Siege Weapons Page 7

  “Good evening,” Turo said, rising to greet me. He flashed me the biggest smile I’d ever seen on a person. He was tall, unusually tall. I could’ve fainted. Brown hair, cropped short, framed his face—thin with chiseled cheeks. An inviting scar slashed under his thin bottom lip, as if he’d once been bitten too hard.

  “Hi. Ales… I am.” I coughed the words out and tried to regain my composure. “Captain Ales.” I couldn’t miss how his skin glowed the color of moonlight. His eyes seemed as blue as an ocean world seen from space.

  “Very nice to meet you, Captain Ales.” He wore a smart official-looking but nondescript gray tunic under a long black jacket that draped to thick heavy boots. He could have been an invigilator. My heart fluttered, but I fought to stay calm. As far as he knew, I’d done nothing wrong. “I am Turo, as you know. Please, won’t you join me?”

  It wasn’t necessary, but he pulled a barstool out for me, and within an instant, the bar-bot appeared.

  “One more of these please,” Turo ordered, waving a short empty glass with the dregs of a thick nebula green liquid in it. “And what’s your drink?”

  “I’ll have a Lactarian malt. No ice.”

  “Well, well, you have some taste.” Turo grinned at me. Seemed like I’d already exceeded his expectations.

  I smiled and slipped my jacket off onto the empty stool beside me, giving Turo a perfect view of my biceps. Not to mention the bottom edges of my black cloth shirt that didn’t quite come to the top of my trousers. I could feel his eyes tracing the arch of my spine to the strip of smooth black skin that showed. I knew how this game went.

  The bar-bot motioned to the collection of Lactarian malts.. I’d never seen so many. Basic was all that I could ever afford.

  “Sir.” The bar-bot waved. “Would you prefer a mountain cask, sea cask, or moon cask? What age would you like? We have fifty years, one hundred, three hundred, three hundred and fifty, four…”

  “None of that crap,” Turo cut in. “Bring him the good stuff. From the three-thousand-year pulsar-smoked cask. Make it a double and make it two.”

  He impressed me. Although I was a fan of Lactarian malts, I couldn’t say I’d even known there was a three-thousand-year-old batch.

  “Right away, sir. I shan’t be a minute. Let me retrieve it from our vault.”

  “On my tab,” Turo said, giving me a wink. “Room one thousand and one.” He leaned in closer and placed his hand square on my thigh. “In case you forget.”

  “Huh,” I said, shifting my pelvis toward him and taking in the scent of a new man. “I do believe I’m right next door.”

  “Well, how about that. Seems like we’re buddies already.” The bar-bot had left and Turo took advantage of the opportunity, sliding his hand so far up my thigh that in a second I got hard. And he knew it.

  We locked gazes for a minute. I instantly had the sense of being far more than he’d expected, as he was entirely beyond even my wildest dreams. Ukko’s body was better—bigger arms, ripped abs, the physique of a person so active they didn’t need to work out. Yet Turo had a different quality: attitude. A smile that only curved in the corners of his mouth. He radiated authority, and I was melting.

  The bar-bot came whirring back with two curved glasses of golden-yellow liquid. Turo removed his hand, but not before searching for my balls and giving them the slightest tug. Already, I ached to get him upstairs.

  “Well, here’s to us.” We lifted our glasses. “To new friends, in unlikely places.”

  We clinked. I took a sip and let out an involuntary “Mmm.”

  “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Wow, the best. I can’t believe it. It’s like… like liquid starlight.”

  “Since I first tried this, every other Lactarian malt tastes like hetero piss to me. I swear it’s better than the primest piece of sweet-roasted, green-grass-fed steak.”

  “Yeah, better than sex even.”

  With that, Turo held up his glass and squinted at me through the liquid. “We’ll see about that.” He took another sip and placed his glass down.

  “So,” I asked, trying to take the heat out of things for a moment, “what brings you to a planet under siege?” Part of me wondered if he wasn’t the man Javer promised would meet me.

  “Funny, I was about to ask you the same.” There was a glint, a sparkle, a something in his eyes. What kind of position gave a man of no more than thirty-five such unbridled, utterly raw confidence? Even the way he sat, one leg straight out, a booted foot placed against the rich wood panel, the other almost ninety degrees away, bent under the stool. There was only one place he wanted me to notice, and I had a full-frontal view.

  “Nothing that interesting, really. I’m captain of a transport. My own ship, at least, but it’s falling apart. Always going from here to there. My boss is a hetero maniac, one of the globular kinds; you know, all the tentacles? I can never remember how to pronounce their name…Kalvatra? I don’t know. Anyway I’m blabbering, sorry.” I let out a nervous laugh, and a prickle of sweat dripped down the groove of my spine. “I’m here delivering medical supplies and arrived to this fleet in orbit telling me to get out of here because of a high priest and this galinium stuff. Now I guess I’m stuck here till who knows when.” I took a big sip. “You?”

  He downed the rest of the malt in one gulp and waved for another. “I’m with a branch of the Trades Council.”

  I froze but tried not to let it show.

  “In case you haven’t heard, our gracious host and high priest Svandor and her government have been weaponizing this galinium.”

  “Oh? So you really are right in the middle of this?”

  “Yes. Guess it makes no difference now. I came a bit late to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the crisis.”

  “What happened?”

  “They put me in a room here and said, ‘You’ll be shot if you try to leave.’”

  “Oh. But what the infinity is galinium? I’d never heard of it till…till I was in orbit around this system.” I quickly gulped down more drink.

  “You’ve never heard of it because it’s not from this galaxy. The Jansen system was formed of debris from across the universe, outside this galaxy. The mineral is so common, the people here burn it for fuel, although it’s hardly an efficient fuel source. But if it’s weaponized in a megacollider, well, that’s a different story.”

  “But there’s no megacollider around here. There’s not even one in the Outer Verge, surely?”

  I’d seen one once, on my occasional travels into the galaxy proper. Megacolliders were insanely complex. The structure completely encircled a star and used the energy and gravitational waves to collide particles at speeds using, well, star-powered amounts of energy. I knew of maybe five in the whole galaxy.

  “There isn’t one here. Aldegar is the nearest, but it’s now controlled by the Ingvar Empire. Someone has been smuggling the substance to Ingvarian space, weaponizing it inside the megacollider, and smuggling it all the way out to Jansen.”

  I finished my drink. It burned, and I coughed out my words. “Do, uh, you know for how long? They have a lot here already?”

  He took a moment to answer. A moment that left me wondering. “We don’t know really. The Trades Council learned about this smuggling operation not so long ago. An Ingvar spy was caught near Targuline, paying a trader to make fake import licenses to smuggle the stuff here.”

  If anyone asked me who in the Verge would happily procure fake import licenses for an unknown and potentially catastrophic substance, I would have to recommend my boss.

  “So what could happen? Jansen uses this super weapon to try to take over the Verge?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “No, it’s much worse than that. For a long time, the Ingvar have wanted to expand out here. They are closed in on all sides by star-states twice as powerful and with a genocidal hatred of their people. Their own territory can’t sustain its population. That’s the problem with successful slave rebellions, too many mouths to
feed and not enough goodwill to feed them.”

  “They’re going to invade the Verge?”

  Turo nodded. “We think that’s their plan. They’ve already been undertaking a lot of activity in the border systems, trying to turn a few to their side. We’re hardly a galactic power. If they invaded”—his blue eyes pierced straight into mine, almost pleading—“they would succeed.”

  We sat in silence for a while, finishing our drinks while he ordered more. My mind swirled, fogging up like glass, and not only from the alcohol and promise of sex. It seemed insane what he’d told me, but all too plausible. Javer was a thief and a scoundrel who would as soon sell out the entire Outer Verge if it made him a quick profit.

  “We have to fight for our freedom,” I said, suddenly sad.

  “Ales, we have nothing. No army, no defenses. Only half-empty worlds rich in resources. It’s amazing we’ve lasted this long. The old order in the galaxy is changing. The great and powerful empires that once kept the peace are crumbling. The Ingvar rebellion was just the start, and it’s only a matter of time till a power greater than us wants what we have.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “This place is the only home I have.” Our gazes locked like a tractor beam. I’d known him for minutes, but for the two of us, alone on this place, faced with the rumblings of war, we could have been captain and commander. “I’m not going to let a thing happen to it.”

  Turo smiled, warm and big. “You’re so sweet, really, Ales. You are beautiful. I hope you know that.” He placed both a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it, feeling the muscles. “Come now, enough of this. I want to get to know you.”

  “Okay.” I smiled, loosening myself to his touch. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, for one, I see you can handle your drink, but do you think you can handle me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you crave real domination; someone who will take you with no mercy and turn you into their slave.” His face was so close to mine, the heat from him warmed me, the bright white scar cut down his bottom lip intrigued me. His hand stroked my cheek.

  “Yeah, I did say that.”

  “Think you can take me as your master?”

  I didn’t get a chance to answer as his mouth moved to mine and his teeth bit down on my lip.

  “All right, you two, this is a family place. Time to get a room.” The bar-bot interrupted us, its programming not quite taking into account that we were the only ones in the bar.

  We both laughed.

  “Come then.” He stood, taking my hand. “Let’s put your claims to the test.”

  Chapter Eight

  THE ROOM’S DARKNESS lit our passions brighter. Within seconds, my clothes were strewn across the floor, and Turo’s hands ran all over my body: touching, feeling, caressing. He remained standing and reached to the back of my neck to guide my head firmly down.

  “I can’t wait to get a taste of it,” I said, showing off my eagerness and willingness to please.

  “No,” he barked, a marked change of tune. “All the way down.”

  Slightly confused, I slunk to the floor, my head next to his boots.

  “Lick it.”

  With the hesitation of something new, I stuck out my tongue and licked his boot. It tasted exactly like I thought, but it was more than that. It was submission. His other boot caressed the back of my neck, applying just enough pressure to stop me getting up.

  Slowly, I worked my way up the boot, licking it with an ever increasing hunger. When I got to his crotch, a hardening bulge greeted me. I so wanted to taste the warm skin underneath. To smell his full, raw scent.

  “You are going to take it out, and take it all. For every time you cough, splutter, or complain, you will be punished.”

  I nodded and undid his trousers. He was no Boren, but long and thick enough not to forget in a hurry. I worked on it with my tongue, licking from head to hilt, touching it all over while sitting naked on the floor. The taste set my body on fire. All my senses were tuned to him. They rested and waited on his every desire.

  All of a sudden, he kicked me right in the balls. Not too hard, but hell, what was too hard? I gazed into his eyes, and suddenly the world around me dissipated to a black emptiness. It left nothing but the face of Turo: at once both ancient and new. I wondered about the journey behind those blue eyes. What had brought him here, to be this man, to have this power? “Do not ever touch yourself without my permission. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His hands on the back of my head pushed his dick as far down my throat as I could take. I held for as long as I could before pushing him away.

  He clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Let’s try that again.”

  I took him inside my mouth once more, as much as I could. He thrust, deep and fast. Again, I spluttered and gasped for air.

  “I warned you. Now stand against the wall.”

  I did what I’d been told as he brought out a small object from his coat pocket. “Hands to the front, wrists together.”

  He placed a small rounded metal square between my wrists and dragged his finger down the middle, activating the device. An invisible force clamped my wrists exactly where they were, unable to move them closer or farther apart.

  “Electromagnetic handcuffs.”

  “This is my punishment?” I asked.

  He laughed, grabbed my underwear from the floor and stuffed them in my mouth. “Keep your hands in the air.” He stepped back, dropped his coat, and pulled off his tunic, revealing a lean, highly toned body with a smattering of black hair on the chest and down to his trouser line. He seemed ready to fight me, despite my helpless position.

  Without warning, his boot connected with my balls. I moaned. My cock as hard as it could get, and the idea of not being able to touch it without permission or even protect myself from this brought my deepest fantasies to the surface.

  He kicked me eight, ten, fifteen times. Each one harder than the last. I gasped for air. Saliva dripped out of my stuffed mouth. Involuntary tears pricked my eyes. A dull ache built inside me, the entirety of my attention focused on the feelings coming from my crotch. No other part of my body mattered, no other sense worked. The throbbing made me want more.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and told me to lie across his knees. “Let’s turn the color of your ass red.”

  I shuffled over to him, my balls a good kind of agony, and awkwardly lowered myself across his lap. The spanking pushed me beyond pleasure. Men had done it to me before, slapping my ass once or twice as they fucked me, but nothing like this. Every snap of his palm stung, and he waited for precisely the right time before moving on to the next cheek and stinging it again. I moaned with every slap, biting hard against the underwear stuffed in my mouth.

  “Very nice. Yes, it’s looking much better now.”

  With the tips of his fingers, he traced the damage around my ass cheeks before drawing a single finger in a languid, circular motion from my hole to my tender balls and back up again. I gave an even louder muffled scream.

  I lost count of the minutes that came next. He owned me. He tied a strip of cloth over eyes, my own trousers tied my feet together and hands were re-cuffed behind me. I stood. I lay down. I sat. I fell as he kicked, slapped, tickled, and punched his way to his own satisfaction. My cock didn’t get touched once, not by me, not by him. It ached, begged for relief, but none came, and that made me want everything more.

  “Harder,” I tried to say through my stuffed mouth as he booted my ass. I think he heard.

  I loved it. He gave me everything I’d ever wanted, but soon, the forgotten pain grew too great to contain. I was a child of war and an orphan of defeat. I had no way to fix myself, only to mask my true feelings, to try to separate what lived inside me into tiny pieces that could be smothered with a shot of Kri and a barrage of random men. The desire for someone else was really only the desire to be someone else, a distraction from the pain inside me that could not be healed.
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br />   Turo hadn’t given me healing. He’d simply arrived like this, ready to take me and my desires at face value. I had nowhere to hide, having my desires met like this, like no one had before. It acknowledged they were mine, and even though it gave me pleasure, pleasure beyond words, they came from a place of pain. To know that was to know I had agony burning inside that would never leave me.

  I lay on my back, my feet and hands tied together in the air, my hole open and exposed. He ripped off the blindfold and held my gaze with his as he spat on my hole and prepared to push inside me.

  “Stop,” I said, gasping to catch my breath. “I need a minute.”

  Turo took himself back with surprise and concern for me. He undid the handcuffs, stepped away, and padded over to the bathroom. I stood, rubbed my wrists, and stared at his naked butt for a second—smooth, small, white. It captivated me, but I needed to breathe. I needed air, the colder the better.

  I pulled on whatever clothes I found and left without turning back. The elevator dropped hundreds of floors in seconds, and I ran through the bright, deserted lobby and burst out into the freezing night. I couldn’t think about anything else except being outside.

  But the cold wind and clear night sky offered nowhere to hide from the heavy anticipation of war. The absence of people violently declared something was wrong. Threatening shapes of attack moved in the sky; lights strafed through the atmosphere, searching out potential targets. There was nothing like the helplessness of being under siege.

  A dull crack came from behind, like bones crunching. In the distance, a group of soldiers were running toward me along the wide deserted avenue. I froze to the hotel’s steps, but it didn’t seem they were after me. The group got closer, at least twenty men and women, dressed in black uniforms with assault weapons slung across their backs.

  They jogged past, eyes ahead, apart from one. His skin shone like starlight, thin blond eyebrows, a strong jaw, no hair on his face, and sharp green eyes, which locked to mine for a moment that lasted long enough to show his fear. In that second, two strangers from different worlds shared exactly the same feeling. I followed him with a solemn gaze and tried to transmit whatever empathy I had. Yet his eyes stirred memories inside me that threatened to burst open and spill out onto the street.