Page 5 of The Commander
“What was so important, girl, that you had to break curfew?”
“Traps. I had to check my traps.” Under her ties, her chest rose and fell like she was running a race.
“You broke my law for traps?”
“Ever been hungry?” She licked cracked lips with her tongue.
The dirty prime that he was, he wanted to soothe those cracks and creases with his own tongue, then dip into the dark cave of her mouth, go inside, and share his moisture with her.
What the fuck?
The desire was astonishing. Unnatural. One reserved for a mate that he had already decided he did not want. She was prey. Tasty, yes. Blood and death, yes. Nothing else.
He’d read the reports on these humans from the exploratory teams and surveyors. Pathetic skin bags of unprotected soft tissue—no hunting skills at all. Most of their teeth were flat and bovine, combined with five mediocre senses. With technology advanced enough to blow themselves up, that is what they had done, until their civilization had entered the beginning stages of death.
They managed sky travel and touched on the barest beginnings of space—enough to dirty it up with their extra garbage—but nothing on this planet was equal to a Sarrian prime battler. Humans were not a threat.
She couldn’t kill him. But she could get him killed.
Control would love it if battlers like himself mated and reproduced with these humans. They’d get more warriors for their armies and have a way to control them.
She was just one small, curvy human, but perhaps he should stop talking now. Leave the room or kill her and let the red hats have her. He didn’t want a woman mucking up his plans or his life.
He had questions she hadn’t yet answered. If he left without them, could he still call himself a commander?
“Poor thing.” He added what he thought was a sympathetic coo.
She winced.
“You were hungry? What happened to your food supply?”
“What food supply?” Her question held enough sarcasm that it became an insult.
Brave Kitten. She had claws. He liked it.
He knew her preference was to die rather than be raped and eaten alive by the red hats. Or him. Was she trying to piss him off and get it over with?
Bastian stood up straight again to clear his head of her fantastic scent. It made him feel too many distracting things. But feelings were nothing. He’d been tortured in training games as a child. Every inch of his skin had been on fire at one point or another. He could withstand this.
She tracked his every move.
“I’ve been hungry.” He tapped his mouth.
She glanced away, disturbed.
“An empty belly was never worth my death. ‘Aim high.’ Isn’t that what they say?” Her eyes darted back to his, a confused pinch between them. Or was that worry? He couldn’t tell.
He might have misquoted. Well. At least he had her attention. “What traps? Where? Only a crazy woman would go out alone so close to dark when she should be tucked up in her bed, hiding from monsters. Are you stupid?”
She reacted beautifully to everything he said, lips tightening, eyelids fluttering and skin shifting colors and temperatures. He went over to the wall and stood beneath the high windows giving he an illusion of space. Like a prison, they were so high in this room that people of normal height couldn’t look out.
The outside darkness confirmed his point. The night was not safe for soft, squishy, curvy things like her. Any idiot could see that.
She took a breath, collecting herself, looking at the door. Not at him. “Food. Rabbit. Rat. Bird. Whatever I can catch. I meant to go early, but the pig’s men got in the way, and it’s not like there is just food waiting to be found around here. I looked!”
“I wasn’t aware ‘pigs’ had men.” That interesting combination of terms stumped him.
“The tubby pig tyrant running the town and his guys—Andy and his lot—who hold the food as a protection fee against the aliens. Against the invaders. Against the muzzle head dog breath monsters and you. Whatever you are.”
“Muzzle heads?” He stopped her.
“Dog breath assholes? Those guys that brought me in that slobber all the time.”
“Red hats. The duty.”
“They don’t wear red.”
Bastian moved his shoulders in an attempt at a shrug. She was right. That wasn’t why they were called that. He showed his teeth, but she missed the impressive display, her eyes turned elsewhere.
“After I got free of them, it was later in the day, and I guess the wankers were waiting for me. The bastards took the baskets I spent hours working on. They took everything. They saw me when I went to check on the farthest one.”
“You made basket traps and went to check them. When?”
“What?”
“Did they just grow out in the fields and in the brush? When did you have time to make and set basket traps?”
“I could only make two. There wasn’t a lot of time. When I couldn’t find food anywhere around the town or the river, I had to do something.”
“Why?”
The question turned her face back to his, as if it were so stupid that she couldn’t grasp it. What Bastian couldn’t grasp was that she was alone. Humans traveled in packs.
They liked to do things together. Research suggested that they be treated like herd animals.
This creature deviated from the norm.
Her pretty eyes, with their green ringed human irises, scanned his face again as if hoping to find something human there.
Then they flicked away. She wouldn’t find anything human in him. He was pure. A battler descended from the hand of a dead goddess, made to serve, guard, protect, and provide.
“I was fucking hungry,” she bit out after a breath, looking at the door and repeating herself as if that explained everything.
She didn’t like his company. Too bad. He wasn’t finished yet.
Not facing Bastian while she spoke helped calm her, he guessed, but that wasn’t how they were going to do this. Provoked, he returned to her side, placed his fingers at her chin, and turned her to meet his look at him. “The pig—is Mister Danov? He took half your food rations as a protection fee?”
“Yes. Him.” She jerked from his touch, trying to free herself.
She didn’t want his touch? Too bad. He liked touching her. Smelling her. She really was tempting in so many ways.
There was no reason for her to be squeamish around him. There was a commander watching over every territory of tax collection. Humans were acclimated to the alien presence that managed every aspect of their daily lives.
She should have come across a prime battler during collection days and adjusted to his type. There were also a few predators on the planet that carried a faint resemblance. He knew human minds liked to put things into neat boxes. She should have found a match by now. Velociraptors, demons, certain insects. Take your pick.
He had a human shape—head, shoulders, torso, legs, feet—but he did not match her. From the angular planes of his face, a lack of eyebrows, eyelashes, and humanoid hair to his black deep set eyes and the inset line bisecting the center of his bottom lip to his suprasternal notch; they were different species.
She closed her eyes again. He tapped on the delicate closed lids. “Look at me when you talk, Kitten.”
Her eyes widened and teared. She blinked rapidly to clear them. Bastian resisted the urge to scoop one up with the tip of his finger for a taste. He just knew it would be appetizing.
He’d been gentle so far. Barely touched her. What a troublesome creature to please.
He asked, “Other side of town? Why not forage closer to home?”
“Home is a bunch of people escaping the harassment from the pig, and there’s no food or game there.”
“Give me a timeline of your trap making and collecting.” Her eyes moved in her head as if she were thinking, counting.
“We were kicked out of Dalewood,” she began.
“Who is we?”
“Brenda and me.”
“Who is this ‘Brenda’?” He closed his hand over her throat, watching her lips move as she said the word Brenda, with a slight, soft pucker. He really wanted to lick the plush curves.
Trembling under his hand, the pulse in her neck beat seductively against the heat of his skin, and her eyes rolled to the side, trying not to see him when he was right there, taking up all her view.
“My friend. We came from Springfield to Dalewood, but the pig.” She stopped talking when his thumb stroked over the tender skin of her ear.
Bastian pulled his hand away. Was he petting her? Her fear was turned up nicely, but so were other things, her body confused with his intentions. What were his intentions? Why couldn’t he stop touching her?
This wasn’t his usual interrogation method. She wasn’t bleeding yet.
“Go on. I want a timeline. This is rather confusing. You are stupid, aren’t you? Start from the beginning,” he snapped at her as he took a step back.
“We moved to Dalewood from Springfield. The work was supposed to be better here, but it isn’t. That man, the pig—Danov and his men, they forced us out of town. There was a whole fake court and everything a week after we arrived. He accused us of spying. I know it was stupid; it’s all stupid.”
“Forced you out and then?” He redirected her from cloying self-pity. There was no time for that.
“We found the other people hiding in a camp by the river. They didn’t have anything. Boiled water. They were trying to eat dried weeds and bark. There was nothing, anywhere; it’s like it died or was scared away. There are not even dandelions. Where the hell did the dandelions go? I saw that and started the first basket—a trap to catch meat.”
Bastian held back a deep disapproval. This was not how the towns were supposed to be run. There was an allotment of food for everyone, including the elderly, the young, and the disabled. As long as each human settlement met the tax quota, they were provided with the necessary supplies.
“Brenda and I had a little food. I shared, but she, she’s pregnant. Everyone was hungry. I draw the line at eating grasshoppers. My dad said they were good in a pinch, but I can’t do it.”
Bastian searched his mind for a reference. There were several food stores that matched a grasshopper on his home planet. She was silly to ignore nutrition, but humans had many sensibilities he didn’t understand.
“I was only trying to find something to eat.”
“Did you see any rebels outside the town?” he asked. All of this sounded plausible, a little too noble to be believed, but plausible.
“Rebels? That wanker scum? I think they were waiting for me.”
“Waiting for you?”
“Why else would they be there? Why did they take my damn traps? I thought I saw some of them in Dalewood, but I don’t know. Everything there happened so fast. We weren’t there very long. Why would they be there?” She swallowed noisily, uncertain with her answers.
Bastian guessed she was hungry and thirsty. Tired and worn out from all this running around saving the world from human tyrants. “You wanted to go out early again?”
“Andy showed up before I could get going.”
“Andy—the pig?” Bastian did not know any of these names.
“No, not him; he’s one of the pig’s men. Andy works for Danov; he collects women for Dalewood’s brothel.”
“Brothel?” That was an old fashioned word and not one he expected to hear. He had to reach far back into his knowledge base to pull out a dusty, thousand-year-old meaning.
“Women who have sex for favors like food, water, and clothing. I don’t know what else to call it.” He watched her close her eyes and make a face at the idea.
“I see.” He examined her layers of clothes, all her interesting parts covered up. She wore traditionally male clothing: pants, jackets, the light protective armor, but none of it hid her essential female core—the part that would be given away for favors. A core he could smell, like a poison flower, too tempting to stay away from. The longer he spent in this room with her, the sweeter the poison became.
“I wouldn’t do it. He tricked us, and I wasn’t going to be one of them. So, the pig kicked us out. And then, the first time in my life, aliens get their hands on me. My dad is probably disgusted with me.” Her voice had turned watery again at the mention of her dad.
That was one of the many names for a parental figure: father, pop, papa, wasn’t it? Dad. Daddy. He liked it.
Bastian poked her leg. “Your dad?”
“He’s dead. How could I be so stupid? Can you just let me go? It was all an accident. I should never have left Springfield. I should never have joined a town.” She shifted her hips, moving as if she wanted to sit up.
Did she think they were finished?
He tugged on her leg hard, shifting her down the table in a sudden, sharp jerk.
She yelped.
“Don’t get distracted, little Kitten. Tell me it all again. No deviations. Why were you out after curfew when you know that breaking any of the laws is a death sentence?”
“I just told you!” she shouted.
Bastian moved from her feet to her head, fisted her hair, and yanked her up to meet his eyes. She started to protest.
He snapped his teeth right at the edge of her face. Had she forgotten how easy it would be to kill her? He was in charge, and she was a tied up, helpless little piece of good-to-eat meat.
With her entire body trembling, the words rushed out of her again in a muddled repeat of everything she’d said so far. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, with the hot ambrosia of horror filling his head until his eyes threatened to roll back into his skull with drugged bliss. She smelled so fucking good.
“You humans are not very nice to each other.” He released her, shaking his hands free of the silky strands of her hair and stepping back.
He should open the door and let in fresher air. But he didn’t want to share any of it with the red hats. No, he wanted to claim it all for himself. Keep it. Eat it up.
“Dad said never to trust anyone. And I did,” she whispered.
The humans maintained a regular stream of petty squabbling. Fighting for hierarchy and supplies—they forgot all about their masters who could squeeze their lives to nothing on a whim. It insulted him that they’d all failed to recall how much he enjoyed watching them suffer.
Mister Danov kicked people out of the town, weakening the human workforce. The man didn’t have permission for actions like that. How long had he been doing this? No reports to that effect from duty had landed on Bastian’s desk.
This woman said local rebels around Bastian’s base were so bad they now gathered in large groups—visited the towns. Outrageous.
Duty soldiers left and returned to the base for their patrols. No mention of rebels. Not since the two from last week.
The reds were leaving pertinent information out in their reports. How unusually intelligent and independent of them. The duty was not made to think, only obey.
Chosen as soldiers by the Sarrian because of their hunting skills, Bastian’s red hats must know about the rebels, the trouble in the town—this unauthorized camp outside of it—so why didn’t he know too?
Since human blood acted as a drug for the red hats, he had no doubt that they weren’t above making deals with unscrupulous leaders behind Bastian’s back. He suspected they’d scared the food away. Their help was a simple thing, and they’d give it if Mister Danov bribed them with human blood.
Not being a fucking ambassador, Bastian let the humans pick their little spokesperson. The man was a corpulent cockroach. A former military representative, Mister Danov claimed the role of go between. He had the simple job of making sure the humans understood Bastian’s expectations.
Maybe he was helping the rebels?
All this tiresome drama was just one more reason to rid the planet of humans. There were other beasts of burden that could do the work of cultivating this planet.
Keeping his attention steady on the girl, she started talking again to fill up his thoughtful silence with excuses he hadn’t asked for. “I tried to stay, follow the rules. I know how to work, and I was going to, but the pig wanted me to pay for the right to work and live in his town. Sex and servitude. Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t do it.”
It didn’t sound so bad to Bastian, really, as long as it was a female like this, on her knees giving him the sex and servitude. It could be pleasant.
“After I made the traps, I set them up near the river. Closer. But there was nothing. No fish in the river. Did you kill off the fish?”
He didn’t dignify that with an answer. Humans had killed off the fish years before his arrival. If they left nothing to spawn, it couldn’t repopulate, could it?
“I had to keep going farther out to set my traps. Nothing. No food. Even the rats don’t come around Dalewood. I was going to go early this morning so I could make it back. I should have had plenty of time. I was just trying to find something to eat,” she repeated.
“And you did all of that ‘food searching’ alone?” he clarified again.
“Who else would do it? An old man? A woman who can barely breathe? Brenda can barely pull vegetables from a garden.”
“The men you were found with,” he pressed.
“I wasn’t found with anyone!”
“No?” Bastian acted surprised, trying to mimic the human’s raised eyebrow look.
She blinked at him, her lips puckering. Was that revulsion?
“I was alone. I realized someone else had been to my traps before me, took my baskets, my snares, all the good twine I’d saved. Everything. I saw paw prints in the dirt, but if I caught something, it was gone too. When I got to the last trap, these greasy, pocked-up wankers came out from behind the trees—they’d been hiding down the slope, I guess.” She recounted each part, her expression telling Bastian that this time she was trying to visualize it and pick out details. An attempt at appeasing him.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. More than five? Less than twenty? There were a lot of them. On foot. I turned and ran. Have you ever smelled a wanker before? Do you know what they do to women? What they all do?”
Bastian watched her lips move. She shook her head as if to shake off the anxious tears that kept dripping out of her eyes and down her face. Terrified of her fate, she tried to swallow over and over, her dry throat not functioning properly. On top of all her spicy fear, the tremulous sight shot to his cock, stiffening his member, forcing a hiss at the squeeze of it.
The vast catalog of her human emotions was quickly becoming one of his favorite things to feast on, each adding flavor to the scents she shed. He could keep her talking in circles, answering the same questions over and over, on the edge of confusion. Winding them both up toward—something.
Something he’d told himself he did not want and would not do. Something that was becoming less important the longer he stayed in this room with her.
“Well, you went out hunting for meat and ended up getting caught in a net. How does that feel? What are we going to do about that? Here you are, all tied up, and here I am. Just an alien and a girl. I still have to search you. Make sure you are telling the truth. What shall we do?” Bastian sing-songed teasingly in her ear.
Expressions flitted across her face like shadows as she sorted through her answers.
“I’ve told you. Over and over. Everything. I don’t know what else.”
She had. He ignored it. “Where shall we start, at the top or the bottom? What do you think? You say you are an innocent, helpless creature, caught by mistake. It’s the fault of all the shitty men in your life. Always someone else’s fault,” he asked as if talking to a child.
“No, no. That’s not it.” She shook her head frantically.
“It’s not? How can I know this? How do I know, really know, if you are a wronged citizen or a rebel? One of those ‘wankers’? You are just telling me stories about Mister Danov and that Andy, but really you were out checking the traps just before dark to take back food to your rebel man and his nasty friends? You were helping them. Going to let them all fuck you.”
He said it to gauge her reaction, but the obscene idea offended him in unexpected ways. He didn’t want a nyone putting their filthy hands on her. That was a possessive thought he should not have.
Her eyes widened and her feet twitched. It looked to him like group sex did not appeal to her. “I wasn’t.”
He shook off the anticipation of feeling more of her skin, exploring her. Sex. There would be no sex. He had to get this done. Though she seemed truthful, things had occurred around his base involving Springfield and his duty, and she was entangled in the middle.
“Females like yourself do not travel alone. It would be very unusual for you to know how to catch your own food. You are young, healthy, and articulate. Not the type to be wandering the countryside after curfew. Females like you use the advantage of the town’s walls,” he pressed.
“There was no one else! I just want to eat. I had good traps. I wanted meat, not a rebellion. I don’t have a husband, a lover, or children. Do you know what this world is like? Who would do something stupid and bring children into it?” No mate? That was very interesting.
Denials escaped from the girl in whines and tears as he reached behind his back for his blade. Poor lost human. All by herself.
He knew a fun way to check her honesty, but it would require closer inspection.
Dressed in his clean uniform with the usual handheld knives tucked in the usual places, he had his showy, name day blade neatly in the sleeve against his spine. He loved to use it for intimidation.
Overbearing in its high protocol arrogance, Bastian kept it nice and sharp. Every prime had the same type of knife, a personal final designation given by Control when they entered formal service. And every prime had a love-hate relationship with the thing.
He held it up for her to see before rolling her to her belly, face down, and carefully cutting into the clothing between her restraints. “You look so uncomfortable. Let me help you with that.”
“No. No. I’m fine. You can’t. Don’t.”
Her protests were adorable. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
Her resistance contained a musky additive that wouldn’t be there if she meant what she said. He could smell it. Naturally afraid, yes. But the cute kitten was also a teeny tiny bit excited.
The red hats had eaten all the dogs and cats in the area. The humans whined about losing their furry pets, showed him images of the lost beasts when he first arrived. He didn’t understand the appeal of the custom, of cute things with claws. Until now.
He shouldn’t care about that other than as an observation. But he did care. The idea went to his head and sizzled across his receptors. He liked that he appealed to her, in spite of herself, beyond her own fear. Programmed to respond to him, she lacked choices with her body’s responses to his presence, but that only made her dismay more fun to watch.
It was all very wrong. He really should have killed her and stepped out of this room several minutes ago. He should end this now. But he couldn’t make his body turn; he couldn’t make himself act with the least bit of self-preservation.
Was he already infected by her?
As soon as he had the clothing removed from her thigh, he put his hand there. She twisted, as if to pull the same trick she had before, hurting herself to escape what was coming.
“Stop that now. Hold still. Why do you think you are tied? It’s not because I want you flopping about like a landed fish.”
“Fuck you.” She spat, her defiance escaping.
Bastian struck the spot with his open hand. Rapid fire, stinging slaps, until the skin reddened, then moved to the intriguing curve of her ass over her pants.
She wailed her resistance, pulling on her ropes. He wouldn’t allow her to hurt herself. That was his job.
“None of that.” Every time she moved, he spanked her more until she got the message.
“Monster. Alien pervert! I didn’t do anything.” Her more agreeable, frightened mask disappeared under the sharp delivery of pain, her face flushing with beautiful, angry color.
Oh, yes. He liked that.
He leaned in, so that his face filled her vision, forcing her to see all the species differences between them. Why didn’t she like his pearly teeth? He kept them clean and minty fresh.
“But you did something, Kitten. You broke my law. Fighting me isn’t a good way to make me change my mind about your punishment, either. Be still now. Relax. For me.”
“I didn’t do anything on purpose. This isn’t my fault. I told you.”
“Just one of those shit days, yes? I think this is what your people call a ‘Monday’.”
“Please. Just kill me,” she moaned, voice cracking. Her fight was useless, muscles straining in the ropes.
She didn’t think his sarcasm was funny. Did he do it wrong?
“Why would I do that when you are so much fun?”
The touch pads on his hands weren’t as sensitive as the areas on his body covered by clothing. But the difference between her human skin against his immediately materialized to his hunting senses. Every brush on her cheek with the back of his knuckles, every touch of his fingertips on her neck, activated a deep awareness.
He cut away her clothing quickly. The old human armor might stop their weapons, but it parted easily under his blade. Vitality shot through his blood, a battler hormone that sharpened his intent, kept him from shaking apart with the desire to experience the female with his fine receptor hairs.
Humans had tiny hairs in varying places, an animal byproduct, to keep them warm, to activate chill bumps, but basically useless. She was smooth, warm, damp with perspiration, and soaked with a catalog of feminine smells.
She said she had no mate, no male, and he only smelled her, as if she’d never been touched by another.
Fuck. He liked that. The knowledge made him start and freeze. But he didn’t want to freeze. Didn’t want to stop. His senses cried out in active rejection of any resistance to the compulsion to touch her.
He sent another command to his brain to stop inhaling her scent and sucking it into his nose like the most incredible thing he’d ever smelled. His knees locked, calf muscles screaming resistance, instinct taking him over in a hormone flood that started at the base of his skull and washed through his long body right into his gonads.
And fuck, it was too late now to walk out of the room, but he no longer cared.
One of her elbows had taken damage, a hematoma darkening purple as he stood there, a fool trying to maintain his control. He leaned down and put his lips on the sore spot.
She made a noise at the touch of his mouth, a cut off, choking sound between horror and hopelessness, in response to the warmer contrast of his hot touch against her cool skin.
Primes ran warm, but this girl called to his basest urges, the most untamed part of his primal, wild nature. He knew she had him running hotter than usual.
“You don’t have to do this. I’ve answered your questions. Please. Don’t do this,” she begged, trying to convince him.
Bastian didn’t stop. Her words gave him a clear, straightforward path. “I do have to do this. And I have so many more questions.” She moaned.
The girl was simply too entertaining. The best thing to happen to him in months.
He wanted more. Unaccustomed to denying himself—he really should have practiced that more—he took what he wanted. Every bit of cloth he cut away revealed more soft, pink human wonder. Layers of scent, possibility, desire, one on top of the other.
He followed the skin up her arm to her neck. She thrashed away. The poor girl must be panicking at his closeness. Too bad. One hand pinned her still while a driving, needing took him over.
There were no females of his kind off his planet. That was the reason he’d left the minute he’d been released from his sire’s household.
He’d thought that wise reasoning, knowing how weak a female could make him. Had he met one, courted a Sarrian in her season, would she have smelled like this? Would his heart rate quicken, his glands swell, his cock grow painfully hard behind his seam? Or was this a mere manufactured echo of that powerful, elemental attraction?
This was pretty fucking powerful.
“You are someone special, Kitten. You don’t know it, but you are much more than a simple humanoid female. I think you might be too special for the red hats.”
“They are animals! Those things look like dogs stretched out like rubber bands. No one survives what they do.” Her feet twitched as if she were trying to kick away the thought.
“How would a sweet young thing like you know that?” he asked into the shell of her ear.
“I saw them when I was a child. I saw them.” Her voice cracked on the honesty of the terrible memory. Bastian could guess. She’d seen red hats attack a human.
It would have marked her for life.
“And so, you are ready to take your chances with me?”