I’ve never had a man look at me like this. I’ve never had a man touch me. Then again, Droka is not a man. He is an alien male. A warrior.
And I know that he is my mate. He’s used the word before, though it’s not the word that humans use for it. We call it being in love or getting married.
I’m not sure I like the Zalaryn word.
Love. You can fall out of love. Marriages can end in divorce. But a mate? That sounds like forever.
And right now we are saying our vows—not with words, but with our bodies. With our sweat and our moans and our gasps for air. With the pleasure we give each other.
This is ritual. This is sacrament.
When he gets on top of me, I feel his power. His strength. But it’s not alarming. Not frightening. Because I know that his power and his strength will be used to protect me at all costs.
I’ve forgotten everything in this moment. The feel of his erection, hot and pulsing between my legs, is driving me mad. I’ve never felt like this—the burning heat in my belly, the insistent almost angry throbbing in my clit. It’s so much more intense than when we were in the escape pod.
Because I know that we’re not going to stop until he enters me.
The desire blots out everything else. My head is filled with nothing but urgency. Hunger. Desire. A need for this lustful itch to be scratched.
When he takes down his breeches, I can’t help but feel a twinge of panic. He’s so big. I’m not sure if it could fit inside me. When he presses it against my opening, I know that I’m right. There’s no way. It’s so wide, so… fat.
And I want it. I want him to find a way to push it in. I want to feel that hard pulsing heat inside me.
I feel embarrassed just having these thoughts. This is my poor dead parents’ worst nightmare. Their only daughter underneath a hulking, lusty alien male. His gigantic erection about to ruin my virtue.
But I don’t feel like I’m about to be ruined. I feel like I’m about to be saved.
He starts to rub his cock against my clit, sliding it up and down. It’s so slippery, I don’t think I’ve ever had so much wetness between my legs in my life. It feels good what he’s doing, but it’s not enough. I need him inside. There’s some deep-seated primal instinct that wants him to plunge inside me.
My whole body is electrified with the need and I might go insane if I don’t get it. I can tell that he’s holding back, not wanting to hurt me.
“Put it inside me, Droka,” I whisper. I close my eyes as I say the words, unable to look at him. If I do, that odd feeling in my chest might rip me apart. That powerful energy—like an orb of something hot and bright and glowing.
The bonding. My reaction to his hormones and chemicals. Whatever it is, I can’t fight it. It’s taking over my body and mind.
When I whisper in his ear, he lets out a low groan and tenses up. He reaches down and grabs himself, guiding it towards my opening. He’s pushing again, and I feel the resistance—but only for a second. Because he breaks through in a flash, and then everything in my life changes. Everything is clear. I know I can’t go back to how I lived before. Alone. Isolated. Never knowing the thrill of a man’s touch. Not realizing just how big the empty pit in my heart really was.
I feel myself stretch out, my lips wrapped around his erection. He pulls it out slowly and I feel every sensation as he withdraws inch by excruciating inch. I feel my opening stretching, I feel my lips parting, held open by his girth, I feel my inside passageway gripping onto his shaft, as if trying to hold on. Trying to keep him inside of me, where he belongs.
Then he plunges back in, just as slowly—inch by excruciating inch. My excitement is building. I feel like a cat in heat: unable to control my raw need. When he thrusts it in all the way, the tip of his cock pushes against some wonderful spot deep inside me and I scream out—my cries primal and not at all lady-like. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. A pleasure that’s deep, and raw, and I want more of it.
Now that I’m stretched out a little, he’s able to quicken his pace, and with every deep thrust, his tip pushes against that spot again, over and over. Before long, I’m panting and grunting like a farm animal—but I can’t seem to care. This feels too good, the bond between us strengthening every time he pushes back into me.
He props himself up higher on his hands, straightening his arms. I open my eyes and look up at him. I expect to feel embarrassed—to feel shy and awkward. He’s claiming my body in the most sacred way. Taking my virginity. Piercing through my opening with his big alien cock. The act that haunted my childhood. The act that threatened to ruin my life—the fear of which caused my family to go into hiding for these last ten years.
But as I look up at his eyes, I feel none of that old fear and dread. I don’t know what I feel—but it’s pure and honest, even if it is also filthy and carnal.
Every time he thrusts into me and hits that spot, I scream and he grunts in approval. A little smile touches one corner of his mouth. He likes doing this to me. He likes knowing that his cock is the instrument of my pleasure. His eyes are half-closed, but his stare is just as intense. His eyes are locked onto mine, boring into my soul.
I feel the heat of his stare and the mounting pleasure welling up inside me. Something strong is building, and I surrender myself to it. It’s deep and light at the same time. I feel like each thrust is pushing me higher up and up and up. I recognize this as another climax building, but it feels different than when he was licking me. That was a sharp and quick pleasure. This is slow, and hot, and all-encompassing. It’s a pleasure that stems from my core, not from my clit.
I work towards it, pushing my hips against his thrusts, finding a rhythm—our bodies working together, every push feeling more intense. I close my eyes and wait for the plateau to erupt.
And it does, seizing my body in paralyzing spasms. Every muscle is tight, wracked with wave after wave of pleasure. He pushes into me harder and faster, intensifying the waves—and I scream out like a deranged beast. This takes over my entire body. My entire mind. My entire soul. It seems to last forever, but it finally starts to ebb. The waves recede, but don’t entirely stop. Each thrust still brings a low-burning fire in my core.
He lowers himself, propped on his elbows, his mouth in my ear. He pushes faster and faster and I can tell that his restraint has broken. He’s abandoning himself to the same reckless desire. He’s groaning now—his voice a deep, continuous shiver down my spine. He stops for a fraction of a second, then pushes even deeper inside me and releases spurt after spurt of his hot fluid.
He holds me for a moment, resting some of his weight on me. He’s so hot. So warm. The feel of our chests pressed together is almost as satisfying as the feeling of our other, more secret parts pressed together.
We doze. After the last few days, I think we deserve it.
- - -
I wake some time later, forgetting momentarily where I am. The private chambers of the Captain of the Imperial Guard. This place is like nothing I could ever have imagined.
Too bad I’ll never be able to stay.
I’m a fugitive. A Marked female, who failed to report to her Zalaryn overlords on her twentieth birthday.
He’s the Captain of the Imperial Guard, sworn to protect the High King and the capitol with his entire being. Sworn to take no mate and sire no offspring—competitors for the loyalty and protection he’s pledged to the crown.
This sweetness will not last. Blinded by lust, I forgot this harsh fact of reality.
I am innocent no longer in every sense of the word. Somehow, I thought our bond would make a difference. If we consummated (exchanged genetic material, as he unromantically puts it) then our bond would be real and true and somehow supersede all of the other obstacles.
But the forging of a bond doesn’t dissolve an oath. It doesn’t erase the tattoo from my shoulder.
I roll over, meaning to slip out of bed so I can wash, but his arm is wrapped tightly around my waist. I decide to stay in bed— to relish this moment as long as possible. It will perhaps be my sweetest memory. Perhaps the only thing to comfort me in my unknown future.
Because I know my future will be bleak, and I’ll need all the sweet memories I can store in my stupid little brain.
I know why these Zalaryns take human females. Why they auction us off to the highest bidder. For pleasure, of course—but mostly for breeding. When I stand on the auction house stage, naked and with a crowd of alien males inspecting my body, they’ll be purchasing a vessel. A pure and vacant womb to carry their sons.
None of those warriors wants his offspring to be carried by a tainted, defiled woman.
They don’t want a woman who has already taken the seed of another male. They’re repelled by the idea. No male would ever bond with a female who has already known the touch of another male. Those sensory pads can detect the presence of another male, even if it’s long since. They deem the woman an unsuitable mate.
That’s fine by me. I wouldn’t be able to bond with another one of them. It’s not like love, where humans talk of falling in and out of love—having courtships and relationships that end and moving on to the next one.
This bonding is different. I don’t know how I know this, seeing as how I’ve been hiding on a barren planet nearly my entire life, but I know it in my bones to be true. Once a Zalaryn male bonds with his mate, that’s it. End of discussion.
I don’t wish to bond with another, even if such a thing were chemically and physically possible with their species.
No male would want to bond with me, and that’s fine. But no male would want me for a breeding vessel either—and that’s not so fine.
Just because I’ve lost my virginity, and am no longer suitable for breeding, it doesn’t mean I still don’t have value.
I know what they do with the girls who aren’t virgins. This was a big reason why my parents got me off of Earth—they didn’t want to risk me getting a boyfriend and losing my virginity.
Because the Zalaryns still take their Marked women, even if they were foolish enough to lose their virginity. But they’re not auctioned for mating and breeding purposes.
They are auctioned to owners of brothels. They’re to be pleasure slaves for any lusty alien with a coin in his waist-pouch. There aren’t a lot of human pleasure slaves in the brothels (most Marked females guard their virtue fiercely, for fear of this sad fate) but the ones that are surrender all freedom. They live their life collared and chained to a bed, letting an endless line of males take a turn with their exotic, human cunt.
I’m mad at myself. Mad at him too—he surely knows the customs of his people, yet he claimed my virginity like it was his birthright, when he knew full-well that it was not his to take.
Knowing that his actions would condemn me to a life of brothel servitude.
I share an equal part of the blame, I know—and it’s hard to be too angry when his comforting arm is still wrapped around me, our bodies pressed together, our bare skin exchanging heat.
We are bonded.
But it doesn’t change a thing.
There’s a sharp knock on the door. Angry. Insistent. I jump, and feel my heart race. It thuds so painfully in my chest that I hope I’m actually having a heart attack. Then I can die in Droka’s arms, and not have to worry about the consequences of my foolish choices.
“Open the door,” a commanding voice shouts from the other side. “Captain Droka, you are commanded to open the door.”
“Holy void,” he mutters. “What is—” but then the words come, and they are the words we both knew would come. The words we both dread.
“Captain Droka,” the voice shouts, “you must relinquish the Marked female at once.”