Brutal Alien Read online

  I grinned as he approached and could see calculation in his eyes, but to what end I didn’t know.

  “I’ll do you one for one,” he said and gave me the first smirk I’d ever seen from him. “A secret.”

  “You want to exchange secrets?” I clarified, chewing spearmint gum as I spoke. “K.” I chewed louder, thinking.

  He approached my body, and I could feel waves rippling against my skin from his movements.

  “Why were you out in the woods?” I asked, grinning like a teenager with a plan.

  “I was attacked by a militia,” he said evenly, never changing his expression.

  “Human?” I asked, blinking in surprise.

  “No, rabbit,” he said. It was a joke, but he didn’t smile.

  “Alright,” I said, embarrassed. “I will gather from that answer that they were in fact human. What happened?”

  He thought about how to answer me, and I saw the calculation return.

  “I took something from them,” he said.

  “You stole something?” I laughed, and he speared me with a hard gaze.

  “I said took, not stole,” he corrected.

  “Fine, fine,” I said, raising both my palms to him.

  “I took a sonar,” he explained without my prompting. “They came after it, and they killed someone I loved.”

  “The girl,” I said.

  “Hm,” he nodded in acknowledgment.

  “Ah,” I nodded, setting my hands over my breasts. Suddenly, it didn’t feel right to be flirtatious. “I’m… I lost someone, too.”

  “A mate?” he asked, his brows shooting up.

  I shook my head. “No, my sister. A couple years back.”

  “Then I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said. “For you, I mean. That’s tough.”

  I walked backward in the pool, and he followed facing me until we had walked the length of the pool several times. He seemed to be getting closer to me with every lap around the pool, his body nearly touching mine. I could see him, hard, through the water. I stopped walking and flicked my eyes up at his.

  It was clear we had some kind of sexual chemistry, but I wasn’t sure what to do, considering what he had just told me.

  “Were you together long?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “A couple of months.”

  “Why take the sonar?” I asked, tapping my lips. “What’s it for?”

  “Ah, ah,” he tsked. “That was one.”

  “How did you meet her?” I pestered with a grin.

  He shook his head. “I said one for one. Now I get my question.”

  I pouted my lips at him and swam towards him, splashing water on his face and eliciting my first smile from the man. It was just as sexy as I thought it would be.

  “Fine,” he sighed with a roll of his eyes: regretting his smile. “I sought her out. I could feel her, like a calling. She said her base was coming for me: had been following me to a wrecking site for weeks.”

  It was so strange to hear it from the other side: to hear him speak about his body craving someone. About the pull the Vithohn feel: the aggression focused on a single goal.

  “She didn’t know I had sensed her for weeks,” he explained to me. “Before she ever had the chance to tranq me.”

  I laughed. “She tried to shoot you with a tranquilizer?”

  “Who said tried?” he rubbed his arm for emphasis and the smiled once more.

  “Wow,” I mused. “She’s a brave one.”

  He laughed: eyes elsewhere. “She was. Anyway,” he said with a large inhale. “We… uh.”

  “Uh-huh,” I moved him along with a roll of my wrist. “You had sex,” I said, fascinated. “What was it like?”

  He let a wry smile creep up the side of his lip and took a step closer, seeming intrigued by me for the first time. He reached his hands down into the warm water and intertwined his fingers through mine before raising both our hands above the water: looking into my eyes as a waterfall of raindrops came off our fingers on either side of us.

  Kodyn raised a coy brow and teased, “You’ve never…”

  “No, no,” I blushed, shaking my head, unsure if I should ask the question I wanted to now that he was holding my hands. I felt a rush of blood through my body as my heart sped up.

  “I meant… how did it change you?” I clarified.

  “All I wanted was to claim her,” he said, dipping our hands back down into the water and looping his fingers through mine continuously. “It was an obsession. When we… did, it was like a new fixation began. The love…” He went to say something but thought better of it, backtracking then with a long pause. “Well, anyway… I think I’ve done more than my fair share of answering. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Oh, let me see,” I said, looking down into the water. “Why didn’t I bring the mech back?” I played with my gum some more, letting the loud chews echo through the room. If he was annoyed by it, he didn’t act like it. “See, your story was so deep that mine isn’t going to sound interesting in comparison.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” he cooed.

  “Alright, but you’ve been warned…”

  I took a long breath but couldn’t seem to find the words to explain myself to him. Before I had the chance to try, he nodded toward me, taking another step closer so that our bodies were touching.

  “You’re going to abandon them,” he said in a cocky tone.

  I swallowed in surprise and burst out with, “What? Excuse me?”

  “That’s the only reason I can think why you wouldn’t give your team an opportunity to defend themselves with it. It was fully loaded: we both saw as much.”

  “Yeah, it’s also a huge target to have at our base. Could get us spotted.” I scoffed. “I told you that.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s my job to protect the base. I’m the watch guard,” I laughed defensively. “You think I wouldn’t bring whatever weapon I could I to make sure my people are safe?”

  “You left it in the woods,” he teased. “You’re going to leave. Or, you want it to yourself for some other reason. A trade, maybe?”

  “Hey!” I blurted out. “I answered you. That’s one for one. It’s a target.”

  “Then why go after it in the first place?” he needled.

  “I think I liked it better when we weren’t talking,” I joked. “How about we go back to that?”

  “We can do that,” he said lowly as he drew a long finger down my navel.

  I felt a tight swelling in my throat that made me feel like I was going to sneeze or cry as his finger trailed down under the water. The space between my legs grew hot and throbbed as he moved in. I watched in slow motion, one hand on his shoulder for balance, as his finger continued down into the water and made the warmth of the liquid pool toward his moving hand.

  I ground against his hand, flattening his palm against my mound and using it to pleasure myself before he picked me up by my waist and took me to the edge of the water.

  He pushed inside me, and I used the corner of the pool to steady myself. He took my hands off the poolside and put them on his shoulders, encouraging me to grab him. He held me by my backside and gripped me hard, thrusting into me.

  The water came up around us as our bodies found a steady rhythm, me writhing against him with each deep thrust. It splashed our bodies, and I welcomed the cool touch, using the moisture against my nipples to make them hard.

  He saw this as an open invitation, taking my small breast into his mouth and sucking on it greedily.

  “Mmm,” I said and moaned loudly as he filled me up: my breath and guttural moans echoing through the room. The sound seemed to hit the ceiling and bounce back at us even louder.

  My heart was pounding hard. If we weren’t splashing so loud, I knew I would be able to hear it echoing along with us. I grabbed onto the spire-like tentacles that came out from the horns on his forehead and gripped them hard.

 
I knew he was excited, ready to burst, but I could feel that I was close.

  “Don’t stop,” I said in a whisper as I moved against his hard body.

  “I won’t,” he said back to me, and it made my heart lilt.

  That simple sentence was all it took to send me over the edge: make my body explode with ecstasy and ripples of body contractions.

  Kodyn let out a low moan, and I could feel my body grow warm as he slowed his pace, finishing inside me.

  When our bodies parted, I looked down in the pool and realized, with a grin, that nobody would ever want to swim here again.

  It was only when he set me back down into the water that I realized we’d skipped kissing and went straight to sleeping together.

  Then, as though he’d heard me somehow, he set both his wet hands on the side of my face and drew me into a sweet kiss. A simple pressing of lips against lips: soft and tired.

  My heart fluttered.

  Unsure what to do or say next, I walked up the cement stairs of the pool and walked over to the deck chairs that were set out in a row by the water. I pulled a blue striped towel off the plastic chair and pulled it around my body.

  Kodyn followed suit, toweling off as he watched me. Then we both got dressed.

  Chapter Six

  Kodyn

  We made our way back up to Elise’s room and, to my surprise, I crawled into my bed and scooped her into my arms: my hands resting on her breasts as we lay in silence.

  There it was: we’d slept together.

  I had felt the pull to have her ever since I saw her face. I hated myself for it, but I’d already given in just days after I lost Fiona.

  I felt disgusted but satisfied.

  Besides, I was already thinking of ways I could use this new bond to my advantage.

  We lay in silence for some time before drifting off to sleep that first night. And to my surprise, the nights that followed were exactly the same. Our relationship was all sex: all body and desire and lust.

  I was at Scarlet Heights for just over a week when I’d finally come to enjoy her small breasts: became endeared to the small hills and valleys of her body.

  Every moment we were alone was another moment she wanted to crawl on top of me: find ways to make me hard while acting coy. She had me with a look, it seemed. One flick of her green eyes: angry, playful, it didn’t matter. Her eyes put me in a trance of lust. I had to have her.

  It wasn’t until our fifth night together that things became different. The morning we woke up and she seemed surprised that I was still there: still enveloped in her body.

  “I want to leave,” she said suddenly, as though we were continuing a conversation.

  I paused for a minute and realized she didn’t have to expand. Scarlet Heights was where she meant.

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, delighted but quiet.

  “I know a runner when I see one,” I said.

  “Because you are one?”

  I smiled against the crook of her neck as we lay side by side. “Not quite,” I said. “Why run?”

  “We need allies,” she said. “We’ve been traveling around for years looking for other crews to help us: to form an alliance with the Vithohn for when the Kilari come. And what do we have to show for it? A couple of camps.”

  “And you can’t do that here?”

  She raised a lazy shoulder. “Once we found Scarlet Heights it’s like… we gave up. It’s not our mission to get anything back: the Earth, our rights. It’s not our mission to form an alliance anymore. All anybody cares about is protecting Scarlet.”

  “And what would you do differently?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “I would… do it right! I want this on a bigger scale. I want tech and videos and a real production. I want to launch a campaign, I want—”

  I laughed, interrupting, “A lot of things, apparently.”

  “I want a call for war and a proper alliance.”

  “You’d have women offer up their bodies?” I asked.

  “Willing ones,” she offered. “Yeah.”

  I thought about what she was saying and couldn’t help but jump on it for selfish reasons. If she wanted to leave her militia, then I would happily oblige her.

  “I’m in,” I said, pulling away from her side.

  She rolled onto her back and looked, green eyes wide, and her pointed chin, angling skyward to look at me.

  “In… what?” she asked.

  “If you want to leave, then I think you should,” I said, kissing the bulb on the end of her nose. “What do you need?”

  She scoffed, laughing into her hand. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “What do you need?”

  “I mean, ideally we’d need supplies, obviously. Willing girls. We’d need to get out of here without Bossman finding us out.”

  Her ‘cute’ nickname for Liam Broderick. I hated it.

  “I mean, it’s not a spur of the moment thing, Kodyn,” she lectured. “Not a ‘get up and go’ deal.”

  “You need treaties, right?” I offered. “From the Vithohn?”

  “Well,” she shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “And you need Vithohn willing to come along,” I led her.

  “Right,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes and set my hand on her stomach, gesticulating with it as I said, “Then you need to come back to Tenizi.”

  Her eyes beamed up at me. It was as though she’d been waiting for me to ask all this time. She wrapped her small arms around me, and before I knew it, it was all she could talk about. She spoke endlessly of what to bring and how great she was at presenting herself to the Vithohn all the way down into the breakfast room.

  It was a strange area of the hotel where all the humans gathered to eat. On my planet, meals were not a social gathering. The Earth culture seemed to be the exact opposite.

  “What’s going on?” Daxarus asked as he approached us with watered-down brown liquid the humans referred to as coffee.

  “Just recruiting,” I said, trying to solidify our leaving.

  Daxarus looked between the two of us, unbelieving, and I continued, “I know enough of the Vithohn who are terrified of the idea of the Kilari coming. They’d be willing to join your cause.”

  “I thought you said the opinion was split?” the chocolate-colored Vithohn questioned.

  “I said some thought it was a conspiracy,” I corrected smoothly. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t those who hold a different opinion. In fact, the level to which they take the threat of Kilari is… alarming, to say the least.”

  Daxarus tilted his head back, taking a seat with us. Rebecca soon followed, looking just as perplexed to be in our company. Up until now, we had hidden ourselves away since we’d coupled up, eager to be alone.

  “I see,” Daxarus said, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  This was one of the times I wasn’t lying.

  “Then… I’ll go as representative?” Elise said, as though it was just occurring to her now. She looked at Rebecca and then to Daxarus for their approval. “With Kodyn, I mean,” she swallowed.

  “If that’s alright,” I offered hesitantly, irritated to be asking permission.

  “Can’t see why Bossman wouldn’t let her go,” Rebecca offered to her lover. “That’s kind of her job, you know.”

  She was, of course, referring to sex.

  “Charmed,” I said, narrowing my eyes to her.

  “You want backup, Elise?” the auburn-haired woman offered and Elise quickly shook her head.

  “No,” she reaffirmed. “I’ll go with Kodyn and then bring some of the Vithohn back here.”

  “You’ll have to clear it with Bossman,” Rebecca said stiffly.

  I bristled. “I thought you said he wouldn’t have a problem letting her go?”

  “Well, no,” Rebecca cut in. “But she still has to let everybody know what the plan is. It’s not safe for her, going alone.”

  I s
et my hand over Elise’s hand and looked back to Rebecca, daring her to question me again. “She’s not going alone.”

  “Oh, what?” she scoffed, looking to Elise and then back to me. “You’re her protector now?”

  Daxarus watched my eyes and searched my intentions. Feeling his woman getting fired up, he set a hand out in front of her, his gaze never leaving mine. “It’s okay,” he warned.

  “No, it isn’t,” Rebecca argued, crossing her arms and falling back in her chair.

  “We’ll deal with Liam,” he said. “You guys gather the treaties, and we’ll be here when you get back. We still have some girls who aren’t mated.”

  I turned my glance to Rebecca, and we became deeply invested in a standoff. If Elise was willing to take me on a pilgrimage to different human camps, I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Rebecca ruin it for me. This could be my best chance to take revenge for Fiona: to find the army who slaughtered her and destroy them.

  Rebecca was the first to back down from our staring contest, looking down to the table and never meeting Daxarus’ glare. She was a woman who did not like being told what to do.

  Elise, for her part, seemed oblivious. She beamed at the table, happy to have started something. To kick-start a real goal for the humans.

  We took our leave from Scarlet Heights soon after, taking supplies with us and starting the hike toward Tenizi.

  If I could get her across the camps, I could find out who killed Fiona.

  It was about a day’s walk. Most of which Elise spent talking, undeterred by the desert heat. We’d stopped only once to rest, to kiss, and to drink water. The closer we got to the Tenizi fortress, the less like a desert it became.

  Sand and rock mountains turned into a dark city, walled off from the rest of the world. We made sure to build high walls as soon as we had taken over the fortress.

  It was an immense stone structure that had many spires: an old human castle. We made use of everything there: the kitchens, the weapons, the technology. We had turrets surrounding the base, laser tripwires, an army of mech.

  I thought, if anything, that my camp would be excited that I had brought Elise back: a human female willing to stay amongst our kind.

  As soon as we entered the building, I realized Elise would be the last thing on anybody’s mind.