Toxic Desire Read online

  The strength of her blows—though I knew they would be strong—is unexpected. I like it.

  I twist her arm behind her back and put painful pressure on the socket, immobilizing her.

  Or so I think.

  With a slither of her arm and a knee to my thigh, she breaks my hold and squares off again.

  “Still convinced you’re stronger?” she taunts.

  “Yes.”

  This time, a very human roar sounds from her throat, and she tackles me with full force. I am pushed back against a tree. I grab her throat intending to squeeze but am instead enthralled.

  The texture of her changed skin against my palm rouses my desire as much as her fighting me. It leaves me open, and she takes the advantage.

  She slugs her fist into the side of my head.

  I am cool-blooded, so I will not bruise like humans do. But it still hurts.

  I grab her, pull her off her feet, and turn. I slam her back against the tree, the trunk wide as a wall.

  She grunts and pushes against me, both her feet on my thighs, her hands on my shoulders. She could shove me off her, but she stops.

  Her eyes are a golden brown, unaffected, unchanged from yesterday. I am glad. They are full of hot things—rage, violence…desire.

  Her bone structure is unchanged. Her lips look as soft and plump as yesterday. The tension in her legs eases, and I press against her, my cock thickening between her legs, feeling the heat of her there.

  She is naked. The only thing separating my fucking her as hard and fast as yesterday is the thin leather of my fly. Her breath gusts in and out, her high breasts pumping up and down.

  Her gaze strays to my mouth, and it is the only invitation I need.

  I kiss her, devouring her. Our tongues clash. The feel of her more dexterous twin-tipped tongue tangling with mine, the clench of her thighs around my hips as the fight goes out of her, the grip of her fingers in my hair pulling me to her—

  She wants me.

  I do not know if it is because of this place or because it is true.

  My fangs descend, and she wraps her tongue around one and begins to suck it.

  It’s like she’s pulling bliss from me, and I swear, I will come, the sensations of her mouth are that intense. She pulls the venom out of me, relieving my swollen gums. I’m overcome by the sheer ecstasy that she, this creature fate has chosen for me, takes into her body the venom I offer her.

  Except, that’s exactly what she’s not supposed to do.

  Fuck.

  I pull away from her so hard, she falls to the ground with a hard thud.

  “Ow! Gah!” She rubs her back. “What the hell was that?”

  I turn from her. My breath gasping and my body screaming, Go back to her. Fuck her full of you. Change her until she is totally yours.

  Against every instinct roaring through my body, I focus on my hatred of her murderous kind and fist my hands at my sides. I growl, “You figure it out,” and stalk to the fruit tree.

  I do not know how I am surviving this, but I will cut my heart out before I give my venom to a human again. No matter how my body cries out in agony for her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nem

  He leaves, and I touch my lips, where the taste of his venom is still heavy on my tongue.

  “Goddamn it!” I snarl. The tip of my tongue brushes my fingertips, and I freeze.

  I touch my tongue. Before it was unwieldy, wide, and thick. Now it’s razor thin and narrow with…

  I hate him. I hate him so fucking much, I’d kill him now. If I could.

  I didn’t notice it while kissing him; all I noticed was that I felt more of his tongue. I could reach all the way into the back of his mouth, wrap my tongue around his, and pull. I could do things I hadn’t done before.

  The forked tips of what is now my tongue flick at my fingers. I wish to the god of anything that I had a mirror. But there’s no such thing in that pack. I have to get this venom out of me.

  I spit and gag myself, getting as much of what I swallowed out on the ground. I scrape my tongue with my fingers. I need water to wash out my mouth.

  Except we have none. We drank it all. And that cursed stream is what caused this whole problem.

  No wonder my body changed in a matter of hours. I was so pumped full of his fluids from who knows how many times having sex that if a change was going to happen, it was going to be fast.

  But it’s been such a short time. Maybe it’s possible to wash his toxins out of me. I’m desperate for any hope this isn’t permanent.

  I rush to the pack of survival supplies, not caring that I’m still naked. Like I give a shit. I’m gold now anyway. Water is more important.

  I grab the bottle and filter with one hand and the testing computer with the other and head for the stream.

  He better not be nearby. I won’t touch him again, not even to hit him. I can’t shoot him because the blaster fueled him rather than injured him. Knives will just bounce off of him.

  I have to figure out how to get rid of him.

  Water first. I hope he’s off somewhere jerking off again, or finding something else to bite instead of me.

  The stream bank is covered in vegetation, but the leaves only scratch me. I grumble under my breath and refuse to feel gratitude for my new natural armor.

  The water flows slowly and is warm to the touch, but it’s clear and moving. I test a sample in the computer, and it contains no bacteria—only large quantities of the compound unique to this planet that permeates the air and causes this fever of desire, which even now I’m feeling rise in me again.

  I fill the bottle with the clear liquid, then place the filter top on and wait.

  The lasers in the filter light up the water a bright iridescent red. The filter excretes a dusty red residue, what I can only assume is the deposits of the desire compound.

  I test the filtered water. Which is now 99 percent pure. Good enough.

  I drink, first rinsing my mouth and spitting, then swallowing the rest. I filter and drink a second bottle, then fill a third to take with me.

  I gather up the ground covering and blankets, forcing everything into the pack.

  My white skin suit lies in a heap of tatters on the ground. I have no desire to put it on. But to go naked feels too barbaric. I may not need it for protection now, but if my skin does return to normal, I’ll want it. I wrap what’s left of the suit around my waist. It covers my ass and groin if nothing else. I buckle my weapons belt with my blaster over the top and pull on my boots.

  I look down at my breasts. My nipples are now gold jewel-like points, still sensitive though, and with the heat of the day rising, the dull flames have returned to my veins.

  I don’t know where Oten is. I’m ready to leave. I want to make progress before the sun gets higher and the feeling gets worse. I can’t be near him when it comes back. My own hand is my only source of relief now.

  He doesn’t have water.

  I shouldn’t care. I want him dead. He killed my crew. Destroyed my ship. Turned me into another species.

  But for some reason, I can’t leave him without water.

  I fill another bottle with filtered water and set it on the ground where our bed was. He can’t miss it.

  I do it because I don’t want him to die of thirst—I want to kill him myself. That’s what I tell myself.

  My ship, the surviving members of my crew, and Dr. Klearuh’s research are my goal. I have to find them. No orgasms from an enormous gold cock or fangs dripping in ecstasy will distract me today.

  But it can’t stop me from thinking about them every step I take.

  Chapter Twelve

  Oten

  When I gain control of myself and go back, Nem is gone.

  I am glad.

  She left my chest holsters with my weapons, which could be a peace offering, but I am not fooled. It is a challenge. My knives will have no effect on her now. I will need other weapons if I am to defeat her.

  I could have choked her so easily, cut off her air and watched her suffocate.

  It would have been apt justice. What her human Ten Systems did to the Ssedez in our war over a century ago was so much worse—destroying civilian cruisers, mass killing of children and families. While our armored skin is impervious to most weapons, strong fire and exposure to the vacuum of space will kill us.

  But even though my hand was around her throat, I could not kill her.

  I am forced to admit defeat to my own dominant instincts. I may be in control of my emotions and my mind, but my body will not allow me to do her violence. It is too far gone with the Attachment.

  I do not have the will to hurt her.

  I do have the will to fuck her. I have to stay away from her. My resistance to her is brittle.

  It is still within me—the anger of my existence. The craving for retaliation that has been with me since the humans first attacked a peaceful cruiser killing thousands of civilian Ssedez. When I entered the war, I was a newly trained warrior hungry to avenge the deaths of so many loved ones I lost: my father and uncle among the first battalions destroyed in the war. My aunt and cousins murdered in horrible ways I try not to contemplate.

  The humans saw us as a threat—our near-immortal selves, our inexplicable technology they could not understand. They sought to do experiments on us. No one ever escaped their imprisonment. We can only speculate what was done to the captured, or if any of them may still be alive.

  Decades of hostile conflict ensued, and the deaths of a million Ssedez. We made the choice—deciding we had suffered enough tragedy—to end it. We stealthily evacuated our home world and set off a series of bombs, made to look like volcanic explosions over the planet, which destroyed the ecosystems and made it uninhabitable. The humans believed
it a natural destruction of our world and had no idea we had faked our demise. We annihilated our home and can never return—a decision, though necessary, that we have mourned for generations. We have maintained our isolation. Nem’s ship, the Origin, in our airspace was the first we had seen of the Ten Systems in a century. But we were ready.

  And we succeeded in bringing her down.

  The ship that is.

  Not her captain.

  I mourn the lives of a million Ssedez, including friends and family whose places still occupy my heart, and yet I cannot end her. I am incapable of harming her. Even when she attacked me, I could only restrain her, never hit her.

  I should feel shame.

  Instead, I feel a need to learn her, physically. I feel a terrifyingly intense craving to satisfy every want, every desire of her body. I have to know what a human woman wants—what this woman wants—so that I can give it to her.

  Again and again. So she will never need anything but me.

  I shake myself and strap on my weapons.

  It is the false physical Attachment sabotaging my thoughts and making me forget who she really is.

  I should learn why her Ten Systems’ ship flew stealthily into our uncharted, uninhabited system. And when we can expect other ships to follow. We must be ready.

  But I am lying to myself if I think that is the only reason I am leaving her alive.

  I see the bottle of water.

  She left me hydration. I examine it, sniff the liquid. Not that I know what I’m searching for; my sense of smell is not one of my enhanced abilities. I have no way of sensing whether she purified it with the filter she mentioned having in the survival supplies. It could be a trick.

  My instinct—though it goes against everything I’ve known of humans all my life—says she would not trick me.

  There is honor in her. Though I never thought a human capable of it, she has it.

  In her fascinations and questions about my people, there was no hatred or derision. Only curiosity. I would not have expected it from a human.

  I thought them capable of only a greed for dominance and an obsession with power.

  But there is more to her.

  I do not think she would poison me.

  Attempt to kill me, maybe. But only by her own hand.

  Though after I infected her with the genes of the Ssedez, which are obviously overpowering her human ones, she is capable of anything.

  I open the bottle and drink. Nothing happens, so I drink until it is gone.

  I follow her path through the jungle easily. She has scales now to protect her from the sharp leaves, but she’s still using my machete to cut the vegetation. The jungle thickens, the stream we found grows wider, deeper, and with it the size of the trees and plants. They are no longer just waist high, but up to my shoulders.

  Her path is clear though. She made it so.

  Why? She has no need to chop down the vegetation with the Ssedez armor to protect her. She must be doing it to make sure I follow her.

  I force myself not to hurry, not to think about how good it was to be inside her. To feel her around my cock and see her face light up with pleasure when I filled her. To grip her flesh as I pounded her and watched her body shake as orgasms seized her.

  The best part was seeing her lose it.

  While I was in her, the general disappeared, and she was all female.

  The sun gets higher, and the air heats. It gets blindingly bright, and I get a glimpse through the trees of a second sun rising behind the first.

  Whatever cursed thing is in the atmosphere thickens. I inhale, and it lights a fire in my lungs that spreads to my veins. My cock beats with a need for relief, and I gnaw on jungle fruit to ease the ache in my upper jaw.

  I follow her trail, going slow, not wanting to catch her. I observe the environment, needing to focus on what I’m seeing rather than the arousal burning through me, broiling hotter with each hour.

  I glimpse mammals of various sizes skittering on the ground or climbing the trees. Animals of flight, though I’m not sure they are birds since they lack feathers, pass overhead.

  The surroundings grow monotonous, the sounds of the forest, the tweets and clicks and squeaks of creatures, become lulling and predictable. Until they are not.

  A roar—long and thunderous—rattles my ears.

  All the animals scurry to hide, then the forest is silent.

  I crouch low and scan the trees. Whatever made that noise is something large. The sound is similar to an animal from my home world. If I am right, it is a predator.

  It roars again, farther away this time.

  In the direction Nem is heading.

  I bolt from the ground, running her trail as fast as my legs will move—which is fast.

  The leaves blur, and my muscles bunch with the forward motion, my whole body in sync with its one goal: to protect its mate.

  No.

  My mind rejects the instinct.

  But my body does not lie, and I cannot stop its reaction.

  Protect her.

  The roar sounds again, and I push faster, shocked that she could be so far ahead of me. She moves faster than I thought she could.

  I turn a corner, dash through a set of trees, and slide to a halt.

  She stands battle ready, legs braced, blaster in one hand, knife in the other, glaring in the direction the roar came from.

  I open my mouth to call to her but before I can, she motions with her knife for me to shut up.

  She’s right. To draw attention to us would be stupid.

  The jungle remains eerily silent. We wait and wait and wait some more.

  The sound does not come again.

  She gradually relaxes her stance. Her pack lies on the ground, and other than the tattered suit wrapped around her waist over her weapons belt, and her ankle-high boots, she is naked. Her legs are visible from calf to hip, and her nipples are pebbles and kissed with the sun’s rays.

  Her body is sculpted by the gods and made to be devoured by my hands. From the contours of her high breasts to the trim of her waist and chisel of her abs, from her firm thighs to her molded biceps, she is a warrior, her strength prominent in every limb and muscle.

  Her body is a weapon, and I want to wield it.

  I walk closer to her, but she holds up a hand for me to stop. Her glare is as brutal as any she has yet given me.

  “Don’t come near me,” she warns, but her body, her stance says the opposite. She’s leaning toward me, as though restraining herself from coming to me.

  I realize too late my fangs are fully extended.

  She eyes me, and the brutality in her gaze morphs to one of heated desire. I recognize the look from yesterday when she knelt before me and told me she wanted to know what a gold cock tasted like.

  She will not do that now.

  I will not let her do that again.

  Her change into Ssedez has not reversed. If anything, it’s sped. The armor on her has thickened, the diamond pattern etched into her. She willed it to happen on instinct to defend herself from the animal. Once she relaxes, the solid armor will retreat back into her skin, which will grow smooth again. But I do not think she knows how to affect that change yet.

  “Do you sssee what you’ve done to me?” Fury shakes her voice, but I can hear through the cracks: she’s afraid.

  I swallow. “I see.”

  “Are you happy? Is it exactly what you wanted? Why couldn’t you just fucking kill me instead?”

  It is like she took one of my knives and pierced my heart. She would rather be dead than be like me. I should not care what she thinks. But it cuts at a vulnerable place in myself I cannot name. “You are unharmed. In fact, you are better protected.”

  “I need no protection,” she sneers. “You’re just like all the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Males in every ssspecies are the same. Possessed by the need to dominate. To own and make everyone and everything belong to them.”

  “The Ssedez—”

  “Look at me!” She yells so loud a flock of flying things squawks and takes flight. “You’ve made me yours so much that I’m becoming you!” The fear in her eyes is too fierce for her to hide now.

  My instinct is to shout, You ARE mine. I force it down. “It may still reverse itself.”

  “You don’t know that!” she shouts at the top of her lungs. It rings through the trees. The tone of her voice is taking on the powerful resonance of the Ssedez, too.