his essence.
His cock was harder than Daranthiki andragomyne ore and his sap gushed from his tongue as if rising from his testicles.
A pulse of pleasure beat through his cock and his testicles throbbed in response to the rhythmic tug on his tongue.
He growled quietly when her rhythmic sucking changed and was now accompanied by the leisurely brush of her tongue against his.
His tongue curled and danced with hers as the heat of his arousal burned hotter.
He rocked his cock against her, his growls growing louder and more ravenous as they clung to each other.
Despite the barrier her clothing presented, his body instinctively rubbed hers with the delirious need to drive his cock into her and bury it in the tight little human hole that he knew she possessed between her thighs.
Although he was inexperienced in sexual intimacy, he was not entirely unaware of it.
He had once seen a portion of an Aturian vid that depicted a male copulating with a human female.
He had not paid too much attention as he had been uninterested in such exploitive media, but now that he had Daisy within his arms, that brief glimpse plagued him as he recalled just how tiny the female’s entrance had been compared to the Aturian cock trying to breach her.
He was certain that she would stretch tightly around his phallus, her body sucking on his length desperately with every twitch and flex of her internal muscles.
It would welcome his rut, and he would be able to breed upon her eagerly, her soft little body molding to his as he drove his sex into her tight sheath.
His claws lowered to her sides and slid along her suit, catching on the material in preparation to rip it.
He would shred it off her and drive himself into her.
He would claim her and fuck her and bind her to him so tightly that she would never escape him.
The primal Daranthiki instinct took hold of him so strongly that he shook with it as he prepared to cross the breach from which he would never be able to return.
Zil broke free from Daisy with a snarled gasp and whirled away from her.
Her startled cry pierced the air, and he squeezed his eyes closed to combat the mating demands shrieking within him.
It was worse than he suspected. He did not just need to pin a female and fuck her into his own personal oblivion.
He did not just need any female. He had waited too long to seek a mate before joining the legion, and now it seemed that his long-ignored instincts were getting the last laugh.
Although Daranthiki long considered themselves one of the more advanced species in the sectors, he now understood why males and females of the general populace were encouraged to mate young.
For all their advances, they were prey to the most primal part of themselves.
And his instincts were set on claiming Daisy—a female who not only did not truly want him but was paying for his service. It was such a terrible joke that fate played on him that he chuckled wryly as he stepped away from her, his head spinning. He would not disgrace himself in such a way.
Behind him, he was aware of Daisy stumbling as she attempted to regain her physical and mental balance following his rejection. He did not look at her, but he could imagine the expression on her face and the weight of her confusion as he felt her gaze piercing his back.
“Zil, what—”
“It is nothing,” he grumbled. “An unfortunate mistake that is better to be forgotten.”
“Oh,” she whispered, and that one word stabbed him far more deeply than a blade made of the finest quality andragomyne.
This was better. Let it end before anything tried to take root and bloom between them.
Anything more was doomed. Not only was their species in an uneasy truce, but he was still a cybernetic legionnaire, even if he was an illegally decommissioned one.
There would be no happiness for anyone like him.
That was not what they were created for.
It was difficult, however, to remember that fact when he watched her settle heavily onto a boulder when the sun began to decline in the sky, or when he had to force his body to compliance to ignore the sexual need perfuming her skin when he fed her again.
But it was when they were lying a short distance apart on the hard ground that his quieted thoughts made themselves known again, tormenting him.
“You know, if it wasn’t such a miserable sandbox in hell, this place wouldn’t be quite bad,” Daisy murmured tiredly. “I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen such a perfect sky.”
His gaze lifted upward to the stars. He had spent most of his life traveling among them, never believing that he would miss the quiet night skies of his homeworld, and yet, when he looked up at the dark purple heavens brightened with millions of radiant stars spilling and swirling in their unique patterns in space, creating striations of lighter hues above them, it made him long for something more than his lonely existence.
It was odd how he felt so complete at that moment.
With nothing but a flat desert and various rocky formations jutting from the landscape, it left a vast canvas for them to enjoy.
But it was Daisy who made it the most meaningful.
“Yes,” he rasped. “I have forgotten.”
Daisy turned toward him in the dark, her gaze soft. “Was it like this on your homeworld?”
He closed his eyes, blocking out the above beauty that conjured far too easily the painful memories of the past. “It does not matter.”
She fell silent for a long moment, her eyes darkening at night descended, and yet with his vision he could see her clearly all the same—studying him. Finally, she rolled onto her back and sighed.
“I grew up in a metropolis. Such views were cultivated experiences at specific resorts to allow us to pretend for a moment that we were steeped in the natural world.” She gave a small laugh that sent a small vibration of pleasure through him.
“Somehow, we were able to enjoy the natural world with every convenience on hand. No sweltering sun, no biting insects—which I want to express my appreciation that there doesn’t appear to be any equivalent to mosquitoes on this damned planet as far as we have seen yet—and an endless supply of cooling drinks to enjoy.
And yet... this place has something great that I never got to enjoy there. ”
“What is that?” he grumbled. “The hydro-fungi that you refuse to consume for water?”
Daisy chuckled. “No, idiot. It’s you. I know you are hauling me around for the credits, but you have been really great.
I just wanted you to know that. I have never had real companionship.
” She yawned widely and rolled back onto her back.
“Maybe I should have considered a paid companion before,” she mumbled sleepily.
“But even then, they wouldn’t have been you. ”
His heart ached oddly with an emotion he didn’t recognize. He understood. He had never understood how lonely his world was until he stumbled across this stubborn little human.
“McGillin...”
She mumbled sleepily and sighed. He listened for a moment to her heavy, even breathing. It seemed that she was asleep. That was fast. He could not recall if he had ever noticed how quickly she fell asleep before.
“Sleep well,” he rasped.