Chapter 2
The Xatar warriors seemed to have surrounded the skyscraping tower he and Ember hid inside. The thick missile-resistant plas-glass admitted no sound. The quietness was odd, considering.
Quiet, except for the tap of Ember’s fingers behind him and her little voice as she gave instructions to the core of the building.
Hid was perhaps the wrong word. This was the CESS headquarters tower and Ember’s mission was to retrieve certain data from it before war consumed the city. His mission was to keep her safe, alive, and enable their exit from the planet.
He’d failed. Most of the escort team had been killed or captured on the way here. A few cowards had tried to escape and he’d watched them brought down and killed. Their ship was a distant plume of smoke wriggling upward from a park a few klicks away.
Hoss leaned a hand on the junction of the ceiling and the window frame so he could peer down at where building joined land. Black teemed there. The Xatar did love their black armor. They swarmed like insects in their thousands and thousands, waving their dark banners of war and morality. Outside, the light dimmed. Dusk came.
Paired red dots of Xatar helmet eyes glowed up at him. A carpet of red dots. Those and the lightning-jagged horns of their leaders waving about were harbingers of doom. Glimpsed flares of light and the occasional shudder underfoot told him they were attempting to breach the building’s defenses.
Doom. Hoss rather liked the feel of that word. He could hear it roll about in his mind. People thought little went on in his head because he said few words but he merely judged well before he spoke.
A half breed Orc and Shag, such as he was, needed to learn early when to speak and when to be silent.
He raised his head and the long tail of hair running partway down his back slid as he did so. He should cut it again. Shaving off body hair, filing his claws, and keeping his head hair short was his means of seeming less Shag, more Orc, more civilized. On a day such as today, some might be planning their death speech. Not he. He planned his next prettification routine. He rolled his shoulders, pleased at the warm, massive strength in them. He was young, strong. The Xatar would be smears if they dared come find him or dared to harm Ember.
She was his charge, his responsibility, and he took such things seriously.
Yet, he failed.
The surrounding city grew darker as power died, or brighter as destruction lit it up with the orange and red of blossoming flames...or the stark white of lasers and missile engines, or the scored red of rail gun projectiles streaking across the sky.
“Night’s coming in thirty spokmins approx. There is still no answer to your distress message.” He said that in an almost contemplative murmur before turning to Ember. He braced himself for the impact of seeing her.
“I gathered. I’m pretty near done. So all we need is a ride out of here. Nothing more,” she ended, her tone trailing off in what he read as despair.
Her hair skimmed her shoulders, the red a flamboyant mix of shades she probably paid a zillion coin to create.
What a beauty. Little silver-and-black dress with the frothy lace hem. Her long legs sculpted by red tights with pink cats running down the outside seam. His rut was coming and this female sent his male hormones into a frenzy. Her smell was enough. Her looks, my-my, he so wanted to stick something inside her.
Untouchable though. She was higher-echelon staff. She was a human. He was a scruffy lower-class military orc slash shag.
How she would make his balls sing, collared and leashed as his pet, at his feet while he roared and faced the ululating hordes of the Xatar.
He’d scream her name and die gloriously bathed in blood and flames.
Yeahhh. Dream on.
“Urrr,” he rumbled quietly. The lace of her skirt edges always pulled his gaze. A hand with claws like his could easily push that upward, or rip her clothes to tatters and reveal the glory of those breasts that jiggled, just a little, whenever she moved.
Not that he needed to do much to see more.
When she leaned over, as she was, to probe within the white cylinder she’d pulled from the building’s data core...he felt drool gather in his mouth. When she leaned, her red-clad ass peeked into view from under the skirt, and her scent multiplied in strength.
“Got it.” Ember spun, eyes still on the white rectangular data storage unit, or DSU, she carried. Coin-sized blue lenses lay over her eyes. “Got it. Now we can go.” She looked fully at him, surely too late to miss his gulp or the flare of heat in his gaze. “Can we? Somehow?”
“Not yet.” He slowly shook his head then returned to his position at the window, gestured. “Out there we would die in seconds, unless they deigned to make us prisoners. We need a ship.”
“The building’s air defenses still function. Only a CESS ship can get in and not be shot down.”
“Yes. Though we can switch them off, if someone else comes.”
Beside him now, she pressed close to the window then said quietly but firmly. “You’ve got a long gun. Lend it to me. I want to get at least one of them.”
Hoss peeked sideways. What? The kitten had claws after all.
“No. You’d have to break the window. You’d attract attention we don’t need. They aren’t shooting up at us.”
“Fudge buckets,” she muttered.
Even her cursing was normally tame.
He subtly pressed the camo switch above the crotch of his skin-tight camo pants.
Black was good for avoiding being shot but turning on the environment-duplicating camo meant his huge erection also showed less. Now he’d look like a window when he turned and not an aroused beast.
“Camo?” Ember almost sounded disappointed. “Do you need that? I can barely see you. You’re the only humanoid left alive in here. Please?”
Fuck. Hoss sighed then switched it off. “The signal will keep going by itself. Shall we seek other things to do?” May as well face her, you coward. They must look to accumulating weapons, maps of the city, the building blueprints –
“Sure. Sure.” She tucked the DSU into a skirt pocket then perched the data spectacles in her hair. “Let’s get drunk, shit-faced drunk, do some drugs, and...” She hesitated. “Everything I need to do before I die. Because we’re going to soon, aren’t we, Hoss?”
Said in that clipped tone, with all the syllables tucked away where they should be, he refused to comprehend at first. Besides, she’d said his name. She never did that.
“What? No! No we aren’t.”
“I don’t believe you. Tell me how we get out of this?”
Another boom shook the building. Then another. The lights flickered. This place could hold the Xatar off for a few more hours.
Choose wisely, he told himself. Go out in a blaze of glory, all weapons firing. Or go out drunk, after sharing some potentially close-up time with Ember.
“Let’s get drunk.”
“Good.” Her smile was almost a grimace. “The exec office has a bar. What’s your poison?”
“Poison?” He trailed after her, still watching that twitching ass. How did human females manage it? They just walked, and everything down below flowed. “Uhhh, coffee. It gets me drunk.”
“Wow. Cheap. Come, I will brew you a perfect coffee and we will sit somewhere magnificent and watch the sun go down on this world.”
And so it happened. She sipped and slurped some tea-colored alcohol called Spurghowzer while he drank coffee. It was amazing coffee, and he had a sexy human female sitting beside him at the edge of the executive garden they’d found on the very top floor. Her scent intoxicated him beyond his worst imaginings, beyond the effects of coffee, but he was past worrying over the size of his throbbing cock.
Their legs dangled over the edge of the garden terrace. The vast window ahead showed a horizon marked by war and flames. Here was still perfect. Her bare feet even touched his now and then. They’d kicked off their boots.
“Beautiful.” Ember raised a glass toward the black sky. Glowing specks and squares marked the battlesnarkers that cruised overhead. “Still no one coming. We’re fucked, I think.”
He only grunted. Not much to add to that. “I am happy.”
It was true.
“Have you ever...” Past the slur in her voice, he heard a swallow. “Have you ever thought of making love to a woman, Hoss?”
His world grew a few cracks. His heart stopped. “No.” Liar. “You mean...a human woman?” He kept his gaze rigid and straight ahead, though hope was rising.
Be calm, be logical. This doesn’t mean anything.
But the rut had hold of him. Take. Fuck. Make it yours!
Oh, fuck off. He could be iron, emotionless. He was orc!
“I have a thing, you see.”
A thing? He glimpsed her lower her glass to the terrace floor on the other side then climb to her knees. Then she reached up and laid a hand on his shoulder. Hoss tensed. From the corner of his vision, he saw the approach of the female’s face. “Can I?”
Finally, he turned his head and regarded her. Jaw clenched he thought through his answer and tried not to squeak as he replied.
“It is not outside my own desires. However, my job is to keep you safe. This would not be safe. Trust me, you do not want to do this.”
“I trust you.” She rose to her knees and her hand grazed the top of his thigh then landed gracefully and agonizing over the shaft of his cock. The weight of the girl’s hand... He let out a strangled curse that threatened to become a groan.
“Hoss. Ummm. Would I fit?”
Then he did curse and he swiveled to place his hands either side of her waist, lift her over him and deposit her straddling his lap, thighs to either side. But he was so big compared to her that her folded legs slipped and her body split apart as far as it could. Her skirt slipped up her thighs.
“You’ll fit enough,” he growled.
With fingers and one claw, he tore a hole in the crotch of her tights then he undid his fly and released his cock. It sprang upright between them and he raised her and held her above. “Keep your legs spread.”
Even before he touched her, her mouth was parted, her breath fevered, and she wriggled enough to tempt a sworn celibate...which he was not.
Hoss raised her even higher so he could scrutinize her pussy and saw that it was wet and glistening and red, and very swollen. Ready for him. He swore again.
She clearly wanted him to penetrate her first, but he decided to delay such a magnificent moment. Instead he lowered her enough that his tongue could taste her cunt. With her legs draped down his back, he began to lick. Soon she was writhing over his mouth and begging for more. Begging loudly, whimpering.
Aaargh. If only this had happened another time.
He paused to consider this human female he’d always considered untouchable and angelic. “And what is this thing you say you have? Would it be a desire for an orc to shove his big cock inside you?”
When she remained silent, he licked her again until she was panting even more loudly and squealing – though the squeals were more for the biting of her cunt and thighs. Delicious girl.
“Tell me. Tell me before I attempt to impale you on me.”
Though she pouted and frowned, at last she spoke. “Yes. Yes, except I never ever –”
“You have now,” he said as he lowered her over his cock, and he smiled as he penetrated slowly, as he forged inside her slutty little hole and she babbled at how good it felt. Her small hands clawed and clutched at his chest.
He was an inch inside, then two, before he stopped and smirked lecherously. “You are so tight. More may split you a little. More?”
“Fuck. Fuck.” For a microsecond she looked flustered by her own swearing. “What...a question. Fuck me. Yes. More. I want to feel as much of you as...”
So he forced her down farther, watching her exulted expression blossom and turn orgasmic, while the pressure on his shaft became intense, feeling her moisture gush over him and her pussy muscles clamp down and release, and clamp again... Perfect. A dirty and perverted coming together of orc and human and so perfect.
He was in, but a few inches only. With time and training and enough of his come soaking into her cunt, done over and over, and over again, he would open her. She could take more of his length.
They had no time. Groaning, head flung back, he released into her, letting everything go, even if most was forced out to dribble and pour from her stuffed-full cunt. It coated his thighs, flooded onto the terrace and under his ass even.
The building rocked and the lights went out for a few seconds. From the sounds, the Xatar had broken in. What a way to spend his last minutes.
He cuddled her to his body with his cock inside her, growing smaller but still large enough to trigger her into a few post-orgasmic climaxes. Those made her gasp and shudder.
“We are done. Do you wish to meet death dressed or like this?”
The chime of an incoming message made her flinch. It’d come from her data spectacles that were askew but still perched on her head. When she raised her head, she must have flicked over the output and the message became audible to him.
“...the Floating Leaf incoming to extract princess from CESS tower. We are targeting your location. Thirty seconds to impact. Please turn off all defenses in fifteen seconds, counting from...now!”
“Oh shit. Oh shit.” Ember shook herself and her confusion segued into a professional demureness. Which was remarkable considering the amount of come on her. “Acknowledged Floating Leaf! Turning off...now!”
Which was how it came to be that Hoss was only just extracting himself from the girl when the ceiling vaporized and a ship landed in the terrace garden, with her engines fracturing and blowing away most of the building’s top-story walls as well as furniture and sundry other bits in a tail of destruction.
A cold wind blasted past, tumbling paper and debris into the air. Side-hull engines roared, melting floor and balancing the ship precisely. The full weight of her could crush this tower.
The main hatch of the ship had been positioned opposite them. It slid open and a man jumped out. Make that a cyborg jumped out. His red coat flared and was swept sideways. Blue engine glare reflected off and ruffled the edges of most objects, silhouetting him in azure.
Hoss lumbered to his feet while tucking away his dick. Stuttered some apology, Ember plucked at her dress.
The cyborg yelled. “Fucking well run, you idiots!”
He ran, scooping up Ember, and flung them both into the hatch, to roll across the deck.
The hatch shut, the hefty cyborg slid through to stand before them, stamping legs planted wide, magnets clamping him to the deck. With a crunch and a huge tremor, the ship rose and blasted upward and away.
“Welcome to my ship.”
“I’m Hoss.” He didn’t bother getting up, only sat there with legs sprawled and nodded at the captain. If the ship gravity failed, being down here might give him a few extra seconds to avoid being splattered.
“I’m –” Ember began.
“The princess slut. I know, I know. You’re lucky I haven’t killed you already.”