Toxic Desire Page 8
My sense returns as the night air cools; the burning in my veins recedes. But the Attachment does not.
Her skin changes, the armor withdrawing. It smooths to its human texture. She’s changing back.
The Ssedez in me mourns the change. But the part of me that has Attached to her is glad she is getting what she wants.
Her skin is no longer protected.
But I cannot force on her what she will not accept.
Chapter Fifteen
Nem
Water. It feels so good going down.
The pleasure of drinking pure H2O is almost as good as his hands and arms lifting me to drink it. I do feel better. The burning in my blood lowers to a sizzle, and I remember.
I feel more human. More like myself. My tongue feels different; my skin feels different. Less like a Ssedez.
It’s working.
And he’s helping.
I remember—things that I forgot while consumed with the pain of needing to fuck—who I am, what I’m doing on this planet, who Oten is, and why I’m not supposed to fuck him.
He remembered. When I forgot.
I open my eyes and find him staring at me. His expression is unreadable in the darkness, but the tender touch of his hand on my cheek says more than his eyes ever could.
He cares.
I don’t know why.
He has no reason to.
He has every reason to want me dead. He could’ve killed me multiple times by now.
Yet he’s caring for me, righting his wrongs, small though they are in comparison to what humans have done to his kind.
I don’t understand.
Even as I was begging for him to come in me, he pulled out.
That I could lose control of myself like that… It was from the burning but…it terrifies me. I shiver, thinking about it.
Thank every god there is, it eases when the suns go down.
The lethargy that the heat and the orgasms poured through my body subsides. Perhaps it’s the changing, too, from human to Ssedez and back, that’s contributing to my exhaustion. Going without sleep is usually easy for me—military training and all that.
Oten puts the water bottle to my lips again. I take it from his hand and sit up. I brush against his enormous body, enough to know he is still naked.
I shove that knowledge away.
I don’t have to see him, so I don’t need to think about him naked. Or what his ass feels like in my hands as he thrusts into me.
He backs away and says in that deep voice, “You are awake.”
“No shit,” I say but it comes out scratchy. I drink more, trying to dislodge the hoarseness in my throat. I clear my throat, and it gets no better.
I am hoarse from screaming while he fucked me.
Damn.
“Do you hurt?” he asks, and his concern irks me.
“Why do you care?” My voice is so low and throaty, like sex on a stick. Great.
“Because I do.” His tone is as pointed as a laser.
I snort. “Just want to know when I’ll be good to fuck again? Don’t worry. I’m sure by the time the sun rises, I’ll—”
“No!” He bellows so loud the night bugs stop chirping.
I shift away from him, trying to be unfazed by the force in his tone, trying not to be fascinated by his interest in me.
“I do not care when you will be ‘good to fuck again.’” He uses a mocking tone and imitates my accent.
I roll my eyes, though he can’t see them. “You will when the burning starts again. Tomorrow, I’ll be just as mindless with the need to fuck as I was today. Don’t worry.” I try to make my words as bitter as possible. But it’s too sharp. My anger is obvious. I drink more water.
“I do worry. But not for what you say.”
“What do you worry then? That we’ll find my crew, and they’ll execute you on sight?” I should want that. I do. I absolutely do.
Not.
Fuck.
“I do not fear death, in any case.”
I scoff in jealousy. I fear death more than anything. “Congratulations. You’ve conquered humanity’s biggest phobia.” I raise my water bottle in mock cheers to him.
“I have no need for your human jokes.”
“Just a need for human pussy,” I sneer.
I hear him breathing. Seething. He’s mad. “I have no need for human pussy.” He spits the word.
“You spent hours staring at mine!”
He growls, an edgy barbaric sound, then grasps my neck. “Listen.” He brings my face to his, and I feel his breath on my cheeks. “I need your cunt. No one else’s. I care not for humans. I just want yours.”
It’s almost frightening. The intensity of his words. As fierce as though he could be talking about killing me. Except he’s talking about my cunt. Right. “Did you find utopia down there or something? Your tongue was so far up inside me, you had to be licking my cervix.” I fail to conceal my curiosity. Is his tongue really that long, or did it just feel that way? Was it real, or an illusion like everything else this fucking planet makes me feel?
“Utopia?” he asks, confused. “This means a kind of paradise? Your taste has aphrodisiac qualities, if that’s what you mean.”
I’m not sure which is worse, knowing he likes the taste of me so much or that there’s a note of longing in his tone, like he can’t wait to taste me again. “Before you, yesterday, there were cobwebs down there so thick, I’m surprised it hadn’t sealed shut.”
“Cobwebs? This is a figure of speech, yes? There were no spiders in—”
I laugh. At least he’s good for a joke.
He insists, “I care about much more than your readiness to fuck.” The severity in his tone gives me chills, though now I’ve returned to human, I’m sweating.
He can’t be as serious as he sounds.
“You mean the Ssedez?” I clarify. “You care about protecting your people.” Not about me.
“I do.” He strings along his tone as though he wants to say something but holds back. “And more.” There’s a softness to his words. It’s enticing. It awakens my curiosity and quells my sarcasm.
I want to ask, what else? And no doubt he wants me to ask. But I can’t think why. And for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling I won’t like the answer.
“Are you able to procreate?” he asks.
My mouth falls open. What the— “Excuse me?”
“Reproduction—is that something you are capable of?”
I cannot believe he asked that. The way he phrased it makes me feel like an incubator for having babies. “That’s none of your business.”
“It is possible, though I am not certain because my body is reacting strangely on this planet, but you could be carrying a child of mine right now.”
The answer is a flat no, but I have no motivation to solve his problem when he’s being a dick about it.
He softens his tone. “I have offended you. I do not mean to. I am unsure how to ask according to your customs.”
“It’s a little late for this conversation.”
“What I mean is, it is obvious our genes are compatible given—”
“Given that you turned me into you!”
“Which I am trying to help rectify. Do you need more water?” He reaches for the bottle.
I pull it away. “I’ll get it.” I stand to get farther from him and go refill my bottle. His fake caring for me annoys me.
I go to the stream, following the sounds of the water, expecting to not be able to see it in the darkness.
But I can. The water, where it flows between the banks, is lit up in a rainbow array of colors—blues and pinks and yellows. Like someone filled it with strings of multicolored lights.
Except…they swim. Like fish.
I stand and watch it twinkle.
“It is beautiful,” Oten says from behind me. “We had similar creatures on our home world. We called them—well, it translates to Lover’s Light Fish.”
“Lover’s Light?” I can’t stop staring at them enough to be annoyed at him for following me. In the darkened water, they blink like stars in the night sky.
“There is a story of a male Ssedez losing himself to the blinking lights—as he would to one he fell in love with at first sight. He fell into the water and was poisoned to death by them.”
“Poison?”
“Do not let one touch your skin or get into your water bottle. If they are anything like the Lover’s Light, one bite will give you great pain. Two bites will stop your heart.”
“Figures something so beautiful would be deadly.”
“Yes. It figures.” He echoes my phrase with the awkwardness of someone who is learning my speech idioms.
I look at him a moment. My language is not his language. And yet he knows it fluently. Very well. He’s studied it, in depth. I wonder why.
I kneel on the bank, filling the bottle carefully out of the way of the fish. They float leisurely, and none of them come toward me as I disturb the water. “They’re not aggressive.”
“They don’t need to be. Their prey comes to them.”
“Kind of like you,” I say, intending it to be too low for him to hear. From the first time I saw his fangs, it was like being hypnotized into the need to be bitten. I don’t know how much of it is this place versus just him.
But his hearing is better than I thought. “I had no intention of luring you in, if it means anything. It is this place. Normally, I can control my fangs.”
“I suppose it’s something.” I stand and watch the filter laser light up the bottle, then, once i
t’s done, I drink. My bladder is protesting, so I sneak into the woods to pee.
Leaves brush my leg, and I suck air through my teeth at the slice of pain. Shit. I touch the spot, and my fingers come away damp. I guess my protective armor really has retreated. My skin is back to its normal, vulnerable, human self.
I gingerly step between the plants, thanks to the moonlight lighting my path. I wish I could stop my pangs of regret—disappointment that I am vulnerable to the plant life once more. I did not want to be Ssedez, but it had its perks. Being able to move fast today was nice, too.
I wonder if it would’ve made me immortal. Like him.
The thought fills me with a kind of euphoric power I never thought about. To be immortal—what would that be like? To never die? To see the universe change and change over centuries, never fearing for the end of life, knowing it will always continue.
Yet, the Ssedez do die. Somehow. The Ten Systems killed them, en masse. I suppose even impervious beings will die from lack of oxygen if their starship is destroyed, and they likely burn in an explosion.
A silence drums in my ears—louder than all the jungle noises. The animals stop their chirping and clicking.
There’s a rustling in the brush on the other side of the stream.
And then more than a rustling—a painfully loud crack that sounds like a gigantic animal bumped a tree and trampled the plants around it. Those trees are huge, a hundred years old or more. Something big enough to move one would have to be—
I am naked, defenseless. Whatever it is, it would likely kill me in one swipe.
I race back to Oten, jumping over the leaves, trying to keep from cutting myself as best I can.
I see his outline in the moonlight.
He shoves my blaster into my arms then pulls us both down into a crouch. “I think it’s a bureuh.”
I recognize the word from one of the mythical stories of the Ssedez. “Those exist?” I can’t believe that story is true. It can’t be. If it was, the animal would be knocking these trees over, pulling them from the ground by the roots with its jaws.
“A relative,” he whispers. “Not as large.”
A rumble comes from the creature. It’s a minor growl from its chest, but the bass is so low it vibrates through my body.
Oten and I turn in unison, following the sound of the creature. It splashes through the stream, crossing to our side. Its shadow is almost visible in the moonlight.
“Try not to kill it,” he murmurs.
“What?”
“They were rare in my world. Such large beasts, it is hard for them to survive in any environment.”
“Fuck their survival. If it tries to kill me, I kill it.”
He inhales to speak again, but the sounds of the bureuh get closer.
Oten wordlessly touches the handle of one of his knives to my leg. I take his offering. While I’m better with a blaster than a knife, in close combat, my blaster is useless. He knows it. A knife is better than my bare hands.
The animal crosses a large patch of moonlight, and I have to suppress a gasp. The shadow is three times my height. A dozen horns crown its head and line its shoulders.
One head butt from it, and I’d be impaled to death.
I’ve fought worse, but I tighten my stance, planning an attack. Assuming its teeth are as ferocious as its horns, going high will not be an option. Crouching low or veering to its side would be a better attack. Though if its night vision is good, rushing it from the side may not be an option.
Its head turns toward us, catching our scent.
Oten touches his hand to my thigh, and his finger taps a leftward direction. Then he leaves, sneaking silently into the brush.
Splitting up is a good idea. It will have to go after one of us. The other can ambush it from behind.
If it attacks.
It heads toward our gear, sniffing out our campsite.
Those are our survival supplies. Without them, we’ll be as dead as we would be if the creature eats us.
I set my blaster to low and aim at a tree opposite our direction, hoping to distract it. I shoot, and the red laser lights up the night and lands with an explosion of sparks in the tree.
But it doesn’t work. The creature is more intelligent than I supposed. It only glances at the tree, then turns its nose in my direction, the source of the blast.
It paws the ground and gives a preattack growl.
I hold my breath. Maybe it’s not aggressive.
Then it charges.
It’s fast, faster than something that size should be. I leap to the side. The force of my legs propels me a dozen feet, but I land in a roll. The plants slice dozens of cuts across my back and chest. I grit my teeth against the pain and land on my feet.
The creature rears to a stop and lifts its nose in the air. It follows my scent and pivots in my direction. It grunts and stamps at the ground, the impacts heavy enough to shake the ground beneath it.
I see movement behind the animal, and then I spot Oten in the moonlight, moving stealthily between the trees.
The animal snorts and raises its head. I fear it’s about to charge me, but before it can, Oten leaps from his hiding spot onto the creature’s neck. He grabs its horn, hanging on as the creature shakes and tries to toss Oten off its back.
Oten lifts his arm high and slices down with his knife.
The bureuh roars in pain and whips its head from side to side. Oten struggles to hang on and nearly drops his knife. He keeps his place and lands another wound with his knife.
He’s not striking killing blows though, not aiming for its arteries or brain.
Stupid. But noble.
It’s difficult to see, but there’s a space visible between the animal’s enormous fore and back legs. They’re as big around as a tree, but there’s room enough for me to dive between them—if it doesn’t step on me. Its belly, from what I can tell, looks rounded and vulnerable. I don’t see any sharp spikes.
The animal may or may not be rare on this planet, but if I have to make a choice between its life and Oten’s… I charge the animal and lunge beneath it, ignoring the plants that tear through my skin. I reach out with Oten’s knife and slice a deep gouge into the beast’s belly. I scramble out the other side at the same time it bellows in pain.
It lurches upward onto its hind legs—tossing Oten off its back. Its roar sounds so loud in my ears, they ring.
It lands on its front paws again, the ground shaking with the impact. Then gallops off into the forest, knocking trees to the ground in its path.
I look for Oten, in the direction he was thrown, but am unable to see him in the dark.
“Oten!” I call.
No answer.
I expect him to stand, to see his shadow, to hear him move. Nothing.
I charge over to where I think he landed and search through the vegetation, ignoring all the cuts the leaves make into my skin. “Oten!”
He’s near immortal. Something so simple as being thrown couldn’t have hurt him. Okay, maybe twenty feet is a long way, and that beast was pretty strong.
I shout his name again.
The moonlight lights up a tree that has a fresh gash in its trunk—about the size of Oten’s head.
No.
I crouch and search the area in front of the tree where he would have landed, pushing aside the leaves with my knife.
His dark figure lies beside a rock, on his side.
I land on my knees beside him. I call his name again, and he is unresponsive. I feel for his pulse.
Except it’s impossible to feel. Not through his thick armor. I have no idea how to give first aid to a Ssedez. Goddamn it!
He can’t die.
I don’t want him to die. Which should be a surprise thought, but I don’t have time to think about how I’m supposed to want him dead.
I keep his head aligned and roll him to his back. I hold my cheek near his face and feel his breath move against my skin.
That is some relief. He’s breathing, but it doesn’t stop my heart from pounding.
He’s unconscious.
He hit his head. I run my hands over his scalp, through his hair, searching for a wound, an indentation, anything, and wish like hell I had a light. I don’t feel any wounds. Even the tree and the force of the bureuh’s throw could not pierce his natural armor.
It doesn’t mean his brain didn’t bruise internally against his skull. He could have a concussion.
But I don’t get to find out.
The cuts I’ve been ignoring—the ones from countless leaves that are scattered all over my body—I can’t ignore them anymore.