Chapter 4
Up close, she stole the oxygen from his lungs, his common sense, and his need to do bad things to people. Or at least to anyone except her.
So annoying.
Bad things were his specialty.
He was centuries old and she was young. He was cyborg and not quite human. She was s’kar. He was ruthless and loved killing, torturing. She was...not meek, didn’t faint at death or gore. Efficiently practical, he supposed, but she was an innocent by comparison. He loved making the innocent cry.
The next building had a rooftop party going on, which could be a problem.
To her right, the sun played peek-a-boo with the ragged horizon of atmosphere-scraping buildings. The soft mauve and pink light painted her, cut her away from the environment she passed through as if she were special, from beyond this pedestrian world.
He blinked and looked ahead. Also the law was still not coming.
Was that deliberate? Had someone planned this so that whatever they wanted to do would not be interfered with by law enforcement? Dalks were not usually skilled at hacking, even if it had been only a museum.
His next glance was cursory but thorough.
Such long lithe legs and those red boots and red coat – white birds flew across the back and down the sleeves. The frayed uniform exposed her. One rip revealed glimpses of the swell of a breast. She jiggled and flowed, and jiggled. Much of her did.
Even her tail was sexy with that white tuft at the end and fine white fur. His sxsynthcock was doing its thing but luckily black concealed.
They leaped and rolled, made the jump to the party building easily.
“You can go,” she murmured, jogging to a halt. “We’ve reached civilization.” The curve of her gesture encompassed the party-goers. “My checkpoint isn’t far. Thank you for your help.”
Ledderik cringed at the thank you. No one thanked him, except Zarblu.
Music jammed the air, banging at his skin, mingling with voices. Multicolored light from overhead globes swept over the drinkers and dancers. Arms and tentacles flailed to and fro, in time to the beat.
Molloks and humans and others. Among them would be males, perhaps a few species of the hermaphrodite and multisexual persuasion.
Not safe for her.
He thought to grab her arm but she was moving, approaching the party as if she owned it.
“This is not wise.” He took long strides to catch up then found himself inexplicably slowing.
Thorn transformed. Into a goddess, he’d swear it, dead.
Where her boots contacted the roof the very dust and dirt levitated, rising to above ankle level. The air shimmied about her, leaving a quivering wake as evidence of her passage. Sound muffled, as if his ears were covered, until all he could hear was the crunch of her boot soles, the heave of her warm breath and his, and the thud of blood. He was seeing close-up the effect she’d had in the bar – only this was worse. He smelled her heady femaleness.
Her hair came alive and writhed, as if washed by the thickened air.
Her clothes fluttered backward as they had when he and Thorn had leaped and run. Threads frayed and visibly unwound, untangled, ripped away and vanished into the dusk.
Ledderik wondered if he’d taken a few hallucinogens and forgotten the antidote. But no, this was her doing.
*This is not normal.*
Yeahhh. You can see it too? he asked the sword.
*Despite the fucking awful POV you gave me by shoving me behind your back? Yes. I conjugate fractal images, steady them for motion flaws, and then shazam I have situational awareness.*
“Squash the sarcasm. So what is this?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“I’ll have to think on it.”
Was the sword withholding? It’d have a finger-sized memory. “Never mind.” Ledderik sprinted.
Those on the fringes of the party had noticed Thorn’s approach. They peeled away, turning and shifting their attention to her by eyeball and tentacle, by sensory frond, and possibly also with a flock of dronelike airborne receptors in the case of at least one alien.
They surged slowly, but he’d bet his left synthflesh testicle they’d soon get some velocity under them.
“Not that way!” He clutched at her coat sleeve. At least this wasn’t disintegrating. “What...are you?”
“A hot babe?” Smorg interjected.
“How would you know?”
“May the Gods of Cybernetic Swordsmithing melt me if I lie but I can detect something about her.”
Ledderik grunted. Smorg was male? Figured.
He spun Thorn and saw her eyes were strangely different – bluer than fine pyrinean ceramics. When his fingers connected with her cheek, a sizzle of pure lust shot through him and probably out the other side. His cock risked blowing circuits as it strained to get even more erect.
He rocked in place, struggled for control, yet gained it. If he did anything to her, like dragging her away and doing stuff, it would not be here.
“We have to go elsewhere,” he said roughly, steering her in the direction of another building.
Though she’d staggered as she spun, she stayed with him. “This...” She indicated the people drifting their way. “Is fascinating.”
She sounded dazed or drunk, like some spaced-out elf from an antique D&D cabal. Perhaps on this new power she had over males?
“Come!” He bullied her into jumping to other building, though they had to climb down a level to do it – clinging to the building’s ornate façade while the lights of a floating advertisement cube cast luminous text over their faces and clothes.
Buy Starfriendly Insurance and get free alien disease upgrades.
“A little late,” he muttered.
Once they reached relative safety on the new rooftop, he pulled her to a stop.
The ad had followed them, drawn to their body heat, but now drifted away, leaving them in the gathering darkness, if not silence.
He turned, surveying for threats.
Muffled dance music, long shadows, and deserted – except for overhead flyer cabs, a flock of AI-feral dronelets basking in the last of the solar energy, a cyborg with blood-lust and a s’kar girl with...
Something unknown.
Ledderik took her by the shoulders, daring that weird frisson that sent a shockwave into him. He leaned over her to study her face. “What are you?” he asked again, though last time it’d been more rhetorical.
While he held her, some energy drained away, wound down, like an engine that’d switched off.
Her mouth was open and she seemed to understand. Her fingers curled over his, holding him.
He rarely allowed himself to close in with anyone like this, unless it was for work.
His list of possible bad things to do to a female resurfaced.
*Psionics* Smorg ventured.
What’s that? You mean like empaths? Levitation – that sort of thing? Throwing objects by mind?
*Perhaps*
“You’ve encountered it before?”
*Not sure.*
“Are you talking to me? Or your sword?” Thorn asked, eyebrow twisting. She uncurled her fingers from him and looked embarrassed.
“Sword.”
She was aware, her hair was behaving normally, and her eyes had lost the faraway blueness. Though her costume wasn’t so easily repaired.
Smorg was definitely evading. Doing a search of his memory should not be that difficult.
Having words with you later, he told it. Something like a raspberry sounded in his mind.
Ledderik stepped away, feeling the want in the fingers of his organic hand as he lost contact with Thorn. Addictive, this girl was. He didn’t mind as long as he could control his urges. Seriously, his dick seemed to be responding of its own accord, even as he took in her state of undress, the hints of curvaceous female under the somewhat shredded white uniform.
Okay, not so much hints as distinct warnings.
He liked this, her shape, always had liked females, just his dick was not him.
Thorn paced toward where a room-wide section of plasglass was set into the roof floor. She hugged her coat around her, wrapping it across her front. Light suffused through the plasglass, reflecting off her face.
He joined her and found himself looking down onto a floor of milling people, several stories below.
“Shoppers?”
“I guess so.”
Time passed, and he waited, sure she wanted to say more.
He could be a cyborg with patience. He’d waited months for the confession of one man, though that had been more than a century ago. Zarblu had curbed such tendencies. He wondered if he had gone soft.
After all, he had Thorn alone.
No one would know if he disposed of her.
But why should he?
He sighed. He hadn’t grown soft. He’d always had reasons for killing, just they were flimsier than most needed, and he was so very good at achieving his aims.
“Why...” she began hesitantly, “...are you the only one who doesn’t want to fuck me or kill me?”
Fuck – how dirty that word sounded coming from her mouth.
“Ahhh. That would be because I don’t like my cock. It’s new,” he explained. “And it just isn’t mine.” He tilted his head. “Plus when I kill I have reasons. I’m a little set in my ways. I like doing things...correctly.”
“How many have you used it on? If you don’t mind saying.”
Thorn was definitely practical.
“None.”
It took her a while before she said more. “I have a problem you can help me with.”
There was that unseemly help word again.
“If you want to. My naming ceremony is tonight. This...thing that’s happening will interfere, and what you just said makes asking this simpler.”
“Oh?” He smiled. “What can I do for you?”
*I know I know* Smorg piped up, sounding excited.
Quiet.
“Explain – how do I explain?” she muttered. “My sexual cycle has come earlier than I expected. Normally it’d just mean I might attract a few s’kar and that’s nothing. It wouldn’t interfere with the ceremony. But this. This...” Thorn shook her head. “It’s strange. I cannot predict what might happen. Being different is not considered okay among s’kar. And attracting others...other species, is very, very wrong.”
She stared at him, looking more than a little lost.
“Yes?”
“They might disallow my naming. I’d lose the captaincy of Jocelyn to Baldor. I might never be named. I have to get my father’s ship and his last name, Ironhand. He was Nomad Ironhand.”
“Ironhand?” He lowered his head, peering at her past his brow. It seemed a cyborg name.
“Yes.”
Liquid shone at the lip of eyelid and eye. Tears, impending tears.
So he had some leverage over her. She needed him.
He was going into LoL, remember. What use was this leverage to him?
“What do you need done? Someone terminated?”
He’d had his last-day fun, killed a few...legally, but it was still nice to have one last fling and if he was lucky she –
“I want you to fuck me.”
Ledderik blinked, managed not to swallow his tongue. “Why? Why do you want that?”
“I know!” Smorg again.
He hissed through clenched teeth. “Speak again, Smorg, and I will toss you over the side.”
Still hugging the coat to herself, Thorn rattled out the rest of her explanation.
“Our cycles don’t end until we mate, with a male, with a...” She gestured at him, at pants level, where his wayward cock was still being all stiff. “One of those. Once that’s done it will give me a week, I think, before the next phase hits.”
He nodded, speechless, but thinking through this, digging up the vaguely familiar facts. If not pregnant, the s’kar cycled repeatedly for a while, then went asexual for another half-year, as calculated by the phases of their original planet.
It might not work. He was equipped with an artificial cock and he wasn’t s’kar. Somehow, he was disinclined to point this out. His list of things to do before he went to LoL was now one item longer.
“When?”
“Now is best. I barely have two hours before the ceremony starts.” She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist. “We might have the law descending on us soon.”
“Once they get their fingers out of their asses,” Smorg suggested.
“You have a very rude sword.”
“I do.” Melted, dunked in acid, and thrown over the side, Smorg.
Oooo. I shiver with anticipation.
“I think I like it. I like straight-forwardness.” She nodded.
Like solving her sex goddess problem by having a random cyborg fuck her?
“Very well. My way then. I do this my way.” He looked about the rooftop for somewhere fitting for his first sexual experience. “Come with me.”
Away from the plasglass for starters.
He always preferred to do whatever he did in darkness. In the dark, dirty deeds became dirtier, plus it was harder to be prosecuted unless night vision was involved.
From where his hand touched her wrist, a dark, insidious warmth spread.
“Fuck,” she whispered. “Happening again. Coming more often.”
He smiled. For the first time, ever, he felt some ownership of his cock, understood the possible joys of inserting it into a female.
A large mass of shoppers seemed to have congealed directly below. Her effect couldn’t possibly reach that far, could it? He focused down enough to see the hair strands on their heads, yet still wasn’t sure. Probably a coincidence.
“Come.”
Beneath an awning once erected to screen some unknown people from the sun, amid an unexpected jungle of neglected plants, he found an area of synthetic grass. Though covered with dust and dried leaves, it was clean. He laid her down on the soft coolness, with the stars popping out above against the inky sky.
How romantic some might find this setting – if it not for the buzz of cabs overhead and the insurance ad cube that’d returned to hover. If the thing had cameras, they might feature on someone’s private porno.
He crouched and leaned over her, where she lay on her back already panting. He’d not done a thing, except tow her here and have her lie down. Was there an inherent arousal factor in a male being poised above a girl?
Interesting. He learned fast and this was the one piece of the universe of experience he’d not sampled in his three hundred plus years – sex.
She transformed again, changed, whatever it was that happened to her.
With every beat of her heart and squirm of body the dust about them shuddered and jumped into the air. Leaves on the surrounding plants whispered as they brushed at each other, and a faint tang of citrus blossomed.
Thorn wasn’t exactly clothed. She’d shrugged off her coat at his prompting and dropped it to the side. She’d left on her boots but apart from those all she wore was this disintegrating white uniform. Present tense with the disintegrating. Threads pulled themselves apart as he watched. Psionics? He decided he liked psionics.
“Laid out like this under me, you look like a goddess of sex,” he murmured, allowing a throaty undertone to creep in.
“I thought...you didn’t know how to seduce.” Her voice was husky, hesitant. Her hips wriggled and her thighs squeezed together, making the V where her cunt hid from view seem fascinating.
When he laid his cyborg hand over her throat and caressed her there, she did even more of the wriggling and squeezing. Noted, he thought. Lots of notes were going to be made.
He would get her to spread herself there, soon. Or do it himself. On the checklist.
“Seducing...it’s coming to me.” Definitely. She didn’t seem to mind him taking his time. Since he’d never had the opportunity to examine a woman under him, a living breathing woman who wanted him to fuck her, he was sure a few more seconds of study were warranted.
With his mastery of torture, he could see this, sex, being a natural addition to his skill sets, and he never did anything by halves. Never, ever.
Her plump lips alone fascinated him, when they’d moved as she spoke, or when her small tongue swept out and slipped across, wetting the seam, before slipping away again. The dust of tiny hairs on her cheeks, a little more than humans, less than a feline. The fine lines of her white eyebrows. The flutter of her eyelashes.
“You are beautiful,” he said quietly, surprising even himself. “Also, this uniform is falling apart.”
“Mmm.” She undulated, deliberately drawing him in. Whatever attraction she generated to males, in this moment she was in thrall as much as he.
The elegance of her neck, of her breasts. When she breathed, cloth shifted and peekaboo’d the edges of her areola. No wonder males made such fools of themselves.
When Zarblu had mounted his sacrifices on the table, he’d often watched, and desired to penetrate them, to do...incalculable and often undefined things. He’d lusted in a very frustrating way.
He bent his head and licked her breast tips, suckled for a few moments, curious the shivers and gasps he elicited.
Slowly, snapping threads, he wormed his forefinger beneath a particularly damaged part over her abdomen where her navel and belly skin showed. He began to tear upward. The uniform broke apart as if made of feathers. Torn filaments wormed into the air then were blown away.
Such raw beauty under his hands.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she whispered.
“Of course.”
He didn’t, not exactly, not precisely, not like he knew the levels of pain an andurian could endure before he died.
Not like he knew how long an ellurian could survive underwater.
He’d learn.
When he tortured, he submersed himself in his victim. Love though...fucking someone was new to him. The theory was to make them happy, to make Thorn desire, to make her wet and beg for the entry of his cock.
And he did know anatomy back to front, and inside out.
Especially the inside out part.
Sound was zeroing in again, shrinking down to only this. It muffled anything but the sounds Thorn made.
Blood susurrated, thudded, swamping him. Blood and woman. Flesh and fucking. The reality of becoming one with a female, of burying a part of himself in her.
Except he couldn’t quite do that.
He leaned over her and kissed her bared nipples, one then the other, making paths with tongue and teeth.
Thorn breathed harder, rougher, and she grasped his forearm. “More.”
The coat would cover her torso if buttoned. She would get by even if naked above the mid-thigh level. He could do what he liked.
“Your wish is my command.” Violence beckoned. Purring harshly, a noise he’d not made since forever, he ripped apart the uniform, creating a ragged tear from navel to neck.
Then he ripped it some more until only shreds hung from her body.
His last act of life – fucking a s’kar girl who begged him to, and maybe starring in a porno.
She writhed under him like a whore from a synth-porn, squeaked as he bit, opened her legs for his mouth when he reached there and tried to pull his head closer. He resisted. Her tail lashed in annoyance.
“My way.”
Though frowning, she released him then flopped back her head.
He pulled apart her thighs and held her legs while he explored this lush valley of Thorn – her cunt and clit, using teeth and tongue in ways he’d never thought he’d get a chance to do.
When she appeared close to coming, he flipped her over and pressed her to the grass while he experimented with several more combinations of fingers and tongue.
She was so delightfully vulnerable, exuding sexuality, her cunt flooding with wetness as she wriggled – enough that it dripped from her and puddled under her ass and tail.
This was as spellbinding as a torture session.
He paused to admire how his three fingers were stuck in her cunt quite deeply in spite of her feeble and ineffective protests.
“I didn’t quite say to do that...” Thorn gulped, clearly struggling to regain breath and sanity.
“My way,” he reminded her. “Besides, you asked me.” He shoved his fingers deeper, then out and in a few times, hearing the squelch as her walls yielded to his thrusts.
Her whimper was very unconvincing, and he bit back a laugh.
Better than fucking torture. Better.
“More?” he inquired, in a mild voice. “Hmm?”
“You are a tease, mister cyborg. More? Yes. I think...” She swallowed. “...more.”
He needed to stop her thinking.
Led angled up her lower body using a hold on her tail then burrowed his head between her spread legs. He bit around her clitoris and elsewhere, consuming her with his tongue – licking, lapping, toggling her clit, and sucking. She liked the sucking, from her choked sobs. The plump little button was the key to her joy and he couldn’t help wondering how many times he could make her come, if he tried.
There was a time limit however. He had to stop pleasuring her this way.
“Your cock. Please. That.”
To stop her cycle she needed him to fuck her pussy, to insert himself.
He rose to his knees, freed his synthcock and grasped the shaft, squeezed his fingers in the right combination, gave the mental command, and then he twisted it and the cock detached into his hand.
With a slick synchronized move he unplugged his fingers from her and instead wormed the fullness of the cock into her mess of a pussy, until it was buried to the hilt. He gave it another shove to be sure and held it in place.
“Oh!” Thorn arched. “Oh gods! Don’t. Slower. Please...please. Are you?” She twisted her head sideways to look. Sweat dribbled into her eye. Her mouth opened wider as she took in where he kneeled.
“Never said I’d be connected to my cock.”
“Wait. You shouldn’t. It mightn’t –”
“If it was going to at all, it will. No reason it won’t. I’m male and this is my cock stuck up inside you as far as I can thrust it.”
“I don’t know... I don’t –”
“Shush.” Then he pinned her in place with a knee over her tail, fucking her well and deep with his series 6.4 sxsynthcock while he played with her engorged clit, and he watched her react.
Watching... Coaxing... Forcing more from her. Making her fall into pieces. No longer the composed and perfect s’kar officer.
Words left her, instead she voiced a magnificent and never-ending string of incoherent curses, groans, and grunts. He grinned, loving it all. Those noises...
When she came, clawing at the synthetic grass, her tail curling and looping, he made sure to save the vid he’d recorded through his cybernetic eye. Her cries as she orgasmed for a full ten point two seconds left him with an evil grin plastered to his face.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck.” She buried her head in her arm, her breathing uncontrolled, unhinged, un-everything that might be termed ladylike.
He decided making a girl go all unladylike, making her gush and whimper, squeal and wriggle, while he forced a huge dick or anything up inside her, was close to the pinnacle of thrills out of all his fucked-up thrills.
My, he could get used to this.
Especially now he had a baseline to beat. Ten point two. One orgasm. If time wasn’t of importance, Ledderik was certain he could have made her have more.
He ran his finger down her sweaty quivering spine with the trail of fine, white hair, all the way to between the swells of her ass cheeks and down to her still-stuffed cunt. He extracted the cock from her, marveling at how it resisted the pull, at how she’d made it sticky and dripping. He wedged his finger inside her to the timing of a few caught breaths from the exhausted Thorn.
How she squirmed... The pulse of her cunt squashing onto him.
Then he pulled it out and tasted her, ran that finger onto his tongue and sucked it all off.
This was how a female tasted when she’d orgasmed under him.
He liked it. A lot.
Maybe LoL didn’t have all the fun copyrighted after all.
Ledderik retrieved the bear from her coat and proceeded to feel it for hidden parts, to eye it for anything suspicious.
Nothing.
He tucked it back into the coat and sat down beside her again, waiting.
Thorn rolled over, and he took her hand.
Such intricate things, hands. Hers was especially fascinating. Soft. He brought it to his mouth and kissed the back. Thorn grumbled at him, one eye opening.
He didn’t understand himself, for once, for the first time in his long life.
It was as if something was missing.
The stars were fully out above though pale against the shine of the city. He lay back on his arms and watched her rise shakily and rearrange her clothes, pulling the destroyed white uniform into place. She donned her red coat and buttoned it down the front until the disaster he’d made of her was hidden.
Her face was flushed. Her white hair still mussed. Originally it might’ve passed for some perfect piece of sculpture. He’d fix it for her if she asked but if she didn’t notice, he’d let her walk away like that.
What could possibly surpass this night?
A cock he’d owned as truly his? To do things with it to Thorn, this s’kar female who somehow reached into his guts and enticed him like no other woman had ever – that would beat this night.
Except he had no time, no time at all, he’d signed away his real life and it was due, now.
Tonight.