Toxic Desire Read online

  I nod and roll up the cuffs of his pants so they’re still covering my boots.

  I’m covered from the waist down. From the waist up, however, I’m topless. It’s not terrible. I don’t have breasts enough to bounce much, and my chest muscles are firm from my decades of training.

  I strap on my weapons belt, my blaster holstered. His machete in my one hand, my computer in the other, I am ready to make tracks.

  Oten stands staring at me.

  I can’t help staring back. He is naked but for his chest holster, the pack on his back, and a white cloth he’s strapped over his groin.

  His legs—his thighs bulge with muscle. His lower abs make a V trailing down between his hips. I guess that male attribute is not so uniquely human.

  His arms and his chest—damn—I’d noticed but hadn’t allowed myself to really look. He is a fantasy come to life. Enormous, virile, overpowering, and he’s looking at me like I am the same.

  He points in the direction we need to go. “Let us move now before—”

  “Before we can’t. Yeah.” I tear my eyes from him and lead the way.

  I don’t have to hack a trail for the first half mile, so we’re able to run. We follow the destructive path of the bureuh from last night.

  “You really have these creatures on your home world?” I ask, nodding to the gouges in the soil from the beast’s claws and the felled trees from the beast’s horns.

  “These among others.”

  I keep a steady pace so my breathing stays even as I speak. “Did you use them in battle?”

  He laughs, low in the barrel of his chest. “We are peace-loving, the Ssedez. We train for battle defense only. The only wars we have fought in our written history have been against the Ten Systems.”

  “But you have a history of being great warriors.”

  “For sport. Not for war among our own kind.”

  It’s exciting to learn. The idea a species could evolve without civil war—something humans could never claim. “Humans have warred among themselves since the dawn of our time.”

  “I know.” The anger in his tone has bite, as though his fangs are out.

  “Not all of us are warmongers though.”

  “Not that you know anyone like that.”

  I glance at my computer and course correct off the path of the bureuh. Our pace is forced to slow as I carve through the plants with the knife. “I know many humans who would prefer to never war ever again.” Myself included.

  “You are a conquering species. That is what you do. Take control of other species and their worlds for your gain.”

  “Some of us want to change that.”

  “You cannot change the very nature of a species. It is in your genes.”

  I stop and face him. “When was the last time you met a human?”

  He stops, too, the rage our conversation has awakened in him tense over his face. “Before you, not since our last battle a hundred years ago.”

  I quip with sarcasm, “You had lots of lengthy conversations with each of these individuals on their personal opinions about the war they were forced to fight?”

  “Forced to fight? They volunteered.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “You know nothing about the Ten Systems and their recruitment practices. Not a single one is a volunteer. Every human is genetically tested, and if we pass their tests, we’re forced to enlist.”

  “You were forced?”

  “I wanted to join. For personal reasons. That I would inherit the DNA from my parents who were both in the military was a given.”

  He pauses and seems to contemplate this. “I was a newly trained warrior when the war began. We fought off your offensives for fifty years, and never once did you engage diplomacy.”

  “Not me. Them. I was not alive then. My parents weren’t alive either.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re all the same.”

  “How do you know?” I cross my arms, losing patience with his judgmental obstinacy.

  He bends his face to mine. “Some things do not change. No pretend mask or lies will convince me otherwise.”

  I want to kick him. Hit him. Punch him. “How can you care for me when I’m unconscious, heal my wounds with your own mouth, go naked so you can clothe me, and still hate my species so much?”

  His nostrils flare, and his hands twitch like he’s nervous. “I do not know.”

  “You’re lying. You know why.”

  He growls, aggressive, a warning.

  I ready my knife hand, on instinct, but I know he won’t attack me. “Tell me.”

  “It is a side effect.”

  I wait for him to explain, but he doesn’t. “Of what?”

  “Of having intercourse with you. You became no longer just any human I could kill.”

  It’s my turn to growl. “Like once mated, you own me or something? I don’t think so.”

  He looks away from me. “It is much more complicated than that.” But rather than tell me, he grabs the machete from my hand and walks around me.

  He slices a path for us with such ferocity, I fear he’ll kill animals as well as plants.

  I’m not going to argue with him. He works faster than me. Which I will not complain about. The faster we move, the faster we get to my crew.

  The conversation stalls after that, the burn of the atmosphere getting to us.

  I’m able to calculate our rate of travel and the approximate distance to my ship’s crash-landing site. If we keep this pace, we should reach it tomorrow.

  There’s an elevation gain coming—like there’s a mountain in our way. I have no idea how to account for that. We’ll figure it out when we get there.

  The desire rages through me—the ache throbbing in my clit like an insatiable demand. I feel empty to my core. Moving is painful, each step rubbing me in places that don’t want to be rubbed. Or they do, just not from walking.

  I touch myself subconsciously, seeking to ease the discomfort. But it makes it worse. I pull my hand away, only to touch myself again minutes later.

  Watching him walk in front of me, his shoulders and arms tensing with each swing of the knife, his stride long and fluid, every muscle in his body working—I grow weak with wanting him.

  He munches on the fruit he plucks from bushes at a more rapid rate.

  It must be filling him with the desire toxin, but he eats more, not less. His progress slows, and I see his free hand, between pieces of fruit, adjusting his cock more than once.

  It’s time for our scheduled break.

  But my mouth is so slack from drooling over him, I can’t get the words out to tell him.

  I tell him by touch instead, grabbing his bicep, unable to not squeeze the hard muscle and feel it.

  He stops, his breathing ragged.

  I unbuckle my weapons and drop them to the ground. I take the pack from his shoulders then press my bare breasts to his arm.

  He groans but doesn’t face me. I run my hand over his torso, tracing his knife harnesses, then feeling the washboard of his abs and downward. Down, down, down until I cup his rigid cock.

  I drop my forehead to his shoulder and stroke him through the fabric he has tied around his waist. Wetness pools between my legs, dampening his leather pants I’m wearing. I’m already envisioning his cock in me, easing the ache inside me, stretching me. He’s so big, it’s impossible for me to take more of him.

  He turns his head to me, the tips of his fangs retracting into his upper jaw.

  I don’t want to know the amount of self-control it takes him to do that.

  “Break time?” he asks in a deep grumble. His gaze is heavy over me, sweeping over my mouth and my neck. He caresses the side of my breast, and I pull back so he can circle my nipple with his fingers.

  “Yes,” I breathe, tipping my head up toward his mouth.

  He takes my face in his hands and crushes his mouth to mine.

  There is no savoring or hesitation. Just lust. From his lips. From his tongue. They seize mine, take over me, and I am on the ground.

  He tears his weapons from his chest, then weighs me down. His hard cock is already rubbing me where I want him, my legs already wrapping around his hips.

  The urgency—the natural lust already between us, combined with the madness of this place—has us bursting with the need to fuck. Like two combustible machines racing toward each other. We’ll detonate whether we collide or not. But how much more explosive the fire will be if we incinerate together.

  I wriggle off his leather pants, rolling over and kicking one leg out.

  He frees his cock.

  I am pulled to my knees. I spread my thighs wide, my ass in the air, and he thrusts into me from behind.

  His cock—his wide, long, enormous cock—stretches me to my limit and burrows deep within me. Then he grows impossibly bigger, excruciatingly harder, until I am so full, stoked in so many intimate places. So primed and aroused, so wet and swollen. My mind and body so overtaken, I am carnal. There is no way for me to respond except by instinct.

  The brutal, consuming need to fuck.

  He drives into me once, twice, three times and—

  I scream and call for him. “Oten!” The orgasm storms through me, tearing up my spine, searing my nerves with fierce and unending pleasure.

  He pounds me again and again. Slapping against me, pulling me to him.

  Where my mind ends and his body begins, the boundary blurs until I am only sex.

  Sex and ecstasy.

  They are me.

  And he is mine.

  I dig my fingers into the dirt. Grip the ground with all the strength in my hands and shove myself back into his thrusts, every muscle in my body forced to its limit.

  I meet his drives. Making it harder, faster, until my flesh is shaking an
d my skin vibrating. My bones, my whole being shudders and is swept away on the bliss of coming around his cock.

  I imagine what it would be like to watch us—for someone to come upon us in the jungle. To be seen in this way, to be witnessed as a purely sexual creature—

  But, on the pain of my existence, as though I’m robbed of the very thing I was made to have, he pulls of out me without coming.

  I turn to him and snarl, almost animal-like.

  But I get to watch. He grips his cock, his face a torn portrait of agony. He roars a great sound, and with killing tension seizing his limbs, he comes. His sparkling liquid silver seed spills in the dirt.

  I am horrified.

  It’s a stunning waste of beauty.

  I wanted that.

  I needed that.

  Why did he deny me? How could he make me crave him like that and then take it away from me?

  He raises his eyes to me, his breathing like a storm blowing in and out of his lungs. “I…couldn’t—” He forces himself to swallow. “I…almost…didn’t…stop.”

  Then I remember.

  He’s doing what I asked him to. To keep from turning me.

  He collapses on his back next to me, and I stare at him. He really has godlike powers. His ability to resist the insanity of this place is inhuman. Which makes sense because he’s not human.

  I lay back, recovering, my body overwrought and hammered.

  I don’t know how I’m going to survive this for another day without losing my mind to him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Oten

  She will be the death of me. This thing between us, just when I think it cannot get worse, it does.

  We do it again: hike for a few hours, then stop when the burning becomes too much.

  I fear hurting her, but not enough to be able to refuse her. I make her come with my mouth this time. She uses her tongue then her hand on me.

  She makes me come on her back like I promised. The look of longing on her face as my come spouts from my cock should make me happy. She wants me to come in her—in her greedy cunt or her succulent mouth.

  But I cannot.

  It makes me wish I were human so that I could.

  That I think this is horrific. Wishing I were human is a monstrous betrayal of everything I believe. I stay away from her for a while after that. Letting her lead, following far behind.

  She does not seem to mind.

  I think she is as shocked as I am by how much she wants me to come in her.

  It makes no sense. But the part of me that is forming the physical Attachment to her is pleased. Each time I fuck her, each time I make her come, she becomes more attached to me, too, giving me a deep satisfaction.

  It is true that I still hate her kind.

  But my regard for her, my respect, is growing. I think—I am still in doubt—but I may be starting to trust her. Which is dangerous and foolish, but I cannot help relying on her steadfast abilities, how trusting and freely she lends both them and her insatiable body.

  This place makes her want sex, yes, but I believe it does not force her to desire me as she does.

  It pleases me. Too much.

  And I fear, am horrified at the possibility, that my feelings could potentially Attach to her like I have physically. It is unthinkable.

  Being with her is impossible in any case.

  I do not know what will happen once we reach her ship, if we find her crew. They will likely imprison me.

  I wonder if she will let that happen.

  The heat of the day rises. We fuck again, and though I intend to be gentle, she makes it impossible. She demands, and I succumb. I have no choice but to give to her what she cries out for.

  To see her satisfied is the fulfillment of my existence.

  Denying her the pleasure of my coming inside her is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

  My body is made for such marathon sex. We Ssedez are built to withstand the demands of the Attachment mating period. But I am not made to restrain myself, too.

  It drains me, and I become less focused on our path. I blindly follow wherever she leads.

  I worry about her body. Her sensitive human flesh.

  So much sex cannot be good for her.

  But it pleases me that she not only takes it but wants more at the same rate as I do.

  I choose not to care whether it is because of me or because of the toxicity of this place. I care only that she wants me to fuck her. That is enough.

  At least for now. When we reach her crew, I do not know what will happen to me or her. Or us.

  The trail comes to the base of a cliff, an upward climb of rigid stone.

  “Must we ascend?” I ask, but I do not look at her. I do not want her to see my fangs. They are extended, and my self-control needed to sheathe them is weakening.

  We look up the cliff face, a wall of cragged gray rock so high, we’re unable to see the top. Low-hanging clouds block the view.

  “How are your climbing skills?” she asks.

  “Not as good as my fighting skills.” I wander along the cliff face. “We could try to find a way around.”

  “According to my topographical reading”—she stares at her computer—“this cliff extends far to the north. The Origin landed to the west. It would take us three days to go around.”

  She grips the rock with her hands, testing it. “The rock is solid.” She takes out a knife, leans her ear into the stone and taps it with the metal hilt. “It’s sound.”

  She stows the knife in her belt and climbs onto the wall. Her limbs are lithe and swift, her testing of the handholds and footholds quick and practiced.

  I am outclassed, already, and she has only gone ten feet.

  My muscle-heavy torso does not climb well. Plus, the survival pack will overthrow my balance. “I cannot climb and carry this load. We will have to leave it.”

  She hangs by one arm and stares down at me. “Seriously?”

  I stare back and imitate her, “Seriously.”

  She laughs and pushes off the wall. She lands in a crouch. “We’ll need to unload it.” She dumps the pack and leaves behind the cold weather gear, the stove, and the extreme first-aid supplies. She keeps the bare minimum, then binds the pack with twine, making it as thin as possible. “I’ll need it close to my back.”

  I gaze up the wall, concerned for us both. “I wish we had a rope.”

  “Without a belay device or pitons, it’s useless.”

  I do not know what those are, but I do not ask. It makes no difference. She anchors the pack to her back and begins her climb. I watch her.

  Following her path will do me no good. My body is too big to use the same hand and footholds as her.

  “Don’t climb beneath me,” she calls down. “In case any rock breaks loose.”

  I do as she says and start to climb to her left. I am slow and clumsy at first, but I find a rhythm. I get stuck sometimes and have to downclimb and go up a different way.

  It is unbelievable how much faster Nem moves than me. She becomes a speck above me.

  I reach a spot in the rock that changes to a darker graphite gray. I climb around it and farther up see water dripping down the face.

  Visibility grows poor, and I realize, I have climbed into the cloud.

  And lost sight of Nem completely.

  I swear in my own language but keep climbing. I will find her at the top.

  But my mind grows delirious.

  I’m breathing in the vapor of the cloud—and it is full of the desire toxin.

  My lungs burn as though enflamed. I start hallucinating.

  More than once I stop, thinking it’s her tight breasts and hardened nipples in my hands. Then I remember, it’s just rock.

  I keep climbing. The rock grows wetter, and sprouts of moss dot the best handholds. My options for purchase grow more difficult. My mind slips away until I can no longer remember why I’m climbing or where I’m going to—only that I have to get to her.

  I need her like I need breath. I need to know she is okay. I call her name, “Nem!” but get no response.

  My body pulses with the need for her, but more strongly is my mind’s panic over the need to protect her. I climb onward—focused yet brainless.

  I hear her voice on the air. A cry. I know that sound.

  She needs me.

  “Nem!” I climb farther, not knowing which direction her call came from.

  “Oten!” she shouts in pain.

  The sound comes to my right. I climb sideways, the cloud thickening until I can barely see my own hands.