4. Under Attack

4 UNDER ATTACK

W rath

The ground shakes all around us. We are deep beneath the city, in tunnels and rooms and natural caves that have stood for centuries without being disturbed. The underground is more stable and safer than any of the constructed buildings on top — or so I thought. Dirt and rocks fall from the ceiling, loosened by the vibrations, covering the bed and everything else with a light smattering of sand.

I look up, wondering what could have caused that level of disruption. It doesn't feel like…

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Three more explosions detonate in quick succession. I snatch my human up against my body, her naked flesh pressed against mine, her face buried against my chest as she gasps with fear.

The door to my room flies open. It's a breach of good manners, but I wouldn't have heard a knock if there had been one.

It's Zin.

"We're under attack," he says, stating the obvious. "I've initiated the escape protocols and everybody is evacuating."

My first thought is that Thorn has come to the end of his tether and lost his mind. I cannot entirely believe that though. Thorn and I have always been at odds, but we have never escalated to this level of violence because we both understand that once you start destroying buildings and massacring innocents, there is absolutely no end to the horror. We may be enemies, but we are not insane.

"Who is doing this?"

"The human ship has de-cloaked directly above us and is bombarding the ground above. Tunnels are collapsing. There are casualties."

Zin talks in a short, clipped tone, giving me the relevant facts in a near emotionless tones.

"The humans have decided to attack the city," I say.

"Not the city. The ship is firing on us specifically. I think the humans know where we are. Specifically, I suspect they know where you are, Wrath."

"How could they possibly know where I am?"

Actually, to be precise…" Zin's eyes look venomously at Allie. "I think they know where she is."

She pulls her face from the sheltering line of my body, and her eyes, already wide, somehow go wider. "I know what's happening," she gasps. "They must have a lock on me. They must have a tracker in me. I knew they had one on the suit. I ripped it off and threw it away, but maybe that wasn't the only one. They could have chipped me and put the tracker in the suit as a decoy or back up. This could have been the plan all along!"

Zin pulls a blade from the inside of his vest. I step in front of him as he moves toward Allie with a matter of fact expression that I know bodes ill.

"What are you doing, Zin?"

"We kill her, we throw her body far away from this place, and we never allow another one of these humans to get the chance to betray us like this again."

On any other day, with any other person, I'd take the knife and do what needs to be done myself. Today is different. I stay standing between Allie and Zin, and I give my old friend a look that has to tell him in no uncertain terms that if he so much as harms a hair on her head, he is going to lose everything.

"Touch her and die."

A llie

The entire world is shaking. The noise is terrible, and the dust is starting to get so thick it is hard to breathe. With every impact, dirt and stones and rocks are starting to fall.

Lettie is trying to bore her way to us with the charges from the ship, and if that doesn't work, she is going to fucking bury us alive.

What she is doing is absolutely unthinkable. It is a crime of a kind that will change the course of everything forever. For a while there, we were a sort of entertaining distraction to the saurians. But with this act, we're not harmless little pirates anymore. We're committing war crimes on an alien planet.

"Let's get whatever is in you out of you," Wrath says.

He tosses me back down on the bed, still naked, and now exposed to both his gaze and Zin's fierce glower. I lie there, too afraid to move, and yet being prompted to with every single one of those damn detonations which are not letting up in frequency or intensity. He covers my body with his massive scaled and ridged form, and looks down at me, inspecting me.

"It might not look like anything much. It could be as small as a grain or seed," I explain.

"We need a damn signal detector," Wrath growls. "Get one, Zin."

"From where? Half the tunnels to the surface have already caved in. We need to escape now, while escape is still…"

BOOM!

Lettie's hits are getting closer and closer. She is going to kill me along with Wrath. It is now clear that she doesn't care about me, or the fact that I could very well end up being a casualty of her war. It turns out someone who is prepared to drug you and drop you on an alien planet as fuck-bait might not be the best friend to have. Who would have thought.

Old instincts are starting to rise in me. This is not the first time I have been under attack. It is not the first time my life has been in danger. I know how to handle a situation like this. I stay calm, and I kiss my ass goodbye.

Wrath turns back to Zin, one hand keeping me in place on the bed as he issues calm orders.

"Get out of here. Take everybody and go. I am not going to let any harm come to her. And I will not let any harm come to any of us. Evacuate everybody."

"What will you do?" Zin asks the question.

"We will go deeper. Don't worry about me. I have survived worse than this, a little tantrum from a wench who needs to be wrenched from the controls. I cannot believe Shan is allowing this."

BOOM!

"Shan was always a traitor," Zin snarls. "I will go, but this will not be the last we speak on this. This human problem is getting…"

BOOM!

"Go NOW!" Wrath says.

"You should go too," I say from my prone position. "They're going to hit this place as hard as they can for as long as they can. There's not going to be anything left once they're done. Just let them do it. I don't mind."

"I mind," he snarls. "Zin, go now."

Zin cocks his head in confusion. "You're going to get yourself killed for a human you just met? What is it with these creatures? Do they release some kind of neurotoxin that makes our species particularly stupid?"

"GO!" Wrath thunders the order as he sweeps me up into his arms and starts running. Not up, not to what feels like safety, but down a winding path that goes deep into the saurian earth. The reverberations of the explosions above start to lessen as the depths of the earth envelop us.

Lettie would have to strike the planet until the cannons overheated and exploded in order to reach us at this depth. It is very quiet down here and rather dark. The light now no longer comes from recessed electrical outlets, but instead seems to be supplied by clusters of bioluminescent bugs.

I am shaking, clinging to Wrath as if my life depends upon him. Our surroundings are quieter now, but the sensation of being in danger persists. The air down here doesn't move as much as the air above did. I didn't notice how fresh the air in the upper chambers was until I felt the stillness down here. It's peaceful. Sort of. But it's also a little menacing.

I don't want to let go. Don't want to be separated from his warmth and strength. Holding onto Wrath is the only thing that can comfort me.

He carries me into an area that looks like it has been equipped as an emergency retreat. There are stacks of preserved food in cans and bottles of water. There is bedding and medical supplies. It's a bunker, in other words. Probably the safest place I've been in a long time.

We were never really safe on the ship. The Mare was always at risk of being fired upon because of whatever terrible thing we'd collectively done. Wrath's subterranean hideaway is perhaps the first place I've been in years that is so terribly solid.

My earlier reflexive bravery is starting to desert me. I'm trembling against him. Every limb is shaking, every breath is ragged. I have never been the sole focus of such a vicious attack. Knowing that I meant nothing whatsoever in that barrage, that it was aimed at me, not with any malice, but with a dark absence of feeling that is so much worse, has shaken my trust in my human crew all the more.

"It's okay," Wrath rumbles. "You are safe. We are not so stupid as to allow ourselves to be easily flushed out of our hideout."

He thinks I'm worried about the bombs. They're not great, but they're also far from being the worst part about what has just happened.

"She was trying to kill me. And she put something in me. She used me. Like meat. Like nothing. Like…"

"Shhh," he rumbles, his voice so deep and so calming. "I know. It's not fair. It's very, very cruel. You deserved better."

I like listening to his voice, and I like beings held, and I like being with him. He's supposed to be the enemy. That thought keeps returning to my mind, but he's the nicest anybody has been to me. My feelings toward him are blossoming from reluctant gratitude to a sort of helpless dependence, verging on admiration which in turn is beginning to creep into the territory of love, even with lust having been interrupted in Lettie's rather rude attack.

Wrath puts me down, leaving me to wrap my arms around myself as he hunts through a chest of supplies, making small sounds of irritation. "We need to start accommodating humans."

I watch as he pulls at a blanket, tearing it in half. "Come here," he says. "This will be something to start with. We won't be down here too long. I can guarantee you Thorn won't tolerate his precious historic city being fired upon like this."

He wraps the sheet around me, giving me modesty, if not true clothing. The absence of attire is just one problem in this saurian world, but it is one that reminds me just how far I am from anything that could be considered home.

"I wish I had a suit, like the others," I say. "But they never gave me one. I wasn't really part of the crew."

That's my very mild and only slightly bitter way of saying I'm not surprised Lettie just tried to kill me. They've never really cared about me. Sullivan did, until I was good and rescued and then she forgot about me. She liked the thrill of helping me when I was in need, but once I was on the ship I may as well have stopped existing. It's easier to fall through the cracks than people think. I bet there's plenty of crew on the Mare who wouldn't know who I was if they fell over me. Or if they found my steaming bones in a crater on an alien planet.

"What was it you were saying back in my room?"

I should be more careful about what I say. And I should be more careful about the tone Wrath is using. It's almost casual, and it lulls me into a sort of shell-shocked half-thought response.

"Which part? We were being shelled."

"The part where you said you didn't mind if you didn't make it out."

"Oh. That part."

"Yes," he says, grimly. "That part."

"I didn't want you to be hurt. It wasn't worth it. The people down here need you. You're important. I'm not. And once they hit me and got the tracker, they wouldn't know where you were anymore. You'd be saved. That's what mattered."

"You matter, Allie," he says. "You matter as much as any of us."

"That's not true. I'm a… I'm nothing. I'm a charity case, and I know you feel sorry for me, but I don't actually matter. I am okay with that."

My ass suddenly hurts. A lot. It takes me a second to realize that's because he just spanked me hard. He has me by one arm, and he is keeping me in place so he can do it again if he deems it necessary.

I gasp, staring at him with wide eyes that instantly fill with tears.

"Do not speak about yourself that way again. Ever." He is stern and gruff, and his bright green eyes bore into me with an intensity that tells me I will suffer if I do.

"I'm sorry," I squeak.

W rath

She hasn't learned her lesson. She's just afraid of me and what I might do if I punish her. That will at least break the habit of saying such things out loud, but it won't change the thoughts that created the words.

I am going to have to do some work with this human.

Fortunately, I have time, because I am almost certain that the near incessant bombardment from above has blocked the exit. This, I do not intend to tell Allie. I do not want her to panic. There are stores down here that will last for a while, and I believe Zin and the others will work to restore oxygen supply. There is nothing to do but remain calm and instruct my human in the ways in which she will conduct herself.

"You are mine, and that makes you special. I will not tolerate you speaking about yourself in any way that degrades you. If I hear anything of the kind coming out of your mouth again, you will be in pain."

"I'm sorry," she squeaks. "I didn't know that I was yours. Of course you are special, and anything you have is special."

That's not quite the message I tried to impart, but I suppose it is what I said.

"You are special in your own right."

I see an expression of clear doubt in her eyes, but she doesn't dare question me. I just smacked her for daring to say otherwise, and she obviously does not have much of a taste for disobedience or punishment. Again, quite a difference between her and her other humans. The others I have known seem to have a taste for pain.

"You are," I repeat the two words.

"Yes, sir, of course, sir," she says. I am doing nothing to make her feel special simply by demanding she feel special.

"The fact that I chose you for my own should suggest that, no? Do you think I choose anybody?"

"I think I am one of the few humans who has not already been claimed. That's what Lettie was banking on. That and my long blonde hair and my big…" She blushes and trails off.

"You are very physically appealing," I tell her. "But that is not why I chose you."

"Why? Was it for my sparkling personality?"

"You were supposed to be given to Zin," I tell her. "I told him the next human we caught was his. He had claim over you. I took you for my own. Don't think for a second you have not been claimed by me, brat."

"Brat?" Her cheeks flush with color. "I've never been called that before."

"No? Well. I assume your position on a ship full of renegades might have given you the wrong idea. Might have left you thinking you are better behaved than the rest of them, or well-behaved at all. Might have led you to think that because you are not looting or pillaging, you are somehow innocent. You have your edges, and your strength, Allie. I see it in you, even if you do not."

She turns brighter red still. "Is that true?"

"It is."

"Wow," she breathes, more to herself than to me. "I never thought of myself like that."

I suspect she hasn't thought of herself at all. It seems to me she has tucked herself away from thinking about or being herself on any level. Easier to become a little hermit among dozens of pirates than to attempt to be herself.

I am used to helping those who come to me broken in some way. I am very much a keeper of those who fall through the cracks of the world. This may not be a saurian, but I see so many marks of neglect on her psyche. She is lucky. I know precisely what to do with her.

"It's not easy to discover that you have been betrayed by those you have submitted to," I say. "But it happens. Sometimes, true gems are overlooked, or even deliberately excluded from society. Just because you've spent your life on the outside, doesn't mean you will always be there."

Allie looks at me with an incredulous expression. "I don't understand how you have such a bad reputation. You are such a nice saurian. You are so wise, and so kind, and so caring…"

"And I stand against the law. I act according to my own rules, and I make decisions and take actions that others consider cruel or illegal. Sometimes both. I am not a hero. I am an alternative."

Her expression is shifting from incredulity to admiration. "I think I like you," she says, somewhat shy.

She is absolutely adorable.

"I like you very much, Allie," I say.

She lowers her head but looks up at me with a sweet little hopeful smile.

We have nothing but time down here in the bioluminescent darkness. The mad human has unintentionally given us the gift of privacy and space.

"Have you been mated before, Allie?"

"Yes," she whispers. I see a tremor pass through her, a trembling of her lower lip. She lowers her head and attempts to avoid my gaze. If she could disappear like one of the chameleon lizards that blends into walls, I believe she would.

"Is there shame in having had sex before?"

"Some men don't like it. "They like to think they are the only ones to ever touch you. They even sometimes think that having let others inside you means you're worth less."

"Do you fear being mated?"

"Yes," she admits.

"By any male? Or by one like me?"

"Any male. And especially one… like…"

She trails off, her shyness and fear overcoming her ability to be specific. Especially one like me, she means. I frighten her. Not surprising. I frighten most creatures.

"One like me."

"They said you would ravage me. They said it would hurt."

I feel my cock stirring again. My erection never truly left. I want to be inside her, but I want it to mean something. This woman needs meaning. She has just been betrayed by those she thought she could trust. She has been used, abused, and discarded. If I mate her, she needs to know that it is not an act of casual use, but of total possession.

A llie

I am deep underground, cast in a purple-green glow, half-covered in a blanket which I have already let slip off one shoulder and breast, and facing one of the most imposing figures I have ever encountered in my life.

I can't ignore the fact that his cock is proportionate to the rest of his body, which is another way of saying his cock is impossibly large. There is no way such an appendage could ever fit inside me. It is silver and it is scaled, a truncheon of potential punishment.

I bite my lower lip in the effort to keep myself from whimpering. I don't want to seem so pathetic as to be intimidated by the same cocks that have been ravaging the rest of the crew for months now. There has to be a way of taking it. It has to be possible. I just need to be logical about this.

"Are you afraid?"

"I just need to be logical about it," I say, nervously blathering the last thought in my head.

"Logical about what?" Wrath asks the question with no small amount of amusement.

"About your cock," I blurt. "I don't see how it fits. I can't possibly have that much spare space inside me. There's no way. It wouldn't be economical."

"Economical," Wrath smirks.

He takes me by the hands and clasps both of my palms to his cock, inviting me to touch him again. I feel the throbbing heat of him in my fingers, the way his member twitches as if it were somehow separately alive.

The big saurian beast is so sensitive. I hear him groan, and when I look up at him, I see his eyes half-closed, as if he is deeply enjoying the moment. My touch is affecting him very deeply. I am giving him pleasure, even though I am exploring him rather timidly.

"Don't be afraid. You cannot hurt me."

I'm not afraid of hurting him. I'm afraid of getting hurt myself. I'm afraid of how large he is and how potentially brutal he could be. I'm afraid of being used for my body and discarded afterward, when I have been broken on his body.

"You could hurt me, though."

"I could, but I will try not to. I think it would be best if I laid on my back and let you guide yourself down onto my cock."

His words thrill me, as do his actions as he takes me by the hand, leads me to a bed which is already prepared for whatever unfortunates might be stuck down here, and proceeds to lie down on his back, hoisting me up above him.

I let the blanket fall, my naked curves exposed as I spread my legs on either side of his thick waist.

"Tell me how you have been fucked before," he says. "Were you married?"

"No," I shake my head. "I wasn't married."

His big, scaled hands cup my ass and pull me forward so the underside of his ridged alien cock is pressed against my wet pussy. It feels good and ominous at the same time, as if I am about to be fucked in a way I have never been fucked before.

"Was it a dalliance?"

"It was survival," I admit. "I was… there was a time… I needed money."

Admitting that fact makes me absolutely burn with shame. I thoroughly expect him to reject me, to push me away from him, and to send me to my death, probably. Males don't love whores.

"You sold yourself," he says, drawing me gently back and forth along his cock, using the wetness I am generating to coat his hard saurian ridges in my personal lubrication.

"Captain Sullivan rescued me from an angry client. He wanted his money back. He was going to kill me for it. She killed him first. Then she told me that it wasn't my fault, that I'd been left with no way to support myself, even after everything that had happened to me…"

"What had happened to you?"

I shake my head. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

He pulls me all the way up to the end of his cock, so the throbbing head of his alien dick is pulsing against my tender clit.

"I don't remember everything about my life. There are gaps."

"I see," he says, his big hands grinding me in slow circles, so my slit spreads open around his cock.

"You don't have to fuck me," I say. "I know it's…"

"What?" He stills me for a brief moment.

"I know it makes me worthless," I say, just barely choking the words out. I've heard them before, echoing in my mind. That's what everybody thinks about desperate women, as far as I know.

"Worthless?" Wrath's brow rises. "Sweet little human, I am not trying to extract value from you. You are priceless."

He slides me up and back and his cock rises against my pussy, and… I feel him enter me for the first time. My pussy spreads wide for him, and the thick tip of his massive cock head slips inside me, pushing past that rebellious muscle and making me stretch for him. I cannot believe this. Not only does he not judge me for my past to the extent he has not so much as missed a beat or considered it something he had to think about, he wants me as much as ever.

"Good girl," he growls softly. "You're such a good little mate, aren't you? This pussy is so wet and ready for me."

His praise makes me blush with pleasure. I am wet and ready for him. I am willing to be fucked by him. I want his cock as deep as I can take it. I want him to claim me completely.

"There might have been others before me," he growls as he starts to work me down on his cock. "But there will be no others after me. This naughty pussy is going to be used only by me."

I feel a pulse of excitement and pleasure at those words. The idea of belonging to one male, and one male only feels like a fairytale to me. Every other male I ever encountered was looking to treat me like a disposable tool. When Wrath says he is going to use me, it doesn't feel like being used at all. It feels like being loved.

I stretch for him, just as he wants me to. I spread myself for him and he spears inside me, going deeper and deeper, inch by inch until there is no more of my internal territory to claim. I stare, wide-eyed up at him as my pussy tries to contain his massive, throbbing cock.

"You're so big," I gasp.

"And you are not," he rumbles back. "Does it hurt?"

It doesn't hurt. It feels like it should. Logically, I do not understand how my body is capable of taking this thick an intrusion. But my flesh is reacting to him as if we have done this a thousand times before, as if he has always owned me, and as if I have always been his to fuck.

He lifts me up, depriving me of the same flesh I was just so excited to adjust to. I do not want him outside me. I do not want to be empty. I let out a little moan and try to work my hips back down on him. Every ridge and scale of his cock gives me a fresh little bolt of pleasure as he returns to my depths.

"You like this, don't you," he rumbles beneath me. "You are hungry for this cock, aren't you?"

"Yes," I admit, feeling my face redden as a result. I know good girls aren't supposed to want huge alien cocks deep inside them, but part of me has always known I've never really been a good girl. Even when I was the best behaved on the Mare , I was still not good by definition.

His massive hands curl around my cheeks and spread them a little. The motion feels lewd. He is opening me up, spreading me. He is showing me that there is no part of my body he won't expose and one day use.

I should be trying to maintain modesty, or protect myself, or claim some maidenly innocence, but the way this saurian looks at me, and the way he handles me makes me feel free. I don't have to be anything besides his anymore. I don't have to be useful to anybody. I don't have to earn my keep. I don't have to prove my worth. I don't have to be ashamed of myself. I don't have to hold onto a lifetime of guilt that I always feel for reasons I can't even remember now. I can just be fucked by him and that is okay.

I reach down, putting my hands on his massive, muscular chest, and I let him guide my hips up and down, slowly at first, then harder and faster as his lust and my wetness allow for a rougher, more intense mating. My golden hair hangs down against his silver skin, highlighting another one of our innate contrasts.

I know he is a mature saurian. Not old, exactly, but the saurian equivalent of more than old enough to be my father. I like that fact. I like this big daddy alien making me take his thick cock and being very careful with me while he fucks my sweet pussy.

"So good," he praises me, as if I am pleasing him. I love the praise. I have so rarely felt that I am good at anything. Since joining Sullivan's crew, I've been an outcast and an inept pirate who refuses to so much as touch a weapon. I don't like them.

But Wrath makes me feel as though I am pleasing him as completely as I can please anybody. I'm not just enjoying sex, I'm being enjoyed sexually. My body is being used for what it was made for — to bring mutual joy to myself and my mate.

He doesn't care about what I did before we met. He doesn't care that I've been bought and paid for before. Nobody has or will ever own me the way he is possessing me right now.

Wrath slides his hand around a little, so that the pad of his thumb can rub against my clit as he fucks me to orgasm, grinding my pussy down all the way, as deep as I can take it.

"Come for me," he commands me. "I want to feel your human pussy quivering on my cock. Show me how much you like this, how badly you need this, how much you are mine."

W rath

She is perfect. The way she looks riding me is a sight I will never forget. This moment is imprinting itself in my mind stroke by stroke.

When she told me that she had been forced to sell her body to survive, I felt her shame. There should be no shame in that. I know what it is to be alone and weak. I did not become the alpha of the underworld because I had a good and advantageous start in this world. I, too, have been taken advantage of. I have been hungry, and desperate, and scared. It was a long time ago, but those feelings never leave you.

"You're mine," I assure her. "You're mine, and you will never again be anything other than mine."

Her face is flushing, her mouth open, her eyes sparkling. I can feel her pussy getting tighter as she gets closer to orgasm. I plan to fuck her well and often, until she forgets that any other male was ever fortunate enough to touch her.

"Oh my god! Oh my!" She starts to gasp incoherent words as her climax takes her. I press my thumb hard against the little bud between her lips. That is the key to putting her over the edge, I discover. She writhes and wriggles on my cock, giving me her pleasure, showing me what she looks like in her moment of pure erotic abandon.

She is beautiful. Transcendent. She is an angel, delivered from the stars directly to my dick. I feel her start to weaken once her orgasm begins to fade.

"Such a good girl," I say, pulling her up off my cock, and lying her down atop me. "I'm going to take very, very good care of you."