Toxic Desire Read online

  “Come on, Oten,” she calls over her shoulder. “We’ve got tracks to make before this fire shit gets us again.”

  I grab the pack of survival gear.

  She’s right, I realize. We’ve sated the fire, but it’s only simmering within me. It will blaze again and soon.

  If it’s going to be this way the entire time we are on forsaken Fyrian, I do not know how I am to hold anything back from her.

  She could own my heart and soul before this is over.

  Impossible.

  I will die before I let that happen.

  Chapter Seven

  Nem

  He follows me. But I ignore him.

  I cut through the undergrowth with a vengeance. The vegetation is a predator in this place. The spines and thorns jutting from the various plants are more toxic than the air. I begin to recognize them. The darker bluer ones are the worst—with their spines like barbs that tear as well as slice my skin.

  The green plants merely cut. The purple ones stab. And the trees, well, their branches are high enough, sweeping overhead and blocking the sun, so I hopefully will never find out.

  I will not let these plants infect me with their sex-inducing poison anymore. I can resist him.

  I must resist him.

  We could come across an escape pod from my ship any moment. The locator signal could be broken. I focus hard on that—the hope of recovering my crew. I dwell on the names of my dead, at least those I know of, and I pray for them. I pray for the ones I hope were spared. I haven’t prayed since I was a child, but it focuses my mind.

  Mostly.

  Oten walks behind me. The spawn of the Oten, who is at very least a demi-god.

  And I sucked his cock.

  The memory thickens the lust in my veins. The tip of his cock opened when he orgasmed and exposed the most vulnerable flesh. More tender than my human skin. His come spilling over my tongue wasn’t sweet. No. But it was thick and satisfying. It was meaty somehow, like it had a substance to it. It coated my throat, and I can feel it in my belly, doing something, as though it’s giving me strength, energy.

  I won’t complain about that.

  The jungle is no match for me.

  And even Oten can’t deter me.

  “How did you get aboard my ship?” I ask, not looking over my shoulder at him. Though I hear him following me. “And don’t say the traitor thing again. I know it’s a lie.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because no one on my crew would betray me.” I know each of them well and personally.

  “Denial is not an effective trait in a leader.”

  “Even if there were a traitor, how did he smuggle you onto my ship?”

  “Are you the only female soldier among your numbers?”

  “No.” I know of one other who revealed herself to me and me alone. Though I did not reveal myself to her. “We don’t expose ourselves.”

  “But how do you know if you do not expose yourselves?”

  “I had one ask me to repeal the single-gender regulation when—” Do I want to tell him we went rogue from the rest of the fleet? The Ten Systems believe our ship disappeared. I’d rather keep it that way. “I refused her.”

  “Why? A female should be free to be herself.”

  “Like you said, to be treasured like glass, right? She is fragile and an object,” I say with bitter sarcasm.

  “I did not say that she is fragile. She is a treasure because she is valuable for her skills that males do not have.”

  I falter in my step, and a leaf cuts me. Damn it. “What skills do your Ssedez female warriors possess?”

  “They make great leaders. Many have a stronger ability to negotiate and see from others’ points of view. They can resolve disagreements better than males. They can often better predict the moves of the enemy for the same reason.”

  He’s right. I’ve often thought this about human women, though most human men do not understand it. “Your male warriors aren’t intimidated by a woman who can predict a situation better than they can?” I seriously doubt that.

  “They are grateful for those who can see and help in ways they cannot.”

  Sounds like I should’ve been born a Ssedez. Though I won’t tell him that. “It doesn’t matter. Hiding our sex solves more problems than it causes.” I could’ve abolished the rule aboard my ship, but another reason I did not was that my whole crew was so used to it. I didn’t want to cause any more shake-up than I already had.

  “And when and if we find your crew, how will they recognize you?”

  My heart beats a little faster. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Without your armor with your credentials on it,” he continues, “will they believe you are their general?”

  I’d left all my identification behind. Everything that denotes my rank. I trust my crew, but I don’t know how far they’ll trust me. I can’t respond.

  I consider it, but we’ve come too far to go back. It would add hours to our trip. But the fear he’s inspired is there. I don’t know if my crew will recognize me.

  I hate him for spotting my weakness. I’m mad at myself for not thinking of it.

  I’m the general of my mission, for fuck’s sake. If I can’t keep my shit together, I shouldn’t be in charge. I’m smarter than this. Getting marooned on a planet with the enemy, having lost my ship, the priceless research aboard, and likely most of my crew—it is an inexcusable series of mistakes I would never have made, if not for him.

  I fantasize about ways I could kill him.

  I wonder if cutting off his cock would work, while he’s unaware and his natural armor is not out. I wonder how fast he can…pull it out or whatever he does to put on his protective skin armor.

  We travel on, mile after mile. The burning returns, and, in an effort to quench it, we consume the supply of water in the survival pack. The sweat pours off of me. The heat is so intense, we drain our three-day supply in twelve hours. We eat the dried food, but the heat exhaustion makes it difficult to digest.

  Our pace slows, both of our breathing labored.

  The hallucinations have returned, which are so much worse now that I actually know what his cock looks like. I keep wanting to see it, thrusting between my legs. To feel the ridges along his length sliding across my sensitive, swollen flesh. To have him rubbing inside me over and over and over…I ache for it.

  It does not help that every time I turn around, I see his fangs and cock are perpetually extended. I wonder why he didn’t bite me the last time. I want him to.

  “Why can’t you go without water, O Immortal One?” I accuse him, trying to find any excuse to ignore the mental images.

  “I normally can for a very long time. On Fyrian, it appears not.” His voice rumbles low and sends more bolts of arousal straight to my enflamed flesh. I stopped trying to rub it between steps; trying to ease it made it worse.

  We hear a stream, and the sound of the water is like an aphrodisiac. We move faster.

  Oten moves ahead of me. “I will try it first. To see if it is safe.”

  “I can test it,” I murmur. “There’s a filter in the pack.”

  But either I’m too quiet or he’s too desperate, because he ignores me. He goes straight to the water’s edge and dunks his face in.

  I manage to hold back, enduring my thirst and the fire within me. I stare at his back, the rippling muscle seeming to glow, the sunlight caressing his gold flesh.

  He kneels back from the water’s edge and wipes his mouth. “It’s fine. Drink it.” But the moment the words come out of his mouth, his hands start to shake.

  The movement bleeds down his arms and into his torso until his whole body is convulsing. He moans in pain and falls to his back.

  “Oten, what’s wrong?” I rush to his side, but it’s too obvious. He’s having what looks like a seizure, and I worry he’s been poisoned.

  His quaking hands move down his body, wiping at his skin as though trying to put out the flames. His hands vibrate lower, yanking open his leathers, and go straight for his cock.

  He grasps it and starts stroking—more like pulling on it—so hard it has to hurt.

  It’s the desire toxin doing this to him. It must be concentrated in the water.

  “Stop. I’ll help.” I pull off my weapons belt and unzip my suit from the neck down. Seeing him jerking himself like that feeds the lust searing through me.

  He sees me, the open zipper baring my chest. And it does what I’d hoped. He detaches one hand from his cock and latches onto my breast. He squeezes, and it should hurt, but I ache so much, the pressure relieves it.

  His jaw works as though trying to bite the air. Some liquid drips from his fangs, and the memory of the ecstasy from the last time he put them in me is too strong to ignore.

  I lift his head and order, “Bite me.”

  His gaze is unflinching over my breasts, and he shows no reaction. He can’t understand me. So I show him.

  I lower my neck in front of his face, blocking his vision of my chest and exposing my throat. It works.

  He grasps me with both hands and strikes. His fangs penetrate, and the effect is instant.

  Euphoria pours through me. It renders me useless, claims my senses, and steals my control. It is bliss. The sting of his bite mixes with the pleasure.

  My body tenses and pulses, orgasmic waves racing up and down my spine.

  My empty core clenches on nothing, and I beg, “Fuck me, fuck me. Please.”

  Either he hears me, or that’s all he wants, too. He rips my suit open through the groin, tearing the seams, then tosses me onto my back.

  I hold his head to my neck, not allowing his fangs to retract, addicted to his bite.

  He spreads my legs around his hips, and, without any hesitation,
drives his cock into me.

  I cry out, his invasion both a filling and a taking. He’s so full inside me, stretching me to the brink in stinging bliss, I come around him, gripping the hardness of him. He grinds into me, pressing as deep as he can go, but then he shifts and pulls out.

  His thrust back in is punishing—punishing with pleasure. The ridges on his cock are as good as I knew they’d be, better. They rub at me in all the perfect places. His hips pound against mine over and over. The spirals around his cock ripple into me on each entry—like he’s spinning through me.

  The pleasure is so much, too much. More than I can take. I enter a state of mindlessness. So overcome by the sensations he gives me, I am only that ecstasy. Only that bliss. And there is only him.

  He lets go his bite, leaning on his arms over me, and I watch him.

  The unyielding planes of his chest bulge and contract. I grip his arms, digging my fingers into the impenetrable surface. The sharp cut to his jaw, the fierce length of his fangs, and his eyes…

  They’re possessed by an ethereal glow, boring into me. His almost human qualities are gone, and what’s exposed is the merciless carnality.

  He lets out a brutal cry of release and comes. The warmth of what he pours into me spreads through my body. It transforms on its path, filling me in all the places his cock cannot reach. A total takeover of my body.

  It lasts for minutes. He comes for I don’t know how long.

  When he stills and quiets, the only sounds left are from our breathing. The feeling he poured into me fades.

  But in its place is a vacancy.

  And I want him again.

  Chapter Eight

  Oten

  She makes me feel…powerful. Sex for me—with me—is always that way.

  I do nothing without the full experience of what I am, and I am as fierce in passion as I am in battle.

  But this…

  The water I drank was a drug, but I did not know it until too late.

  The fire I thought I experienced before was nothing compared to this. It rages on a path of destruction, wrecking all in me that is conscious, leaving behind only carnal instinct.

  She is there. She offers herself to me, and I have to have her.

  She comes as she must before I can enter her, her body primed by my venom for the sex I will give her. The wetness that flows between her legs is an anomaly for me. It paves the way for my cock and lets me move in and out of her faster than I have known.

  It is new to me.

  She begs for me to fuck her.

  I will not deny her.

  Her cunt is the softest haven there is. Not just because it is unique to me, but because it is her. This being who is the new source of all the desire storming within me—I am compelled by the need to mark her so she and everyone knows it.

  The venom and my come combine within her, and the scent of it emanates from her pores.

  She smells like me. As though she’s mine.

  This reaction I have to her, it could be because of the water and this chemical that Fyrian produces to intoxicate us. But even if it is caused by a chemical, it doesn’t change the awakened instinct in me.

  Or the fact that once is not enough.

  But she lies sated and slack. She cannot take more.

  I pull out of her and see the thick fluids I poured into her dripping out onto her swollen folds. I want them to stay in her, so I urge her thighs closed.

  But she moans, “No,” and reaches down between her legs. She massages herself as though she is still needy. She soaks her fingers in the come at her opening and raises dripping fingers to her lips, leaving a trail across her belly on the way.

  Her pink tongue licks her fingers clean, then she looks at me with hungry eyes. “More.”

  I draw in a sharp breath. My cock pulses and jerks. “I will give it.”

  Except this time, I have some sense.

  I strip off my chest holsters, marveling that I did not injure her with my knives the first time. I want to strip her; I want us both naked. I want to feel her skin against mine. But I will not fuck her in the dirt again.

  I find the pack of survival gear and pull out the ground covering.

  She whimpers. “Oten…” The need in her voice is heavy, and she rolls to her side, her thighs pinched together around her hands massaging herself.

  “I am here.”

  “Come back.”

  “Soon.” Between me and this place, the unconquerable General Nem has become sex crazed. After who knows how long that she has been pretending to be male. Anger seethes within me at the thought of her having to hide her femininity. She deserves this pleasure. Her body needs this.

  I have a thought that caring for her like this is contrary to the hatred I feel for her and her kind. But it does not matter. Now that I have had her, now that she is marked as mine, I will treat her as such. There is no sense to it. Only instinct.

  I lay her on the ground cover, and she lets me undress her. I savor the feel of her skin, and she responds to my hands. So soft, so vulnerable, so giving. I strip her of her clothing that is in tatters from my ripping the zipper and from the cuts of the jungle plants. I pull off her boots and place her weapons next to her.

  She is laid out and bare for me. Naked.

  I must protect her.

  “Now you,” she murmurs, pointing at me.

  There is not much for me to remove. I take off my boots and leather and stand before her, nude.

  Her gaze holds fast on me. It wanders up and down my body. She squirms, writhing, and opens her legs to me. “Now.”

  Through force of will, I retract my fangs. I will use them again later.

  I kneel between her legs and spread her thighs open. The Ssedez female must come before she will open for a male. It seems wrong for her not to come first before I fuck her again.

  Besides, I want to taste her.

  I press my mouth to her cunt, and sweet nectar of the gods, I could drink her down.

  I lick her every crevice. The twin tips of my serpent’s tongue reaching into the depths of her. I stroke her and suck on her until she is arching her hips, thrusting against my mouth.

  She comes, and I insert my fingers into her, feeling her spasm around them.

  Unable to withhold my fangs any longer and wanting to fuel her pleasure, I let them descend and sink them into her thigh.

  Screams of pleasure cascade from her mouth. She clenches around my fingers in rapid pulses, and I must feel her around my cock.

  I fuck her until I come.

  And then I do it all again.

  And again.

  There is no sating her. Or me.

  In a brief moment of reason, she whispers, “I need to get to my ship.”

  By then, the sun is descending behind the hills, and travel will be difficult in the dusk light. “It will be dark soon.”

  She barely hears my answer. She is already at my cock, sucking on me for more.

  I worry what I have done to her, what this place has done to us. I do not know what too much sex can do to a human, especially too much sex with a Ssedez. But when the sun disappears, the giant star’s light gone, the fire lessens.

  Her breathing returns to normal. “Is it…has it stopped?” she asks, her voice more lucid than it’s been in hours.

  I check my own body and find the unnatural flames that have raged within me since landing in the pod have retreated. Not gone, but they are a murmur. “It feels less. More tolerable.”

  “It must be activated by the sun’s heat.” She sits up, though I am unable to see her. There is little moonlight. “There are headlamps in the survival gear. We can travel.”

  But even as she says it, there’s a fatigue in her tone.

  And I am low on energy as well. “We should rest for a few hours, then maybe get up before the sun rises.”

  She agrees wordlessly and lies down next to me. “We can’t let this happen again tomorrow. We have to keep moving.”

  “I am motivated to get off Fyrian. We will find a way.” Though if we find her crew, they will likely try to kill me. But not if I kill them first. Not if I communicate with my warriors from the wreckage of her ship and they join me on this planet so we can complete our mission to destroy Nem and any other survivors from her crew.

  But I listen to her breathing slow as she drifts to sleep.