Brute: A Dark Sci-Fi Romance Read online

  “I don’t want my bones knitted. I want the money.”

  “Mercenary little thing,” he laughs. He is amused by me. “I can fix your leg for free.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I don’t like seeing animals in pain.”

  I grit my teeth. It figures he would think of me as an animal. Aliens always think they’re better than humans. More advanced. Maybe some of them are. I guess he is, if evolutionary advancement means being a gleaming muscular god. But I’m going to surprise him before we’re done. He’s going to find out that this animal has more than a few tricks up her sleeve.

  “I don’t need my leg fixed. I just need the money. I brought the goods.”

  “Human female, you are injured,” he says, as if perhaps I don’t understand that.

  “I know, you big idiot! I don’t care.”

  Those brows come down over his eyes, his posture changes, as does his expression. He goes from helpful and concerned to overbearing and borderline aggressive in seconds.

  “You will speak to me with a respectful tone, human.”

  “I don’t want to be speaking to you at fucking all. Give me my money and take your trinket.”

  “No.”

  What? I stare at him. “You came all this way to not buy what you asked me to get for you?”

  “Oh, I’m going to buy it. But I’m going to deal with you first.”

  “I’ve been trying to do a deal with you!”

  “Not do a deal, deal with,” he growls. “Your intergalactic really isn’t very good, is it, little human.”

  Before I can snap back with a retort, the ground goes out from under my feet. He sweeps me up into the air, way higher than I am comfortable with given how far I recently fell, and starts carrying me toward the ship.

  I should probably be terrified at this point, but in spite of our less than auspicious meeting, I feel instinctively safe with him.

  That might be naive. He’s big enough to tear me apart and probably eat me. His head is twice the size of mine, so I’m sure his teeth are too. I’ve never met this species of alien before. Mostly Earth gets visits from what we call grays and greens, big-headed creatures who have to be asked very nicely not to put their probes where they’d be inconvenient.

  This monster has a good guy vibe, though I still would prefer for him to just give me the money I’m trying to scam from him.

  The ship isn’t actually as small as I thought it was. It was being dwarfed by him. But he still has to duck to stoop under every door, and he needs to turn sideways to get us both through, but he nevertheless manages to carry me into a small medical bay with a bed that really only barely fits me on it.

  “So who did you steal this ship from?”

  “Steal?”

  “Obviously not yours. You look like Gulliver.”

  “I do not know who this Gulliver is,” he says, sitting me on the bed. “Stay still.”

  I don’t stay still. I don’t want his alien medicine. I don’t want to be probed, or mended with whatever ‘tools’ he might have on hand. I want to get out of here. He’s making me feel a whole host of feelings I don’t want to be having. This is getting dangerous on several levels.

  “No. Thank you,” I say tightly. “If you don’t want to buy, that’s fine. There were others who wanted it.”

  That’s a lie. Nobody wants the old piece of crap in my bag.

  He picks me up again without a word. It is so frustrating, being handled like a wayward puppy. Tired of being carried about, I do my best to pull out of his grasp. It’s a futile struggle, but so is life in general and I put my all into that as well.

  * * *

  Crash

  I look down at the little human female who dares defy me. She has dark hair that is tangled in a riot of curls, and dark brown eyes that stare out from under thick lashes. A sprinkle of little dark dots marks her nose and her cheeks, but she is otherwise pale. Her form is of upright ambulation, two legs, one of which is clearly hurt.

  Her clothing is far from glamorous. She is wearing aged protective leathers of some kind. They are cracked and worn in several places, turning brown where they used to be black.

  She is beautiful, but difficult. Her injury would be easy enough to treat, but for how she squirms in my grasp, risking injuring herself. I do not understand why she is being so difficult. She has the intellect to grasp the fact that I am trying to help her, but apparently that offends her.

  “Stop it, or I will sedate you,” I threaten as she spins in my arms.

  “Put me down!”

  “Not until you are mended.” I keep my voice gruff, my tone serious. I do not like to be disobeyed. In the military tradition I was raised in the command line is to be followed precisely. Even outside the military, it is quite obvious that a smaller female should submit to a larger male. That is a law of nature that stretches throughout the universes.

  She has not been taught that lesson, or many others. I feel the tension in her frame. She is curvy in places, but overall she does not have a robust body. She is not suited for struggle. Certainly not against me.

  In the end, it is easier to hold her by the uninjured leg and let her dangle while Farti gathers the med kit. She sets up a loud complaining, which I do not appreciate.

  “Silence,” I chastise her. “You may attract predators with that wailing.”

  “I already did,” she whimpers in complaint.

  She swings about in my grasp and the soft round of her ass is presented to me. My spare hand finds itself in motion, my palm more than large enough to cover both her cheeks in a solid swat hard enough to make her swing forward and back like a screeching pendulum, wishing death on me and my family.

  Enough with her insolence. I hoist her up, one hand around her leg, holding her high enough that I can look down into her screwed-up face.

  “Stop,” I growl in the voice I use when I mean something.

  She shuts her mouth. I see her gulp. Her eyes are red-rimmed as if she is truly on the verge of crying and her face is pale, even though she is upside down and angry. She should be red.

  Wrong color is a bad thing with humans. They are more fragile than they like to admit. I have known several of their warriors, and though they were brave to a fault they did not have the capacity for survival my species enjoys. Their limbs do not regenerate. Most of their body is single use. A very inefficient design for a species that often relies on its ability to initiate conflict.

  Concerned for her well-being, I lower her gently to the bed, making sure to keep a firm hold on her body, making sure she lies still. Now that she is unable to move, I see that she is not in good condition, leg aside. There are insect bites all over her skin, which is far too pale for a creature that spends as much time in the sun as she must. She needs a thorough examination, not just a simple mending, but I know she will resist that with every bit of her strength. She is the most contrary little thing I have ever encountered. Except, perhaps, for…

  “What are you doing? Did you bring an animal in here!” Farti’s irritated screech interrupts my exam. Her head pops up as he comes striding into the room. He does not speak the intergalactic tongue. He prefers his native speech, which does not translate to the human ear.

  “Awww, look at him. He’s so cute! Is he your pet?”

  She lets out a gasp of pure joy and claps her hand to her mouth. Her voice pitches up several octaves, and she makes repeated gasping, delighted sounds that are at odds with the grumbling and growling she has been subjecting me to so far. When she smiles, she is transformed. In her petulant state she was pretty. Happy, she is utterly gorgeous. She has a wide smile, sparkling eyes, her entire face lights up in a way that makes her look much less ill.

  “Did she just call me a damn pet?”

  Farti bristles with indignation, which only makes him more adorable to her. “Oh, my god, I want to cuddle him!”

  He takes several brisk steps back. “If she touches me, I’ll bite her. Don’t you
let that damn human near me!”

  “Easy,” I tell him, pushing Pyxel back down on the bed. “This is the trader we’re supposed to meet. She’s injured. I’m going to fix her leg.”

  “Well, you’ll take the price of the electrozes off the bill,” Farti grumbles. “We’re not an intergalactic medical charity!”

  “Aw, he’s so cute. What’s his name?” She is blissfully unaware of Farti’s hostility toward her.

  “His name is Farti.”

  “You called your pet Farty?”

  “Farti,” I say, emphasizing the I sound at the end. Humans are cute in the way they find it so hard to even hear, much less pronounce the little intonations and higher order frequencies of language. “And I am Kr’ash.”

  “Crash.”

  “Kr’ash,” I repeat.

  “Crash,” she says.

  “Crash,” I agree. It doesn’t really matter what she calls me. She’s settled down a lot now, and I can finally have a look at this leg of hers.

  “Is Farti friendly?”

  “Not particularly,” I say, rolling up the leg of her faded, dirty, threadbare pants. She’s really not dressed well at all. I have encountered better clad urchins at interstellar charity events.

  She can’t take her eyes off him, which is good because it gives me the chance to remove her boot and deploy the medical tool that instantly removes the swelling and repairs the damaged tissue simply by being rubbed lightly over the surface of the skin. It’s a deep echo-scanner, which uses the inbuilt data and information from the injury itself to restore the tissue to its previous state. In about twenty seconds, she’s fixed.

  “Wow,” she says, her eyes widening as I move her foot up and down for her, demonstrating the healing. “That doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “Mhm. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  “Huh. Now you can use it on my butt where you hit me,” she suggests. “It’s still tingling.”

  “No.” I am firm on that. “Discipline must be endured.”

  She cuts her eyes at me. “And who are you to discipline me?”

  “Your superior.” It is a simple matter of fact. I do not know why it seems to confuse her. “You are a small female of limited strength and agility. I am a male of far superior abilities. Of course it falls to me to discipline you.”

  “You’re a real fucking asshole, you know that?”

  I am tired of her temper and her cursing. She has much to learn and she will learn some of it from me now.

  It is the work of a fraction of a second to turn her over onto her stomach. She flails and fights me, but her strength is piteous. Even Farti could probably overpower her. These humanoid frames are very early evolutionary models. They come with a great deal of flaws. One of them being the fact that she can be held in place and have her bottom spanked nice and long and hard without my expending nearly any energy at all.

  She is fortunate that the seat of her rear is covered, otherwise it would surely be even more painful for her.

  “You will speak with respect,” I inform her. “You will not swear, curse, or otherwise denigrate me. Do you understand?”

  “Fuck you!”

  I stop, puzzled for a moment. “Do you not understand, or are you attempting to rebel even though you are clearly physically outmatched?”

  “The last one, dick!”

  “Thank you for the clarification,” I growl, yanking down her lower body covering. It is so old and worn that much of it disintegrates in my hands. Her howl of outrage is not because of that though. It is because I have bared her cheeks and now I can see all her charms laid out before me. The lower parts of her leggings are still intact around her calves and knees, but her upper thighs and her bottom are completely exposed.

  Beautiful. I stop for a moment and take her in, one hand on the back of her neck, holding her in place as I gaze upon one of the wonders of the universe. Evolution did many things with a female sex, but it never truly improved on the human woman. Her pussy is protected by two fat lips that are swollen with desire and parting to reveal the petals of her inner lips, ever so slightly folded and crinkled in a unique way. The human female’s sex closely resembles a flower, with the core being the dark little hole that seems far too small to take any kind of intrusion, but that I know can take objects many inches in diameter.

  “What are you doing, you freak!”

  Her attitude is tiresome, and at odds with what I am seeing below. She is wet. There are traces of moisture on her inner lips and even her inner thighs. Her struggles have smeared those traces of desire around, making the entrance of her sex easier to find.

  I can smell her too, a feminine perfume that wafts to my nose. Pure pheromones, a primal mix that reaches down to the very core of my maleness and evokes a response that is difficult to control. Everything in my biology tells me to mount this willful woman and fuck her until she apologizes.

  My hand lands across her cheeks again, leaving a hot red print, nice and low, just above her pussy.

  “I am looking at your cunt.”

  * * *

  Pyxel

  He’s crude. He’s brutal. He’s an asshole. And when he says those words, I feel my inner walls clench around the cock they wish was there.

  “You have no right to do this.”

  “I have every right,” he growls. “I have the right every male has over every female who taunts him and presents herself to him.”

  “I didn’t present myself to you!”

  “I could have pulled these down and found you dry, all closed up.” His finger sweeps between my pussy lips in a touch that is far too familiar and makes me shiver with the need I don’t want to have right now. “But you are wet and open. You are inviting me, displaying yourself. You are in season.”

  He talks about me like I’m an animal. The only thing to be grateful for now is that my pussy seems to have distracted him from slapping my ass, which hurts like hell. There is a tight heat making me feel like all the skin of my bottom shrank, and yet the flesh beneath is swelling with pain, making everything tingle and sting.

  “Apologize for your rudeness, and I will give you new clothing. This punishment will be over. We can resume our trade. Curse at me again, and I will fuck you.”

  Every muscle in my lower belly and upper legs goes tight. Fuck me.

  He palms my ass, his fingers stretching out to the point he nearly covers both cheeks with one great hand. I can sense that he is being gentle with me—his version of gentle anyway. I should apologize. I should sell my goods and get out of here. I should close my legs.

  I try to do that, but he stops me easily, holding my thighs spread.

  “Apology first. Then you can hide your pussy.”

  “Oh, to hell with you.”

  “A fucking it is.”

  “What! That wasn’t even…” I don’t have much chance to complain that I didn’t curse at him. He has mounted the bed behind me in one muscular, agile motion, and I feel something far too thick and far too hard slap down between my sore cheeks. I can’t see his cock, but I can tell it’s huge.

  “I told you what would happen, Pyxel,” he says, one of his hands sliding up the back of my neck, taking a handful of my curls.

  He nudges the head of his cock down the crevice of my cheeks, past my asshole and to my pussy, where my traitorous cunt covers the head of whatever otherworldly phallus is about to split me open.

  “I’m sorry!” I apologize just as he starts to push forward. I feel my outer lips wrapping around him, drawing him in.

  “You’re not sorry,” he says, keeping his grip on me tight. “You’re afraid.”

  That is true.

  He holds his cock there, at the very entrance of my pussy.

  “This is how rebellious females are punished in my world,” he tells me. “A rude young woman will find herself bent over and fucked several times a day if she cannot manage to control her mouth. We like to recruit badly behaved female cadets for that reason. Instructor and instr
uctee both get something from it.”

  The anthropological lesson is lost on me in this moment, with his thick rod on the brink of splitting me open. He really was right. I am afraid. Afraid of how it will feel when what must be a monster cock pushes inside me, and afraid that I might like it. My body is already responding to his handling in a way I can’t control. I should hate him for this. I should be tense and angry and fighting him off tooth and nail. Instead, I find myself feeling whiny and small, pleading for mercy rather than demanding it.

  “You’re too big for me!”

  “I am not,” he says, though his cock still does not move. The hard ridge is pushing against my sex firmly, not entering, but not pulling away. The tightness at the very entrance of my body is starting to relax. Oh, fuck. He’s not going to take me against my will. He’s going to make me push myself back on him. He’s going to let my traitorous pussy surrender. And I can’t stop myself, because of all the personal qualities I don’t have, self-control is the one I lack the most.

  My hips make a gyrating, writhing motion. Maybe I can pretend to be trying to get away, even as I push myself back against that intrusion. Maybe we can both pretend that he is fucking me as punishment, and I am not spreading my thighs for him and fucking him out of pure animal instinct, which makes me every bit the little beast he seems to consider me to be.

  That hot, hard head slips inside me just a fraction, pushing the tight inner walls of my sex, making them conform to his hard rod. He is just as big as I suspected, thick and heavy. I can feel the weight of his member now, gravity helping him spread my pussy. It’s more a cudgel than a cock. Nothing this large has ever been inside me before. I’ve had sex, of course, but the desperate rutting of wild men is nothing on this controlled, dominant display of power.

  I’m not supposed to want this. He said it’s disciplinary. But this has been a weird day. I’ve fallen to what should probably have been my death and survived. I’ve been the recipient of alien medical technology. And now I’m pinned beneath that same alien, my pussy about to be invaded as a punishment for being rude to him.

  The hand on the back of my neck keeps me pinned and relieves me of some of the burden of choice. The worst thing, right now, would be to admit that I’m not bothered by the fact I’m about to be fucked by a total stranger. I don’t know if I could ever look at myself in the mirror again if I let it be known that my body is responding to him, and even my mind is slipping into some kind of reckless submission. What does it matter if he fucks me? It might feel good. Nothing much does feel good these days. I live alone, in a small shanty on the verge of a forest, as far away from other people as possible.