2. Ties That Bind

Lettie

I didn't get free. I started to think about the filthy, unseemly, and downright humiliating things that happened to the captains, and I just went kind of limp in Shan's arms as he finally hauled me up into a better grip.

"Give me a blindfold. I don't want her finding her way back out here."

"Good idea."

Thick fabric is wound around my head, leaving my nose free, but only just. I am wrapped up like a mummy from the neck up, which leaves me with my other senses to attempt to compensate. Touch is the one that immediately comes to the fore. I feel the powerful rippling of the creature behind and beneath me, holding me in his outlaw arms. He's not being rough, but he is being firm. He has me in a hold that will not allow me to escape, though it will allow me to wriggle. Every motion I make gives me more of a sense of his body.

His massive form makes me feel small, and that is a rarity. I generally feel as though I am taking up too much space, but I don't even take up his entire lap. It has been a very long time since anybody made me feel this secure. There is something about being blindfolded that promotes relaxation too. I've seen this done to scared animals of all species, but I always figured people were too smart. Maybe not. Maybe I'm nothing more than a scared animal in the grip of an intelligent predator.

I draw in a deep breath, and I smell the unmistakeable scent of alien males all around me. There is something almost intoxicating about the pheromones they are emitting. They are like little keys of desire looking for a lock to slot into, and with every breath I take, I become increasingly saturated with them. My brain is being addled, and there's no hope for clarity now. Between touch and scent, I am more captured than I was when Shan snatched me out of the bushes.

The journey is not long, or perhaps it is and I have no sense of time while huffing saurian pheromones like someone discovering a new addiction. I had wondered why Sullivan and Raine didn't try harder to escape. Now I understand. These aliens generate sexual serotonin, if that's even a thing. That's what it feels like. It feels like every receptor in my mind is wide open and begging for more.

I am picked up and put over Shan's shoulder. I feel his scaled shoulder pressing into my soft belly, the blood rushing to my head as I am carried what feels like down a deep and winding ramp. The air becomes stiller, and a little more stale. Sound stops traveling in the way it does outdoors and instead starts to bump against heavy things. We are underground. We are getting progressively more underground with every step.

I am guessing that I am being taken to Shan's room. And I am also guessing that Shan's room is underground, along with all the other outlaw saurians. The place has the feel of a subterranean frat house. Laughter echoes through passages as the story of how they captured a human starts to spread. I hear myself being described in crude terms.

"Thick and juicy human treat."

"Fuckmeat," another growls.

"Human holes,"another adds. They are riffing on a coarse theme, until I feel myself swing around fast with Shan's spinning motion.

"ENOUGH!" He roars the word and the burrow falls silent.

The effect of his one word is impressive. He may not be an obviously high ranking outlaw, but I am starting to wonder, for none dared challenge him for me. Even Wrath himself did not try to taste me. We have gathered from our surveillance that Wrath is equally powerful, if not more so, as Alpha Thorn. Thorn has the might of the law on his side, but Wrath seems to have practically everything and everyone else. A schism runs deep in saurian society, and I have just fallen into it.

Seems to me that the main pastimes of these outlaws are fighting, carousing, and imbibing mind-altering substances. It's actually very much like a lot of pirate places. I would almost feel at home, were I not being held captive in the arms of a devastatingly handsome and frighteningly silent saurian outlaw.

A heavy metal door swings closed with the kind of CLANG that creates instant existential dread in career criminals like me. I find myself enclosed in a room that is little more than a cell. The blindfold is pulled from my eyes, and I finally get to see what I have gotten myself into.

It's an irregularly shaped room on account of being carved from rock. I imagine the location of the walls is determined by the location of other structures in the outlaw warren, and probably various kinds of dirt and rock and… I'm overthinking the room. The walls are all bare, aside from a bed, a big, heavy metal box, and a wardrobe.

Shan swings me down onto my feet and lets me look at what little there is to look at. If there is a secret way out of this room, it is either through that metal box, the wardrobe, or under the bed. There are no other avenues of potential hidden escape. I always look for non-obvious ways out of a place. I imagine there must be some down here, otherwise every single saurian outlaw could be taken out if they plugged the exits and just ran a bit of toxic gas through the place. It's a dark thought, but we live in a dark universe. Everyone has to have an escape plan. That goes double for outlaws.

The bed is simple. It looks like it's basically a single bed for a saurian. You could fit probably four people in it, top and tail, but just one massive horned creature. There's one pillow on it, and a blanket that looks like it has the texture of steel wool. It's basically one very small step up from a bed of nails. Nothing in this room looks comfortable. That tells me comfort isn't very high on Shan's priorities. And that really doesn't bode well for me.

He turns and locks the door, then reaches for a thick steel beam which he runs across the door and through loops secured into the wall on either side of the door. I watch him barricade us in from across the room where I have scrambled for a semblance of freedom, my back against the wall with a simple instinct for survival. I push my hands into my pants, looking for something that might help the situation.

I find something small and round in the first pocket. It's not a lot, but it might help. Pulling it out of my pocket, I make a move to dash it on the floor. But before I can throw my little smoke grenade, Shan is on me. He moves like fucking lightning, his big saurian hand wrapped around my human wrist, holding my arm up above my head as he pins me back against the wall.

I am stuck between rock and a scaled place, very much embarrassed at having been caught so quickly and so easily. It makes me feel amateurish. If you'd asked me yesterday if I was good at my job, I would have said yes. Now I am not so sure. What kind of a rogue gets caught in the underbrush almost immediately and can't even get a distracting smoke grenade off? Every single one of my movements seems so obvious and so telegraphed to him.

Shan hasn't said a word to me yet. Not a single one. He is inspecting me with a quiet, intelligent gaze. Most of the saurians have lizard type eyes with dark slits set in bright, colorful orbs. His eyes are dark, two solid black holes. It is much harder to read emotion in them — if he has any.

"Sorry," I squeak. "I had to try."

"Let go."

His tone is very cool, very calm, very collected. He doesn't seem upset that I tried to pull some shit. He certainly doesn't seem surprised. He just wants me to do as I'm told, and so I do. That's not only the easiest thing to do right now, it's the only thing to do right now.

I drop the little round ball into his waiting hand. He examines it briefly, before putting it into his pocket. He does not let my arm go, so I remain stuck, arched back against the wall, looking up at him rather ashamed of myself. I'm not embarrassed at having tried to escape, but I'm fucking humiliated at having been caught.

"Sorry," I whimper again. I want to shrink away from him, but that is practically impossible with the way he is holding me. I am forced to stand in place, and I am made to look him in the eye as he inspects me with that cool, detached demeanor.

He says nothing. He gives the briefest of nods, then releases me. My instincts make me want to scramble further away, but what would be the point? This room is too small to evade him, and he is obviously so much faster than I am. The first time he caught me, out in the forest, I didn't see him coming and assumed I'd just done something stupid. Now I'm not so sure. Now I think he might be able to move faster than any creature should be able to move. His reflexes seem impossibly quick. There's a part of me that wants to test them just to find out. There's a bigger part of me that doesn't want to move a goddamn muscle lest he snaps on me. I can sense his predatory nature, and I know that nothing this strong, this fast, and this quiet is safe.

"Please don't hurt me."

Maybe I'm safer than I think, I try to rationalize. Shan seems self-contained and self-controlled, and not easily annoyed. The other outlaws wouldn't shut up the entire way back from the forest to their hideout. He did not respond to a single of the taunts of the other outlaws on the way back, and he only roared in the halls outside when the smack talk became too much to allow.

He walks across the room and removes the leather holster which carries his weaponry and such. He hangs it up on the back of the door. My eyes follow the motions of his arms. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and every part of him ripples as he moves because he is absolutely ripped. This guy is scales, muscle, and bone. My eyes run down his body. Some of the saurians have tails. This one doesn't. This one has a thick, meaty ass with glutes I know are powerful enough to hunt me down. He is wearing dark pants that cling to his body in a frankly sinful way. It's the sort of styling that hot girls in even hotter clubs wear, but for rough outlaw saurians.

Shan turns back around, his dark gaze settling on me again. I see his eyes narrow just a fraction, and a bolt of anticipation and fear run through me. I still haven't moved from where he left me, and now he is coming back. This time, he's leaving behind all the weaponry I could have attempted to grab and use on him if I'd had anything resembling presence of mind. Though, now I think of it, I don't think I'd have a snowball's chance in a volcano of using his own weaponry on him successfully. He's too quick. I need to look for some other kind of edge. I'm not giving up just yet, but I do know that I'm going to have to be damn smart to get away from him.

My brain freezes as Shan gets close enough to me that I feel his energy somehow penetrating mine. He is muscular and he holds himself in that very specific way that people who are very, very dangerous hold themselves. Sort of a lithe, powerful gait that could erupt into violence at any moment. Is he angry with me? How would I be able to tell?

I feel myself shrinking away from him as he stands in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look up at him. He reaches out, curls his index finger, and tucks it under my chin, holding my face up to his for his inspection. I wonder what his intense, dark, mysterious eyes fathom in me. Does he find me weird looking? Probably. I'm probably just a short, round, fleshy blob to him. I've always been good at stealth and subterfuge because I'm not one of the sorts of women who stands out. I'm not statuesque and murderous like Raine, and I'm not a blonde ball of energy like Sullivan. I'm just Lettie. Or Lottie, sometimes, because people often forget my name. They forget me entirely from time to time, which I use to my advantage.

"Please, let me go. I didn't come down to the planet to be…" I can't finish that sentence, not with the word they used.

"Bred."

He finishes it for me. His voice is deep and resonant, and he rolls the R ever so slightly in a way that makes my knees go fucking weak.

"Yes. That. I'm just here to try to get the captain, well, whichever captain, we need them back on board the ship. I didn't want to… I wasn't looking for… I really need to find the captains."

He cocks his head slightly.

"Why?"

"Well, I think there's going to be some kind of mass brawl, or I don't know. Whatever you call a mutiny that follows a mutiny? Half the crew is drunk and the other half is on roller skates, and I'm just trying to make things work, you know?"

This is not a good explanation. Any verbal attempt at trying to describe the chaos on the ship is going to fall short. Plus, I am tongue-tied in front of this saurian who has now said the word bred to me and made all the muscles low in my belly and between my thighs clench in a very unladylike way.

He tilts his head back the other way, considering. His expression is neutral, but not unpleasant. He's not being threatening, though his entire presence is intimidating. I have a weird and intrusive thought that makes me want to reach up and poke the tip of his shoulder spikes and see how sharp they are. I restrain the urge, but only just.

"Remove the suit," he says.

It is a three-word order which makes me flush with intense heat all the way to my toes. I can't imagine taking my clothes off in front of him. I can't imagine what might happen after…

"I'd like to keep it on, please."

He doesn't say another word. He lowers his finger from beneath my chin. His thumb and forefinger find the zipper of my suit. He slowly, and deliberately draws it down.

I am not naked under my suit. A lot of my shipmates don't wear clothing under it because it does grip pretty tight, but I like to wear a t-shirt, bra, and panties. He peels the suit from me, leaving me in that flimsy attire that seems to do nothing to hide me from him.

I want to resist being stripped. That suit has my communicator and a whole host of other useful survival items, not to mention instruments of chaos. However, at this point in our dealings with the saurians, we know they always take the suit — so I did not come entirely otherwise unprepared.

I find myself trembling as the layers of the protective garment peel away from my shoulders and chest. His eyes have not left mine. He is not curious about my body yet. For the moment, he is clearly more curious about the effect being slowly stripped has on me.

Having pulled the suit fastening down to my waist, he makes a quick gesture to indicate I should remove it. But I still don't want to. I might want to less now than I did before. I wish I could disappear. One of the little tricks inside the suit would do that, if I had the chance to activate it. There hasn't been a chance. He's kept me under his watchful black eyes the entire time he's had me. It's so strange to be regarded by someone you can't really look back at. Even stranger to feel as though that creature sees more of you than anyone else ever has.

Shan

She's disobedient.

I've given her an order and she is refusing to follow it.

I expected as much. Humans are trouble. Everybody knows that. There's a reason they need to be captured, tamed, and used. Thorn was the first to do it, but I know very well that all saurians who can will be swiftly following suit. Humans are a cross between a mate and a pet, fuckable little creatures whose wombs represent a rare opportunity in our culture. This young woman doesn't understand how much trouble she is in just yet. But she will.

I do not like repeating myself. I don't even like giving an order the first time.

This human is complicating matters in a way I can ill-afford. I will not tolerate any defiance whatsoever.

It is easy to pick her up, and to peel the remnants of her suit down her legs. She is wearing a few light scraps of clothing beneath the suit, but it is the suit itself I care about. She wriggles and makes soft sounds of protest as I take her repository of weapons and communication devices and whatever else hides in those pockets and folds. I feel her soft body warm against mine as I tip her over my knee in order to expedite the process. There is a moment in which the soft, very thin fabric of her undergarment pulls tight across her ass and the pouch between her legs. I am very keen to inspect her anatomy and see what is under there. For now, I must pay attention to the suit. It pulls off over her boots, leaving her in thick boots and small panties and a light shirt. She is very underdressed now and blushing at it. Modesty, how adorable, and how dramatically it is displayed on this creature. She turns bright red across her face and her upper chest as a reaction to being deprived of her outer clothing.

She has a very interesting scent. I try not to pay too much attention to it, because I cannot afford the distraction, but the way she smells makes my cock rise with mating ardor. There were rumors that humans smelled bad, but this one does not smell bad at all. This one smells like sex and adventure, like the unknown and the conquerable. It is a scent I suspect is now lodged deep inside my mind for all time.

I deposit her back on her feet and turn my attention to the suit. This is a truly impressive collection of human technology. I know that the alpha and the enforcer are both still trying to work out all the secrets of the contents of these pirate suits, and I know that most of the secrets are still intact. There is a lot we do not know, and the human captives are showing very little inclination to explain. They are good at keeping their secrets, even under intense erotic interrogation.

"Be careful with that," she says. There is a tremor in her voice, and I hear concern in her tone. She is scared to speak to me, but she is warning me of potential harm anyway. That's quite sweet. I turn to look at her.

"There's a lot that can go wrong if you poke around in those things," she says. "Everybody sets theirs up differently. Mine isn't safe."

I nod. I assume she will not give me more information as to what to avoid. She's just giving me a warning that if I explore it, I will find myself in peril. That is a pity. I know there is so much in the suit that I would find fascinating and useful and that would elevate me by making me more dangerous than I already am. I am holding a set of tools that could change my life forever, and I can't use them because the results of doing so without understanding them are potentially lethal.

"Tell me how…"

"No," she says, her earthen eyes flashing with what I can only describe as a reluctant resistance. She is not brave, this human. She has the demeanor of someone who has been forced to do something because they are more afraid of the outcome of not doing it than they are of doing it. There is a reluctance in her every expression. I can tell she wishes she was somewhere else. Somewhere safe. But I can also tell there is enough strength in her to back up her defiance.

If I want her to spill her secrets, I will have to tame her first.

It may not be such a hard task. She does not seem to be the dominant type. The first two humans taken prisoner by saurians were leaders — a captain, and a mutineer. They have proven to be handfuls for their saurian mates. The human cringing in front of me does not look like a handful.

She is pleasingly soft and rounded in her features and her form. She has a very nondescript short brown haircut and light brown eyes. She looks to me like someone who tries very hard not to draw attention to herself. That is something I can understand.

Realizing there is nothing to be gained by keeping this trove of human artifacts within her reach, I put the suit into my personal safe and spin the door closed. Unlike the alpha's reserve, my safe will not easily be cracked. Much like the human's suit, it has its own series of tricks.

"You warned me. Now I will warn you. Don't try to get it out of there. You will be harmed if you do."

Her eyes go wide, reflecting more of the light. Her pretty pink mouth makes a series of motions that might be attempts at speech, but which terminate in a hesitant…

"Oh… okay."

I can smell her. Especially now that the suit is off, her scent fills the room. There is a light floral quality to the scent, along with a richer, almost saltier tang.

Humans carry a primordial ocean inside them. This is how they can gestate their young internally. When a human woman becomes pregnant, she creates an interior expanse of fluid that, to her young, must seem as vast and eternal as any of the universe's great oceans. A human fetus floats in these waters, gradually undergoing the process of becoming over months. It is quite a strange method of reproduction by our standards, and I am fascinated by it. Since Wrath began talking about the potential to breed humans, we have been learning all we can about the matter. I, more than most, have been fascinated by the process as it has been described to us by the physicians who have studied alien reproduction. Saurians lay eggs and leave. A hatchling must be taken care of, but it is rare that the parent responsible for the young creature's existence even knows it has been hatched. In contrast, humans have a physical tie to their young that, though broken at birth, seems to persist psychically throughout life.

She may be a stranger to me, and I may be an alien to her, but I have spent a long time learning all I can about her kind. She is not as much of an unknown quantity to me as she might imagine.

I am eager to mate her. But she is terrified, staring at me with widened eyes that display a great amount of white around her brown pupils. I could take her in this moment, throw her on the bed, tear her clothing from her curvy form, and make sure she knows that she belongs to me. I could make her feel like nothing more than owned meat, a series of holes to be ravaged and claimed. That is what the others would do. I can hear them in the halls, reveling in the idea of such brutal treatment.

She is fortunate, though she does not know it. I am not made of the same character as the others. I am not as ruthless and remorseless. I am aware that she would feel pain and horror if she were slammed to the ground and fucked. I know she would be broken in a way she might never recover from.

As much as my lust might rise at the sight of a vulnerable, fertile, somehow innocent human captive regarding me with that rosy-cheeked fear, I tame my impulses. There is time for rough dominance, and it will come. I have important business to attend to tonight, and the prospect of ravaging a terrified human who trembles when I so much as touch her chin is less than appealing.

"Come here," I say, crooking a finger at her.

She looks around the room swiftly, almost as if hoping someone might save her. Nobody is here to help her. She is at my mercy.

"Come here, human."

"My name is Lettie."

"I did not ask your name. I told you to come here."

I feel lust surging inside me at her disobedience. This soft creature needs to be punished soundly for arguing instead of doing as she is told. I will not be questioned, and I will not be distracted with little facts like her name. Lettie. It is cute. It suits her. I like it. But that is not the point.

She shuffles forward reluctantly, her eyes glancing up at me and then away again. She seems guilty. She knows she has behaved badly. She already feels it. That is a good thing. Perhaps there is some hope for her training already. I feel my cock stirring as I realize there are some small signs of submission already.

It takes much longer than it should, but the human, Lettie, arrives in front of me eventually. She is avoiding my gaze yet again. A lot of saurians don't like to look me in the face, but I think this is not about the usual repulsion. This looks like shame on her part.

I reach for her chin, feeling how delicate the bones of her skull are. She's just so breakable. I will have to be careful with her. I will have to protect her with every breath I take, even when I am inside her. The urge to ravage is intense. The urge to ensure her safety is even more intense.

"I need you to be good for me," I growl at her, keeping my fingers clamped firmly on her chin so she cannot look away. Her eyes continually hunt for respite by looking at anything else besides me. I am sure I frighten her. I frighten most saurians. My features are not typical. My eyes are odd and unsettling. Unlike her smooth skin, my face is scaled and large and rough, and when I speak I have sharp teeth. When she looks at me, I know her instincts must be telling her that she is in deep and terrible danger of the kind only a soft-bellied mammal can be in on a planet where raptors reign.

"What does that mean?"

"It means doing as you are told. I must attend to some business. You must stay here."

"You're leaving me?" She seems surprised and perhaps a little concerned. I can understand why. Better to be at the mercy of one saurian who has yet to hurt her, than to be at the mercy of the horde outside the door who would likely tear her apart in their efforts to take her for themselves. Wrath's underground is not a safe place for anyone, least of all her.

I take the blindfold, which I now realize I should never have removed. I wanted to see her face. I wanted to know what my new human possession looked like. She is adorable. Her cheeks are full and her eyes are large and wide and her coloring is like that of the wilds, so much brown and cream, flushing with pink when she is excited, scared, or caught in the throes of desire. I can scent her arousal. I know there is some part of her that is responding to me in a sexual way.

"This is going back on," I tell her. "For your own safety."

I feel a certain disappointment as I cover her eyes again. Then I reach for cord, which always sits coiled beside my bed. I use it to bind her wrists first, and then I sit her on the bed and likewise bind her ankles, having removed her boots. She has cute feet, soft like the rest of her, two adorable fleshy little paddles with small, shapely toes. She does not say anything while I do this. She accepts being tied with a certain amount of grace that is stoic and admirable.

Having secured her as is necessary, I step back and admire my handiwork. There is something very vulnerable about her. I do not know if it is the impossibly soft flesh which feels incredibly pliable and warm under my fingers, the feeling of which remains with me even now that I am not touching her. She is a vessel I want to fill. But this has been a very eventful day, and there are forces at play more important than my raptor lust. Soon, I will take her. I will make her scream for me. I will stretch every tender part of her around me and I will indulge my most twisted pleasures. But not yet.

"Stay here. If anyone knocks on the door, scream like you're being ravaged."

She blushes bright red beneath her blindfold. The way these humans change color as a result of their emotions reminds me of some of the behavior of the smaller non-sentient lizards on our world. There are creatures which flash and pulse with light to blend into their surroundings. This human might want to be invisible, but she is lit up, her face glowing and her eyes bright.

The mention of ravishment excites her. And her excitement pulls at the strings of my own desire.

She's soft, pretty, supple. She's vulnerable. She is prey. I will devour her completely.

Soon.