Pheromone, page 17
part #1 of For the Love of Aliens Series
He lifts one hand up, withdrawing his claws and then sliding a fingertip over my lips. I close my eyes as he continues his exploration, teasing the bridge of my nose, stroking my eyebrows. My body trembles under those simple touches, and I press a palm against my stomach. Please stop, I think, but I don’t say it aloud because that’s not what I really want.
He plays with my hair, giving my scalp a rub with four fingers, thumb teasing the shell of my ear. When he presses his palm flat against my cheek, those pheromones of his sink into my skin, and I shudder violently. My hand comes up to grip his wrist.
“That’s cheating.” I open my eyes to stare at him, and he smirks at me. He might not know what I’m saying, but he understands the gist of it. The guy is much smarter than I’ve been giving him credit for.
“Pheromones … only work on some females.” That’s a clear enough statement if I’ve ever heard one. “They work well on you.”
Oh, look, a complete sentence. The translator is learning as it goes, and I’m all here for it. Finally, some alien tech that isn’t complete horseshit. Some of these species might have intergalactic travel, but this place is—for lack of a better word—technologically challenged.
I tuck some hair behind my ears, trying to be nonchalant. I’m not fooling anybody.
“You exude pheromones as well.” He steps closer and inhales, nosing at my hair. I can’t breathe for the nearness of him, and I can’t explain why. I want him even though I know I shouldn’t. “They work well on me.”
Shit.
Big D crouches in front of me like a gargoyle, evening out our height difference a little.
He grabs me then, massive hands on my waist. They encircle me, his long fingers. He’s got my entire rib cage, waist, and hips in his possession. Even through the fabric of the space suit, I can feel it, that sticky musk on his skin calling out to mine.
“We don’t fit.” I say that, even though I want to try. I’m so wet, maybe it would actually work? Can he smell that, too? Is that what he means by pheromones? I look up, and it’s like I’m being pursued and romanced all at the same time. He’s a beast—a male—who wants to fuck. He’s a man who genuinely likes a woman. What am I supposed to do when I’m being hit on both fronts? Sex and romance in conjunction.
He drops his head and his tongue laves along the column of my throat, up to my ear, along my jaw. My hands press tight against his ab muscles, feeling them contract under my fingertips. Something hot and hard pokes me, and I see that both of his cocks have emerged from inside of him, slick at the tips, ready to mate. He has a sack, too, that I haven’t seen before. It’s heavy and tight, an invitation in and of itself.
He growls at me, breath ruffling my hair, tail curling around my legs. It spirals around both his and mine, trapping us together, pinning us to one another.
“What are you doing?” I ask, but it’s a useless question. One, he can’t understand me. Two, I know exactly what it is that he’s doing.
Big D releases my waist and scoots back a step, remaining in a crouched position. He’s at eye-level with me now, his genitals exposed, tail tip lashing. I’m so wet right now, so turned-on, I don’t have the energy to resist.
This is a bad idea. Sex means more to him than it does to you. He’s an alien you’ve known for nine days. The way he glows, he’s probably poisonous or something.
None of that registers in my sex-addled brain. The smell of him, it’s all around me, a cloud making me dizzy, smashing through my inhibitions, drugging me. Male. Female. Mate. Together. Nest. I put my hands up on either side of my head and he uncoils his tail, extending his claws and dropping to all fours.
As I watch, he turns to the side, showing off his cocks and his sack in a very purposeful way. Looking at them now, they seem … doable. He seems doable. He’s much smaller than he was the first day I met him, shrunk down to a more reasonable size.
Once he’s certain I’ve gotten a good enough look, he makes his way over to one of the vents on the ground, peeling back the earth so that the crevice is wider. He climbs right in like it was built for him, and then he rolls around in the pitch and the flames.
My jaw is hanging open at this point, but not because I’m less turned-on.
More. I’m more turned-on.
He coats himself in that dark pitch, tiny flames dancing across his skin, and then he rises to his feet.
Lightning crashes off the side of the cliff, igniting one of the trees in the distance. I don’t even look at it. I can’t. All I can see is him, standing there on two feet with his horns dripping and his eyes blazing and his massive cocks on fire. Literally.
He inhales, and his scales ruffle, wings spreading. His markings darken and then flare, casting violet light on the trees, shining amethyst across the grass, bathing my skin in purple. He gets bigger right before my eyes, holding his arms out to either side, hands up, claws extended.
And the smell.
I’ve never been a scent person. Jane is a scent person. She has matching candles, bath bombs, and body sprays for every mood. She says smell triggers old memories for her or helps her make new ones. Not me. I could wear a shirt that smells like last night’s buttered popcorn and forget I ever watched a movie.
This is … I’m alive with the scent of him, like I’m awake for the very first time in the history of my existence. I am here. I’m present. Nothing in the past matters. The future is unimportant. I’m in the present, and I’m breathing in hot, smoky, musky male and want. Desire. Need. Invitation.
He’s asking me to be the female to his male, to come to him, to surrender to whatever this is.
My knees go weak and I actually collapse onto the grass, hands over my mouth.
He—because there’s only one ‘he’ here, and he doesn’t even need a name—steps out of the vent and gets onto all fours, stalking over to me. I fall back onto my ass, trembling, dripping, feeling more like a woman now than I ever have before.
He comes right over to me, one clawed hand on either side of my body, his massive form overshadowing mine. He’s enormous now, as big as I have ever seen him. Larger than a bus, as big as a small house.
My eyes drop to his cocks again.
There’s no way. There is literally no way that I can— I close my eyes. I’ve never wanted anything more or hated reality any less. I’m not an Aspis. I’m not a female that he can or should have. I’m a human being who doesn’t belong here, whose anatomy isn’t equipped to handle a creature this magnificent.
I feel like a fraud.
I shove the heels of both hands into my eyes—hard. I see stars behind my closed lids, but I don’t care about that. All I care about is the smell, the heat. He’s so hot that my skin aches, that sweat pours down my spine beneath the bubblegum pink suit.
Tears of frustration prick my eyes, but there’s no getting around it. I can see how big he is, and I know what my limits are. It’s not a question or a contest. His dicks are each as big as my thigh. Could I touch them in other ways? Lick them? Rub them with my hands? Rub them with my whole body?
“I can’t do this,” I whisper, the pressure in my lower belly tightening along with the storm. I can feel the thunder there, the need, the frustration. I want to scream. I drop my hands and look up to see that he’s curled his spine to stare down at me, waiting.
He’s waiting for an answer, and I’m telling him no when he’s literally the only thing I want.
Right there in that moment, if I could’ve shifted into an Aspis female and stayed forever on that stupid planet, I would’ve done it. I would’ve done it without thinking the consequences over. Without thinking about my family. Or Jane. Or my catering business.
I might’ve been happy.
That black substance drips all around me, the air thick and heady with sex.
“No?” he asks, the word like a crash of lightning. I jump, those tiny hairs rising up again. Electrified, that’s what I am right now. He doesn’t ask it in his own language; he asks it in English. I tilt my head back so that I can see his eyes on me. I’ve got tears again, and he reaches down with his wing-hands, swiping his thumbs over my cheeks. He brings them to his mouth and tastes them for a second time.
“No.”
It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever made.
Some part of me knows that if I give into him, I’ll lose something else. The other humans that were abducted with me. The people I love on earth. Maybe even myself. I’ve got logistics to think of. I won’t ever be able to give him what he wants. He’ll never be able to do the same for me. If I agree, he’ll think it’s for more than just a night of fooling around.
This guy—Dragon Dude is all I know him by—retreats very slowly from me, whuffling my hair as he goes. He crouches down in front of me and then looks away, toward the horizon and the cliff edge, toward the distant lightning and the forest fire that’s just started. He swipes his hand down his face, flicking that black substance across the earth. It’s such a human move. He looks so painfully goddamn human right now.
“It’s not because I don’t want to.” I take the translator off and hand it out to him, but he doesn’t take it. He turns his attention toward the trees, mouth flattened into an invisible seam, eyes searching the woods.
He looks worried.
“We … leave now,” he growls, low and rumbling. The sound travels through the dirt and prematurely scares some of the grasshopper aliens out of the ground. They take off toward the forest, spared the fate of the sun as the clouds roll in. “Females might come.”
He says this to me just before he snags me with his tail and starts to run, bounding through the woods at a pace that’s easily twenty times faster than we walked earlier. He heads straight back to the den as a roar explodes in the distance. Females? My brain is so scrambled that I don’t know which way is up. I didn’t reject him because I didn’t want him. I … I don’t know what to do.
I’m as afraid as I am aroused.
Big D hops into the ship, setting me on my feet, and then pacing a nervous rut into the floor. Or … he tries to. He takes up the entire living room area of the space, filling it with shadows and bioluminescent flickers. He paints the walls purple with his bright blow, and he makes me unsteady on my feet with the smell. I’m breathing him in with every inhale, and I feel my body plumping, swelling, making room.
I catch my lip under my teeth.
“You’re saying that if I don’t mate you, other females might come?” I repeat his statement as a question, trying to understand. I hold out the translator, but he won’t take it. He’s agitated, and I’m worried that it’s partially my fault. “Why?”
What a dumb question, Eve. He’s all puffed up and jacked up and smelling like sex on a stick. If you’re not going to fuck him, somebody else will surely take up the torch.
That’s when I know: I’m going to do it.
I am.
It’s a terrible idea that I’m going to regret later, and I don’t fucking care. The thought of another female taking all of these things that are meant for me? It puts me into a blind rage. The hunting, the nest-making, the heroic rescues, the affection, the posturing, his thick cocks, that swollen sack. I’d sooner die than let some alien dragon bitch snag those things.
Even if I’m leaving. Even if I’m going home. Even if it’s just for a short while.
I step up beside him, breathing hard, a little bit scared, a lot excited.
He looks at me.
I’m shaking now.
I open my mouth to tell him that I want it, to tell him to fuck me, to see what he’ll do if I give him free rein to touch me.
There’s movement in the bushes, and I turn just in time to see her.
The crimson female is back.
Big D snarls, back arching, scales lifting like the hair of an angry cat. His spikes raise along his spine and tail, oozing violet venom. He digs his claws into the floor with a grating sound, tearing up fine ribbons of silver. He pulses and glows, like purple lightning flickering across his skin. He lowers his horns in her direction, a clear warning.
“Leave.” The sound of that word, it rumbles the ship, shaking the floor beneath my feet. It’s so loud that I can feel it in my bones. I wouldn’t even need the translator to understand any of it. How or why that bitch doesn’t turn tail and run—literally—I don’t understand. Looking at her from here, I can see she’s as puffed up and bright as he is, like she, too, rolled around in one of those heat vents.
She’s here because of me, because he’s been trying to court me, and she wants to buy what he’s selling.
Her eyes, ruby and violet with silver rings around the pupils, flick to me.
“Meat.” That’s what she says—thank you, handy-dandy translator—opening her massive maw wide. Saliva rolls down her teeth and pools on the forest floor. As beautiful as I find Big D, I find this other Aspis terrifying. Her mouth is a cruel gash across the lower half of her face, the rictus grin of a predator. The way she stares at me, I have the implicit understanding that she would’ve eaten me had she been the one to attack the wagon that day. Hell, she’ll eat me now if she gets the chance. Her gaze drifts back to Big D. “You … ready to mate.”
Big D lets out this grating growl of a laugh, equal parts primitive and sinister. It makes my skin ripple with happy terror. I don’t even know what that means exactly, but that’s what happens to me.
“Not with you.”
Well. That was succinct and unmistakable in intent. I tap a fingernail against one of the translator’s green ear pieces. What a vibrantly clear—and obviously mocking—response.
He doesn’t just want to fuck; he wants to fuck me specifically.
The female snarls and then, without warning, she charges.
I drop down and curl into a ball, trying to make myself as small as possible. I needn’t have worried. Big D launches himself out of the ship and slams the bulk of his body into hers. The two of them roll across the ground, crashing into the base of a tree. I lift my hands away from my ears, realizing that I subconsciously covered them like a child trying to fend off a nightmare. What good would that have done? Covering my ears wouldn’t have prevented me from hearing the crush of my own bones in the female’s mouth.
I scramble to the edge of the ship on my hands and knees, gaping at the clash of titans that’s occurring on my front lawn.
“Zero, they’re fighting with each other!” If I sound breathless, it’s because I am. I’ve never seen a confrontation as violent and wild as the one taking place in front of me. This is basic biology at its finest, a clash of creatures with no happy ending in sight. This is unchecked violence without rules, without society, without social pressures or expectations. I spare a quick glance for the screen.
“I can hear the sounds of combat. My analysis of the audio tells me that the female Aspis wishes to mate with our resident male. He does not return her advances so they have engaged in a fight. If she wins, she will force herself on him. If he wins, he will kill her.”
I can barely grasp what I’ve just read, turning back to the melee with my mouth hanging wide open.
If Big D loses, she’ll … she’ll rape him because he made himself vulnerable and wild and irresistible—for me. Because of me. God, if I’d just done what I wanted to do in the first place!
Beyond that, if he loses, I am straight-fucked.
What are the chances that she’ll mate him and leave peacefully? None. Zero. Zilch. If she wins, she’s going to eat me. I stand up suddenly, determined to intervene somehow. I did it with the sex trafficking orcs, didn’t I? Don’t see why I can’t help out now.
I look around for a weapon, but of course, there are none.
The dragon horde. I mean, that’s not what it is, but … it is what it is. I’m sporting wet thighs and a throbbing core when I sprint across the ship to the door. It’s still wide open, the gleaming pile of items resting in the dusky half-light. I take a few steps back and look over at Zero’s screen.
“Did your people have guns of any sort? Something that might still be in working order now?” I turn back to the horde, trying to imagine using any part of it to fight a dragon. Alien. Alien dragon. Yeah, that. I check the screen for another response.
“My people are quite peaceable—oftentimes to their own detriment. If anything were to be useful to you now, it would be one of the nets on the exterior of the ship. They were installed with the hopes that we might capture an Aspis alive and run some tests on it.”
The ship seems pretty well, dead to me, but then, the sprinklers worked, right? Something is powering Zero and her bitchy attitude. Not to mention the motorcycle.
“Where are these nets?” I ask, moving back into the living room while simultaneously plotting out Plan B. If Big D is overpowered, should I run? In that scenario, would there be any other choice? Leaving Big D to be raped seems like a pretty fucked up way to repay the help he’s given me. He could’ve left me with the orc dudes and went about his day. Hell, he could’ve left me in the field of purple flytraps to bleed to death. He could’ve let me die alone in the jungle. He could’ve left me in the market.
He could’ve let me starve and sleep in the living room and never taken me to that vista point.
He did none of those things.
“Shit, Eve. Shit!” I’m cursing my good nature as I scan over the instructions on the screen.
“The nets are designed to home in on the Aspis, so if you find one, it should be easy enough to deploy. As the ship is lacking power, a manual switch will be required. They were built with the understanding that we might crash, and that we might have to exist here for some time before rescue. In such a case, we wanted our research to continue without interruption.”
As fascinating as all this information is, I get the idea that Zero is a bit of a chatterbox when she’s not chewing me out in a rage. It’s a moment for immediacy, not for useless backstory.
