Brute: A Dark Sci-Fi Romance Read online

  “Farti isn’t a pet,” I explain for what has to be the hundredth time. “He’s my partner.”

  “Really?” Her skepticism is understandable. Earth only produced one species with opposable thumbs and language capacity. It’s a joke across the galaxy that unless a human can shake hands with something, they don’t know if it’s intelligent or not.

  Her species is limited in so many ways. Limited senses. Limited power. Limited understanding of the world. She is a primitive little thing built for one purpose: reproduction.

  I want her. The taste of her pussy is still on my lips. She was delicious when I licked her, my tongue finding all those little folds and crevices hiding her dew. She is aroused now too, by her fear, by her desire, by the chemistry between us.

  “I’m taking you when we leave,” I tell her. “You are forfeit for your lies. I will have you, and the chip, and anything else I find of value.”

  Her skin flushes red with anger. “You’re going to rob me?”

  “I’m going to save you.”

  I am not leaving her behind, sitting on a pile of mostly old trash. There may be more of value in these catacombs for old technology. There may not. But there is value in her, and I want her with me. Right now, I want her on my dick.

  “Save me?”

  “Turn around and give me your pussy.”

  The order is rough and crass on purpose. I want her to feel like the dirty little animal she is. I want her to lift her hips to me and present her sex.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Do as you’re told,” I insist. “Now.”

  I see hesitation in her eyes, but that hesitation is a good thing. It means she’s considering obedience. And that’s all I need. That little sliver of desire.

  “Pyxel.” I lower my voice into deeper command. “Bend over for me. Show me that wet little cunt. I want it.”

  Slowly, she does as she’s told. She turns around, puts her knees on the buckets where she was sitting. I see the perfect outline of her ass and pussy and thighs. I see the wetness between her lips. She’s aroused. After everything we’ve been through, and everything she knows we will have to go through, she is filled with desire.

  There’s something between us. Something neither of us can resist. I step forward, run my hand over her ass, give it a little swat.

  “Good girl.”

  She makes a little growling sound. She doesn’t like behaving herself. Especially not for me. Because she knows she should be resisting me. I’m the enemy she can’t stop fucking.

  One hand on each of her cheek spreads her pussy for me. I have stretched her. I have ravaged her. My tongue bath left her gleaming and wet, but it didn’t change the condition of her sex.

  My cock is rampant as I free it and point it toward that red, puffy little hole.

  “Ask me for it.”

  “No,” she growls.

  I rub the head of my cock lightly over her lips, teasing her. I can see her pussy clenching, trying to draw me in. Her body won’t get what it wants until she does what I want.

  “Crash…” I can hear the thick need in her voice.

  “Ask me for my cock. And ask me nicely.”

  “Crash, come on…”

  “Be a good girl, Pyxel. Ask me for my cock.”

  “Please… Crash…”

  She’s forgotten all about the Genari. She’s forgotten all about the chip. She’s forgotten about the fact we’re buried underground. All she cares about is getting my cock inside her without having to beg me for it. But she won’t get it until she does.

  “Ask me.”

  “Alright, fuck, please,” she relents, swearing as if that makes any difference to the shamefulness of her submission. “Fuck me.”

  As soon as she says the words, I push my cock inside her. All the way in. All the way out. One long stroke. And then I leave her empty again.

  “Crashhhhh…” Her voice comes in a soft whine.

  “What? You need more than that?”

  “You know I do, you bastard.”

  I give her another one of those strokes, all the way in. Feeling every inch of her tight little cunt wrapped around me. And then I pull out again. Because getting fucked properly is a privilege, and not one she’s earned. This little brat lied to me and then tried to kill me at least once. She doesn’t deserve the fucking she wants.

  “Tell me exactly what you want.”

  “I want you to fuck me properly,” she admits. I can hear her embarrassment and her desire. I know she hates admitting this. It’s a pity, because she was made to be fucked. Her body knows exactly what it needs, but she is trying to force me to force it on her. She wants to deny her need. And I won’t let her do that.

  “What does fucking you properly mean?” I growl the question down at her, letting the head of my cock slide just inside her pussy. She tries to push back on it, but I reach out and grab her by her hair, hold her in place.

  “You know what it means!” She wails the answer. “Fuck me hard. Fuck me like you did before!”

  “You mean fuck your ass?”

  I feel her cunt squeeze me as I make the suggestion. I could fuck her ass. Maybe I will, once she’s fully submitted her pussy to me.

  “No, please, sir, fuck my pussy. Fuck me hard.” I hear her hesitation. She doesn’t know what she has to say, but she’ll say almost anything.

  “Ask me to fuck your little cunt until you come all over my cock.”

  “Please… fuck me until I come on your cock.”

  God, I love hearing her say these filthy things. The entrance of her pussy is slick and wet, and I can feel her gripping me eagerly.

  “Say you’re my fuck toy,” I prompt, urging my cock in and out of her, that first inch dipping in and out of her sex. “Tell me you’re mine to fuck whenever I want to fuck you.”

  “Crash, please… stop making me say these things…”

  “I’m not making you say anything. I’m telling you what to say if you want me to fuck you. This is a transaction, Pyxel. You don’t seem to understand what transactions are. You think you’re going to get something for nothing. You’re not going to get a thing from me.”

  “Fine. I’m your fuck toy.”

  She tries to say it as if she’s bored, but she forgets I can feel her cunt wrapped around me. Her body doesn’t lie. Not like she does.

  “You are my fuck toy,” I growl. “Now ask me to play with you, fuck toy.”

  She’s getting impatient. But she’s getting wetter too. She needs her pussy fucked. And every second I stay inside her without giving her what she wants, she needs it more.

  “Play with me. Fuck me. Do what you want to me, just… please!”

  She breaks, and immediately I give her the reward. My cock plunges inside her stretched, drooling pussy, the juices of her desire coating me. She is eager to be taken, wailing and moaning as I fuck her roughly in this dark little room, taking her fear and turning it to desire.

  As I stroke her toward a climax neither of us will reach, the vibrations I’ve been sensing for some time intensify, make the walls and the floor rumble.

  “What is that?”

  “That is the sound of the Genari coming for us.”

  “What?”

  “They will tunnel in,” I say, keeping my cock deep inside her stretched pussy. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep us safe.”

  “How?”

  Her pussy has tightened with fear. I loosen it up again by taking several long strokes to distract her and make her moan.

  We probably have mere minutes until they break through, but I can’t stop fucking her. Her walls are gripping me so tight as I slam inside her. I can’t come, but I think she’s going to anyway. I’ll use the frustration of denial in the battle that is about to begin. She can have the release she doesn’t deserve. If this goes badly, it will be the last orgasm she ever has.

  I fuck her as if the world is ending. I fuck her as if we have only seconds left to live. I fuck her for all I am worth, for all she is wort
h and she climaxes on my cock, my rod churning her juices into a creamy foam as she screams and writhes. Death is near, and it has never been so hard not to come.

  Pulling her off my throbbing dick, I carry her across the room, push her and then Farti into the escape tube and put the grille back on. She sits there, panting, one hand between her thighs.

  Behind me, the roof is crumbling. Pebbles, then rocks start to crash down, along with a cloud of dust. And then there are boots on the ground. The first Genari soldier has arrived. Time to go to war.

  “Don’t look,” I warn them both. “This is going to be messy.”

  * * *

  Pyxel

  Messy isn’t the word for it. It’s a one-man massacre. Their channel allows one or two of them at a time, and every single one that comes through, Crash kills. He does it quickly, cleanly, and with his bare hands. Some of them barely make a sound as they die. Others flop around for a second or two before he crushes the life out of them.

  Any one of them would kill us all.

  The room begins to fill up with fallen Genari. Crash tosses their lifeless forms to the far end to make room for the new ones feeding themselves down the pipe.

  I thought we were captured and cornered, but Crash is far more dangerous than these things are. All I can do is hide and wait for him to do the unpleasant job, to put the invaders to death. It feels awful to sit and hide, leaving my fate entirely in the hands of that big brute, but apparently I have become a damsel in distress, and apparently I am to be rescued by a warrior who thinks nothing of dispatching many dozens of enemies as casually as he might mop a floor.

  Farti climbs into my lap, nuzzles under my chin, makes soft little bleaty sounds.

  “You don’t like this either?”

  He nickers softly.

  “He keeps you safe too, huh?”

  He makes another one of those little sounds and curls in closer. I like the way his fur smells; it’s a rich, clean animal scent. Not gamey or dirty, but domesticated. And he’s so soft too. I rub my fingers through his fur and he wriggles back for more scratches.

  He does feel like a pet. And it’s easy to forget that he’s not one, because I don’t understand anything he says, not like Crash does. Right now, against a backdrop of death, I need this little thing to be my comfort. I need him to be my pet, and he seems happy enough to play that role.

  Farti’s warm body is so comforting I barely notice what he’s up to, until I pay attention to the light tickling sensation on my arm. Those little fingers of his are working at my wrist. He is trying to surreptitiously pull the chip off my arm, steal the chip from me.

  I let him, because I don’t really care anymore.

  I used to think that I was a guardian of something that mattered, but once this is over, I’ll be guarding nothing but a tomb of rotting alien corpses, and more will come. The end of my line is inevitable. There’s nobody to mate with to continue it, and even if there was, what would be the point? There will never be enough of us to meaningfully defend against this kind of invasion force. A hundred Genari must have already died. And there are still more coming. And Crash said it himself. This is just the first wave. They may very well send more across the stars.

  My stomach drops as a nasty realization hits me. It’s very possible that I have triggered a second mass invasion of Earth. When the Genari realize the losses they have incurred here, and that the chip was real, I can see them coming in full force, sending their brood against everyone here.

  The planet could gleam silver with their bodies. The planet could be decimated and overrun, and… I am having a hard time breathing as panic starts to overwhelm me. What have I done?

  Screeccchh!

  Crash interrupts my train of thought by pulling the grate back off the tunnel. “Come on,” he says. “We’re leaving.”

  Farti and I step out onto a crunchy metal carpet of fallen bodies. I try not to think about what my feet are standing on and slipping between as Crash bends down and indicates that we should climb up his back. I wrap my arms around Crash’s neck. Farti clings onto my leg like a baby marsupial.

  Crash begins to climb, reaching up into the tunnel the Genari just made and hauling himself and the pair of us up in a vertical hand over hand climb. It is at least a mile to the surface, but his great hands grab the rock the Genari drilled through and propel us all upward in a way that feels light and easy. This is nothing to him. Not the climb. Not the death. Not the invasion. Not anything.

  I find myself holding onto him even more tightly than I really need to. Not just because I’m afraid of falling a half mile back down the narrow hole to a Genari mass grave, but because I don’t want him to go anywhere without me. He has saved me from so many things. Maybe he can save me from myself.

  Light bathes us all as we emerge. Farti leaps down to the ground, bouncing with excitement, holding the chip up to Crash in triumph. Little bastard.

  But Crash doesn’t seem to care about the chip, or Farti’s crowing. He turns to me, takes me in his large, lethal hands, and inspects me carefully.

  “Are you physically unharmed?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “We are leaving now.”

  “But your ship is…”

  “Damaged,” he says. “We will recover the supplies we can and take a commercial freighter to the next station. From there we’ll commission a new ship.”

  Commercial freighters run organic material from Earth to the stars. Apparently aliens like bananas and beer.

  A lot of humans have skipped the planet that way. Some legally, others as stowaways. Up until this point in my life, I have chosen to remain here on Earth, but now I no longer have that choice. At least, I think I don’t.

  “Will you fight me, Pyxel? Will you force me to make you my captive? Or will you come with me?”

  “I’ll come with you,” I say, snatching the chip out of Farti’s dancing grip, and putting it back onto my own arm where it belongs. “On one condition.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I get pants.”

  He smirks. “Very well. A compliant mate can be given clothing.”

  Is that what I am going to be? A compliant mate?

  I bite my lower lip. I am not in the mood to argue with him, and I know I wouldn’t win anyway. He has never presented me with any danger, but he is a dangerous brute of a creature.

  “Try to put what you saw out of your mind,” he says. “The Genari don’t die in the sense you or I would.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They have a collective consciousness. A hive mind. The memories of one are the memories of the whole.”

  “So you just pissed off an entire species?”

  “Well,” he smirks. “It’s not the first time I have done battle with them. Nothing was done today that hasn’t been done before. They do not have the desire for vengeance that humans do. They will decide whether the chip is worth the resources it is taking to obtain it, or if there is an easier way. I have made sure that it is not worth the resources. And I will amplify that message now.” He flickers me a blazing wink. “If you’re going to be trouble, be a whole lot of trouble.”

  With that, he swings one of the Genari energy weapons off his back, aims it at the ship hovering over the remains of the observatory, and pulls the trigger multiple times.

  The shots impact the hull, tear it open. Fire emerges from the ports and in less than a minute the whole thing comes crashing down, slamming into the pile of rubble that was once the observatory.

  “Couldn’t we have taken that?”

  “Genari ships respond to the hive mind. We could never have piloted it. Let’s go.”

  I don’t have the ability to resist. I am tired. I am frightened. I am no longer sure of myself, but I know I have failed in the defense of my family’s treasures. They are buried now.

  I feel no sense of victory. Their wreckage is burning on top of mine. In trying to get enough money to repair my skimmer and replenish my reserves, I
destroyed everything.

  Crash turns and walks away, his muscular silver body lit gold by the flames from the Genari ship. Farti trots at his side, a happy little innocent gait. They don’t care. At all. They have what they want.

  I follow him because there’s nothing else to do. His name has never been more appropriate than it is right now.

  We go back to the ship the Genari blew up. I’m getting tired. It’s been a long day, and a frightening one. My eyes are heavy. My limbs are too. Every step is difficult, and for once Crash doesn’t seem interested in me. He is still swollen with war rage, inflated with death.

  I watch his massive form moving through the trees in front of me, and I wonder what he will do to me, and with me. He has plans for me, I know that already. But I don’t know what those plans are—and I do know that my knowing doesn’t matter.

  Crash makes decisions and the world falls into place around them. He wasn’t worried when the world caved in on top of him. He wasn’t afraid when an invading force poured down toward him. And he’s not afraid now, even though he is looking at the wreckage of his ship.

  He is a true warrior. I don’t think he’s afraid of death. I don’t think he’s afraid of anything. But I am. I’m afraid of what I’ve done, and of what’s going to happen next.

  He and Farti gather supplies while I sit outside and grieve for what was just destroyed. It’s hard to comprehend all that has happened. There has been so much violence, and so much sexual intensity. I am ravaged and I am exhausted, and I don’t know if there’s anywhere safe left on this side of the Milky Way.

  “Here.”

  Crash holds out a roll of fabric.

  “I don’t have clothes to fit you, but you can wrap this around your waist. Make a skirt.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  He shoulders a huge pack, then stands me up and wraps the fabric around me. It’s sort of silvery, like a heat reflective blanket. Good for shock. And I am in shock for sure. Crash slips his arms under my legs and lower back and scoops me up against his body.

  * * *

  Crash