Page 19 of Breed

The only bit of help I get for what is left of my modesty is an oversized undershirt taken from the wardrobe. It feels a bit like pajamas. It is not at all flattering, but it is coverage, and that is more than I expected to be allowed. When the girls who tried to save Sullivan came back to the ship, they told us all about how they found her naked in a cage. She was being held by the alpha of Grave City, and that is what he did to her. I cannot imagine her submitting to such a humiliation, and yet now here I am, terribly pleased with a shirt that balloons around me, loose neck open almost to my breasts, big hem billowing around my knees.

Shan

She is adorable. That shirt is tight on me. On her, the holes for my shoulder spikes are down by her elbows. It barely covers my midsection, and yet on her it is like a dress. Her hair is messy from being slept upon. I reach out and brush my fingers through it lightly, settling it around her face in a less chaotic fashion.

Lettie looks at me with a hint of confusion in her deep brown, round human gaze and I feel a rush of tenderness, along with the certain knowledge that what happened last night was no mere connection of obligation. We have established a mate bond, and that is no small connection.

Wrath perhaps knew this would happen. Or maybe he didn’t know at all. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe this is a tit for tat, the alpha has a human and the enforcer has a human so he ensured that one of his men would have one as well.

I’m surprised he didn’t take her for himself, but Wrath has always been wily. The reason he’s alive, and rich, and powerful is because he doesn’t take unnecessary risks. Grave City’s populace see him as a legendary outlaw, rakish and uncatchable. But I know better. And the alpha knows better. This is an experiment for him. But Lettie is no longer an experiment for me. She is my mate, and I will look after her at all costs.

“Come with me,” I say. “And do not leave my sight nor my arm’s length. I cannot guarantee one of the others won’t try to take you. You are a delicacy down here. And you belong to me.”

She blushes at that. I wonder how deeply she understands it. Does she feel the same bond I do? Or is she merely a pretty little soft fuck toy with a welcoming body which she would give to any master who demanded it? I do not like the second thought one bit. I want her to know that she is mine. I intend to make that fact abundantly clear.

Lettie

The underground baths are much more impressive than I had imagined they would be. When he said communal baths, my mind conjured up images of dingy tile with years of built-up filth and mold because none of the outlaws can be bothered cleaning. What I find is much more palatable. It’s a massive natural subterranean cavern. Light trickles through fissures in the rock above in a way that makes me wonder if the whole damn roof of this place isn’t in immediate danger of falling down. There are plants growing down from those same fissures, and the rocky earth beneath my feet is soft in places where mats of moss grow thicker toward the waters.

The baths are not baths in the traditional sense. They are hot pools, a series of irregularly shaped basins of water in the ground, filled with crystal clear water that seems to be bubbling up from beneath. The air is warm and humid, and there are quite a number of saurians lying in the sunbeams, both in and out of the water.

A few open an eye to look at us as we go past, but for the most part this seems to be a communal but not strictly social space. There is no conversation. All I can hear is the sound of bubbling and fizzing from various streams making their way up from beneath us.

He leads me to a smaller bath away from the others and gestures for me to get in. So I do. I do not take off the shirt. I do not want anybody to see me.

The fact that Shan saw me last night is enough to make me blush now, remembering how I was spread open and displayed before him. I can still feel him inside me. There are echoes of his flesh stretching mine every time I move. There is an ache that I do not want to go away.

Shan strips, removing his attire carefully and folding it next to the bath. He stands above me, naked entirely. My eyes are immediately transfixed on his cock, that instrument of destruction of purity and innocence. I gave myself to this monstrous creature who cannot possibly have any feelings for me. He fucked me out of duty, and out of a desire to make me behave. My desire betrayed me and delivered me to him, and I think it will do so again.

He slides into the bath beside me, the water rippling up against his scales. He reaches out for me and draws me from the warm shallows to deeper waters in the center of the bath. I do not know how far down the pool goes, but I know I can feel the bubbles rising up around me. Shan keeps hold of me, wrapping one arm around my waist and holding me fast.

“These springs are known for their healing properties,” he says. “This will help soothe any discomfort from last night. I know it was not easy on you. You have a delicate body. Does it ache?”

I hide my face in his neck and nod slightly. I don’t want to admit it out loud, but I cannot deny it. The waters of the spring have a slight effervescence to them, a certain bubbliness that is making its way up under my skirt and playing against the most sensitive and still swollen parts of my anatomy. It excites as much as it soothes, and I find myself squirming in his grasp.

“What is it? Is it sore? Is it too hot? Is it…”

He is trying to understand, but I do not want to explain. Admitting out loud that desire is once more overtaking me is just too shameful. I don’t want to want him. I don’t want to be the breeding mate of a saurian criminal who I met fucking yesterday. I am on this planet to rescue my captains, not satisfy carnal urges stirred up by a taciturn saurian male.

“I am okay,” I say. It feels like a lie, because it is. I am not okay. I am on heat. I can feel desire coursing through me with every motion of the water swirling around me. Pressed against Shan’s naked body with only a soaked scrap of cloth between him and me, we may as well be naked.

“It does things to me when you squirm,” he growls. “But you are too freshly ravaged, too sore to take me again. Aren’t you?”

Again, I cannot answer. I know that if he was to mate me again, not only would I suffer quite a lot with the ache and sting of a well-fucked pussy subjected to a saurian cock, but I am supposed to be resisting him, and this, and everything. But there’s some part of me that does not want to submit to good sense and self-preservation. There’s a part hungry for pleasure, even at the cost of pain.

I want him to do it anyway. I want him to be overcome with passion and use me as he used me last night. I want to have no choice in the matter, because he wants me. I want everything that is wrong, and nothing that is right.

“SHAN!”

Shan’s name is shouted across the baths, interrupting our little moment.

Shan swings around in the water with me. Wrath is standing a few feet away, having entered through one of the many portals. These baths must serve as some kind of a hub. The entrance Shan and I came through is one of half a dozen of such portals. I notice this now only because Wrath has used one closer to us than I noticed was there.

He looms over the pair of us in the water. I cannot reach the bottom, but Shan can. He holds onto me as Wrath comes to stand at the edge of the bath.

This is not the first time I have been in Wrath’s presence, but it is the first time I have seen him in what passes for the light of day. I see now why he holds so much sway over this group of renegades and criminals.

Wrath is a big, lumbering gray saurian with intense green eyes. He has a big, flared protrusion extending from the rear of his skull, and a large horn growing from his forehead. He is broad, almost impossibly so. I imagine he can only fit down some of the passages of this place without having to turn sideways. There are thick, natural plates on his shoulders that give him a sort of biological armor. He is built to take damage, and to make those who attempt to damage him regret the moment they made that decision for the rest of their days.

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