Chapter Three
Heart pounding, her lungs constricting, with a searing heat stabbing into her side, she pushed her body to run faster, while darting a brief glance over her shoulder. It was dark, and the only thing keeping her from slamming into something in her path was a thin sliver of moonlight passing through the leaf-laden branches overhead. Maggie sensed him drawing closer and was convinced if she stopped and peered into the blackness of the forest, she would see his purple eyes staring out at her.
He was out there, somewhere, sizing her up and stalking her relentlessly, like prey. Often, she sensed he was close enough to pounce, but he didn’t, not ready to stop playing with his toy quite yet.
A bird overhead screeched, as though in warning.
Panicked, she pushed her body to move faster.
Out of the dense foliage, a large body suddenly appeared, long arms reaching for her. Her screams were cut short as he took her easily to the ground. What scant breath she had left in her lungs rushed out with a whoosh as she landed atop his hard body. Next, he rolled, crushing her facedown, trapped beneath his massive frame and the debris-strewn forest floor. She struggled futilely, his strength far too great. Hands, large enough to dwarf hers, captured her flailing wrists and pinned them in the damp earth beside her head.
A frightened, quaking sob escaped her. “Please, don’t,” she managed in a reedy-thin, breathless plea for mercy.
There was no response, except the brush of his breath across the back of her neck. Then something hot and wet trailed up the side of her throat. Her mind reeled in horror as the beast’s tongue tasted her. She braced for the pain of his teeth next as she became his supper. And although she wasn’t ordinarily a very spiritual person, a prayer for a quick death came immediately to her lips.
But the pain didn’t come. Instead, his weight lifted from her body.
Stunned and confused, she wasn’t sure whether he understood her pitiful begging, or if the Almighty had decided to intercede. It was neither, she realized, as she was abruptly flipped onto her back and pressed fully into the leaves and soil beneath her.
Expecting a huge, hulking monster, she blinked in surprise as she stared up at a strikingly handsome man. Dark, thick hair fell forward from either side of his head, surrounding her own like a curtain. She could feel, more so than see, in the darkness his muscular shoulders, bulging biceps, and forearms, and the broad chest that constrained her, flattening her full breasts with every gulp of air she drew into her still-heaving lungs.
“Are you human?” she managed to gasp.
His only response was a flash of white teeth as he smiled.
She tried again. “What do you want with me?”
The answer was silent, coming this time in the shift of his body as his solid thigh firmly pressed her own apart, and his hips settled between them. She trembled as his imposing hardness pushed up along her soft center. With a flip of his head, he whipped his long hair behind him, letting in a glimmer of moonlight. It was enough to see that his mouth had curved into a full grin and his eyes were the same purple orbs that she’d sensed staring at her out of the darkness. They deepened almost to black as he moved the length of his shaft deliberately against her.
She needed no words of explanation; he meant to have her.
While her fear and panic rose, she was betrayed by a rush of tingling heat between her thighs as her body responded. It wasn’t all that gave away her desire; her nipples hardened, forming taut peaks as they pressed against her flight suit, and her clit throbbed for attention. Shame filled her when her hips lifted, as if having a will of their own, and her needy pussy pressed urgently into him.
How could she possibly become aroused by this enormous, marauding alien? He’d take what he wanted, effortlessly, as he’d done with her crew, snatching them from the planet’s surface, and then vanishing without a trace.
“Please…” she groaned helplessly.
“Oh, I aim to please, little captain. As I fuck you, claim you, and make you mine forever.”
The words, spoken in faultless English, startled her so that she jerked, fiercely enough to make him roll off her body. She screamed, the sound echoing back to her and waking her with a violent jolt.
Maggie bolted upright in bed.
Breathing fast and shaking, she tried to acclimate herself to what was real. Beneath her, the hard forest floor transformed into the firmness of her mattress. The glowing green light of the control panel near the door and the stark whiteness of the walls grounded her, as the remaining slivers of the dream faded. Her hands came up and speared through her damp hair.
“It was a dream,” she said aloud as if trying to convince herself. Glancing around and seeing that the walls, floor, and ceiling of her bedroom remained constant, and didn’t morph into thick vegetation with glowing purple eyes, she repeated it with more conviction. “It was only a dream.”
Flipping back the thin cover, she swung her legs over the side of the bed as she tried to shake the incredibly vivid images and powerful sensations. She could practically feel strong, inflexible fingers manacling her wrists and a long, rigid cock pressing against her pussy, seeking entrance.
Pushing to her feet, she lurched across the room and into her small bathroom. Foregoing the lights, she turned on the cold faucet full blast and splashed cold water on her face.
What kind of slut was she to fantasize about sex with an alien being, the kind who hunted, captured, and manhandled women, and not the least of it, spanked them, or worse?
As she pressed her wet hands to her flushed cheeks, trying to cool the persistent flush, she gazed intently at her reflection, visible in the slight glow of the footlights interspersed throughout the room. Water dripped off her nose and chin, her wavy blonde hair was mussed, but otherwise, she saw the same sky-blue eyes—identical to her mother’s—that looked back at her every morning, and the same detested dimple in her right cheek, except...
Leaning closer, she frowned while running a finger lightly over the delicate tissue below her eyes. She’d always been prone to dark circles, but right now, they didn’t look like the usual shadows. Instead, they were purplish-black, more like bruises, as if she’d gone a few rounds with the champ in a prizefight and lost big. She grimaced in disgust. With the worry and stress keeping her up in recent days, they appeared far worse than ever before.
“The first few minutes of sleep I get in days, and I’m tormented by sex dreams starring a lecherous alien!”
Maggie took a deep breath to calm herself then reached for a towel. After wiping the water from her face, neck, and chest, she threw it in the sink in frustration. Planning to analyze her disturbing dream later—perhaps a decade past never—she went to her closet for dry clothes.
She hadn’t slept for three nights, and it was beginning to show, not only in the dark circles and stress lines on her face but in her increased irritability. Until just now, every time she had an idle moment or tried to rest, horrible images of what the missing crew members were enduring filled her head. She imagined them as anything from the main course of some huge beast’s dinner to science experiments to sex slaves for breeding.
The last one at least helped to explain tonight’s erotic dream.
“Blast and damn,” she muttered.
As she left her quarters and made her way through the ship, the exhaustion and tension hit her in the form of a headache forming at the base of her skull. She wrapped her hand around the back of her neck and squeezed.
She couldn’t go on like this. A captain needed to be sharp, on her game, prepared for the next crisis or life and death decision. Telling herself she would stop by sickbay as soon as possible, Maggie spun around instead, and went in the opposite direction, making a beeline for the galley and the coffee she needed to function.
Less than ten minutes later, while sipping from her 24-ounce blended half espresso, half high-test coffee brewed with freeze-dried Robusta beans—what her crew referred to as “liquid oomph” due to the 600-plus milligrams of caffeine per cup—she made her way to the bridge. As she waited for the lift, she thought back on the taxing past three days.
Once safely out of range of the alien ship, they’d bided their time, observing carefully, and when it moved out of the sector the next day, heading in the opposite direction from the moon they hid behind, Maggie ordered their return to SperoMP13. This time she sent down drones, unwilling to risk more lives. The data transmitted back prompted more questions than answers. There were no heat signatures, C02 readings, or other human life signs. More curiously, the giant creatures seemed to have vanished.
Her crew wanted to continue the search, but the facts were undeniable; their valued teammates, and to many, close friends, were no longer on the planet. Where they had gone was anyone’s guess: taken somehow by the barbarians, or by the aliens up to their ship, or perhaps—per several suppositions, including her own—they were one and the same.
The unanswered questions were enough to amp the stress levels of her and the crew through the roof. And three days after the awful event, it showed no sign of abating, especially when she’d given the order to set a course for SperoMP2, the second most viable planet in the system.
Immediately, morale took a tailspin. Although they went about their duties like it was business as usual, her typically upbeat crew—despite being in space for as long as they had—did so with long-faced glum expressions. The commonplace smiles and laughter of a week ago had been replaced with faraway looks and sad sighs.
One of the junior officers muttered that it was like being on a flying morgue. An apt description, considering the morose demeanor of the crew, especially the captain.
As she arrived at bridge level and moved down the short corridor to the nerve center of the ship, she sucked down another healthy swig of mega-caffeine. When the doors slid open, a wave of tension hit her like a slap in the face. As she stepped inside, the alarms began to sound.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, shoving her coffee cup at the first person she passed.
“The alien ship, ma’am. It’s back.”
“Put it on-screen,” she ordered.
With a flicker, the digital display changed from an image of the shields coming up, one by one, around the ship, to an enormous spacecraft. It filled the entire screen, giving the impression that it was right on top of them.
“Reduce magnification so I can see the damn thing,” she snapped.
“This is standard resolution, ma’am. No magnification. That thing is as massive as it appears, believe me.”
“Holy shit! It’s got to be ten times the size of the Odyssey.”
“Eighteen, by my calculations, Captain.”
“Shields?”
“Activated and at full power,” Nala replied.
“That means they can see us.” Stealth was remarkable technology, making them virtually invisible, but it wasn’t perfect. They couldn’t stay hidden and shielded at the same time.
As soon as the words left her mouth, something launched from the alien ship.
“Prepare for impact!” she ordered, as Nala immediately announced it throughout the ship.
They braced and waited. If the shields held, they’d be all right. Five seconds passed, without a sound from anyone on the bridge. By the count of ten, Maggie glanced at Teagan. “It should have hit by now. Are we picking up anything on scans?”
“Yes,” Nala cried from behind her. “We have a hull breach!”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Put up the schematic,” she demanded of Teagan.
Once again, the image of the Odyssey appeared on the main viewing screen.
“Where?” Maggie asked as she searched for an indicator or hot spot.
“There,” Nala said, pointing to the rear section. “Level three, near engineering.”
Aloud, she called, “Bridge to engineering. We’ve picked up a hull breach at your location. Damage report.”
“We’re searching, Captain,” Cela, the chief engineer, called back, shouting to be heard over the alarms. “Haven’t found a speck out of place.”
“Keep me posted. Bridge, out.” She stared at the screen for a moment then turned in question to Nala, who could only shake her head. Eventually, she moved to stand beside Teagan, feeling helpless. “I don’t understand. What was it they launched? And why attack without trying to communicate first?” She spun to face Britta. “Anything yet?”
“All channels are silent, Captain. Shall I try to hail them?”
“Yes, demand an explanation for this aggression.”
Another alarm buzzed, and she twisted back to the main screen.
“What now?”
“We’ve found the breach, ma’am. The air ducts—” Nala couldn’t finish as she wavered in her seat a second before she slumped onto her control panel. Maggie had no sooner taken a step forward, when Kara, the co-pilot, drooped in her chair and slipped limply to the floor. She spun, seeing one after the other of her crew lapse into unconsciousness.
“Poison gas,” Maggie whispered weakly as she too succumbed. Her last lucid thought was, “God have mercy on us!”
***
Flanked by Allon, one of his captains, and Kanei, one of the many warriors who made up his elite crew, Roth walked down the short corridor to control center of the small alien ship. At their approach, the doors automatically slid open. He stopped short, to avoid stepping on the small female lying prone just inside the room.
Allon bent and scooped her up in his arms, while Roth moved further inside. He stopped in the middle of the room, and glanced around, counting twenty unconscious females. They would have to work quickly to get all three hundred transferred to the Dauntless before the effects of the sleeping gas wore off. His warriors were in the process of that already via a room-by-room, level-by-level search.
As he turned to leave, planning to supervise the transfers, his boot brushed against a soft body on the floor. At his feet, even tinier than the first, was a curled-up sleeping female. He crouched, his gaze running over her from head to toe, taking in each delicate feature.
She was stunning, and he was moved by some irresistible force to touch her. Pulling off a glove, he ran the back of his hand lightly across her cheek. It was downy soft, even more so than it looked, and her delicate repose reminded him of the pet purrada his sister had as a child.
Unable to keep from exploring further, he traced a fingertip along the line of her jaw and up over her rounded chin to the fullness of her lower lip. As he touched her mouth, a tingling sensation, like a jolt of electric heat, arced between them. It ran up his arm and throughout his body, stirring a raw, wild need, the strength of which he’d never felt before.
Surprised by his reaction, his first thought was to pull away, but his body overruled his brain, his cocked grew instantly rigid, and demanded he take her, now. Not an animal ruled by his loins, with every ounce of control he possessed, he tamped down the urge to touch, taste, and take, but he couldn’t move or look away.
His eyes devoured her, running over her hair, which was caught at the back of her head in a tight knot. It was glossy, the hue a light blonde with streaks of shimmering gold. The harsh hairstyle didn’t diminish her beauty, yet he wanted to see it loose and flowing around her shoulders.
Her skin was unusually fair, her lips full and rosy in color. She was slender, with delicate limbs and small bones, her wrists so fragile he could easily encircle them with his fingers, or snap them with a flick of his wrists. Her tight formfitting uniform revealed a tiny waist and lean legs, but also outlined feminine curves in all his favorite places.
“They are so small,” Kanei marveled aloud. “How can they possibly breed with us?”
Roth glanced up at the warrior; his image distorted slightly behind his inhalation device. He disliked the bulky things intensely but would have succumbed to the gas instantly without it.
“Jarlan says it is possible,” Roth concluded as he slipped his arms under the waiflike creature and rose with her held snugly against his chest. “If he thinks it is so, who are we to say otherwise? The man is an expert.”
Kanei’s hand reached out to stroke her skin as he had. Before he made contact, Roth stepped back, a feeling of possessiveness overwhelming him. That the man had dared try to touch her enraged him, and he found himself snapping, “Debate science later, Kanei. We need to get the females secured in our holding area on board the Dauntless before they come to.”
Both of his men glanced at him in surprise, though they made no mention of his abrupt behavior. He didn’t understand it himself, and strove for composure as he ordered further, “Captain Allon, control of the ship is yours.”
The man nodded in acknowledgment, clapped his hands, and rubbed them together with enthusiasm. Not over the other sleeping females, if Roth knew him as well as he thought he did, Allon was lusting over the alien technology.
His assumption proved correct when he said with a laugh, “Now comes the fun part.”
Roth shifted his gaze to the stunning creature in his arms. “Some might disagree with you on that.”
Without waiting for a response, he carried her out, and down three levels, joining a long line of his men who also carried a small woman in their arms as they returned to the cargo bay to be transported back to the Dauntless, and home to Primaria.