Chapter 6: Best Laid Plans

“So what’s your plan?” Eriksen asked as he sat across from Nazka at the table in the common room, the giant alien sitting cross-legged on the floor so that the surface was at an appropriate height for her. She chewed thoughtfully at the meal that he had concocted for them, using her claws in lieu of cutlery, picking out the diced sausage from some canned meals that he had found in the kitchen.

“You’re gonna give me the code to the cockpit, and then I’m gonna jump this rig all the way home. I’ll tow the Black Claw in the superlight wake.”

“And if you don’t get the code? Don’t you have any kind of backup plan?”

She stopped eating for a moment and set her large hands down on the table, peering at Eriksen with her yellow eyes.

“I’m gonna get the code ... one way or another. Right now this is a fun diversion. I like you, Eriksen, you make for good sport. But if push comes to shove, I’m going to have you begging for mercy, and that’s not a euphemism. I can do things to you that’ll have you wishing that your parents had never met.”

He tried not to look afraid, but the way that she switched her attitude from playful to menacing at the drop of a hat bothered him. He knew that she wasn’t insane, but she was a rare breed of career criminal. Torturing or killing him was just business to people like her, and she wouldn’t have lost a wink of sleep over it. If he was going to go through with plan C, then he had to do it soon. He didn’t know how long she would keep their little game going before she got tired of him.

Nazka raised her bowl off the table, licking up what remained of her meal, then set it down with a satisfied sigh as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

“You’re not half bad at cooking, Eriksen. I’m serious when I say that you can have a position on the Black Claw you know, I need to replace the crew that you spaced. You wouldn’t get paid of course, but you wouldn’t have to worry about rent or food ever again, and as a perk of the job I’d fuck you into a stupor whenever the mood took me.”

His face burned again as she smirked at him. She was so vulgar, every time that she opened her mouth, it was to spew some obscenity or to make an inappropriate remark.

“I don’t think I’d survive on a spaceship with more than one Borealan, I’m barely pulling through with just one of you.”

“Suit yourself,” she shrugged, rising from her seat on the floor. “The offer will remain open until I have to start hurting you. It’s really your best option right now, I can’t see how else you’ll be able to weasel your way out of your debts.”

“Let me worry about that, what are you, my accountant?”

She chuckled and shook her head, her cropped, blonde hair bouncing.

“I’m going to get a shower,” she stated, making her way to the door. “You should come scrub my back.” She looked over her shoulder, watching him freeze with a spoonful of beans and rice suspended an inch from his mouth, giggling like an oversized schoolgirl at his conflicted expression. “I won’t bite ... too hard. I don’t get why you’re such a prude, Eriksen, is it a human thing maybe? We could have a lot of fun together if you just let your guard down a little and stopped being such a pussy.”

“Sorry, I’m not in the habit of relaxing around murdering pirates who’ve expressed a desire to torture me. I think you’ll understand if I don’t leap into your arms...”

“You should be careful who you call a murderer,” she said with a cruel grin. “You flushed four of my crewmates into space without a second thought, after all. You might not see it yet, but you have what it takes to be a murderous pirate yourself.”

She left the room to leave him fuming at the table. That was different, his hand had been forced, and he had been given no choice but to kill his captors. A thought occurred to him suddenly. She was going to shower, that would mean that she would have to remove her belt with the gun holster on it. She had even given him an excuse to be in the bathroom at the same time as her, it was the perfect opportunity to put plan C in motion. He would have to swallow his pride and show up at the door as if he had changed his mind and wanted to join her. The thought of her satisfied smirk made him sick, but this might be his chance to end this nightmare and put her down for good. If he could bring himself pull the trigger, that is.

He had gotten to know her better over the last couple of days, and while she was no doubt a despicable criminal, there was no such thing as pure evil. When he had spaced her crew he had seen them as little more than hostile animals, the same was true when he had emptied his Walther into Nazka’s chest in the access tunnel. He was guilty of homocentrism, they were sapient beings as much as he was and despite their animalistic appearance, they were deserving of the same respect. He would not have killed her crew if he had been given another option and he didn’t want to kill Nazka either, despite what she had done to him. She should be turned over to the authorities, not summarily executed for crimes that amounted to little more than piracy and assault, at least so far. Eriksen wasn’t a vigilante, but he saw no other way out. Eventually, it was going to come down to his life or hers, and he knew which one he would choose.

Eriksen lingered outside the door to the hab module’s bathroom. He could hear the spray of the shower from out in the corridor, Nazka was already in there. He wasn’t sure whether he should try to sneak in and grab the gun before she noticed him, or announce himself and then go for it when she turned her back. He wasn’t fond of capitulating to her demands and showing up at all, but maybe he’d feel better about it when she found herself on the wrong end of the handgun.

He took a deep breath and steeled himself, opening the automatic door. It would usually be locked from the inside, but she had obviously expected him to change his mind and join her. It pissed him off to no end to let her think that she had won, even temporarily. As he stepped into the room and the steam cleared, he couldn’t help but run his eyes over her naked body.

She was crouched in the shower as she was about two feet too tall to stand fully erect in the glass cubicle, hot water cascading over her dark skin as she ran her furry hands across it like a loofah. The glass was misted, and that only added to the scene, glimpses of her muscular figure visible for brief moments where the cubicle was clear as if the elements themselves were conspiring to entice him. As honed as her senses were, she might not hear him over the sound of the rushing water, and she might not smell him over the steam that filled the space. He began to creep closer as his eyes scanned the room for her belt.

One of the round ears that protruded from the top of her head swiveled in his direction, and he stood as straight as a board, trying his best to look as if he wasn’t plotting to kill her. She turned her head to look over her shoulder, keeping her back to him and covering her massive breasts with her furred hands, that smirk that he so hated curling her lips.

“Well, what do we have here? Looks like you changed your mind after all, was the thought of sharing a shower with me too appealing to refuse?”

She stepped out from behind the glass, standing straighter as her head brushed the padded ceiling, giving him a better look at her. She planted her hands on her wide hips and let her breasts fall heavily to bounce as they fought against gravity, her long tail waving behind her as Eriksen’s eyes wandered.

The blonde fur was confined to her arms below the elbow, her legs below the knee, and to her sinuous tail. Besides the hair on her head and the small tuft of fur on her mound, the rest of her impressive physique was as smooth as burnished metal, toned muscles protruding from beneath her dusky skin to catch the light as the water made them glisten. The steam billowed around her, a vision of beauty as droplets of water traced the curves and contours of her figure, wide hips with a pinched waist and generous breasts lighting a fire in him that he would rather stayed quenched. The subtle gap between her powerful thighs made his heart race, and he had to avert his eyes so as not to make his arousal too conspicuous. This was not the time to get distracted by her. He had to be sharp, he had to find the gun and ... those abs though, good lord. He could have washed his clothes on them.

“Good timing,” she said, shifting her weight from one leg to another so that her hips rolled enticingly. “I need your little human hands to get into those places that I can’t reach. Help me out, and maybe there will be something in it for you.” She beckoned to him with a clawed finger, and he took a faltering step towards her, as if mesmerized by the gleam of her yellow eyes.

He spotted the gun, the holster was dangling from her belt which was hanging from a towel rack along with the rest of her leather garments. It was between him and the shower cubicle, he could reach it on the way towards her, if only she would turn her back again and give him the opportunity to grab it.

“I ... I’ll do it ... just look away while I undress.”

“Are you shy? You smell afraid, Eriksen, don’t be. I can behave myself when the situation calls for it. You scratch my back, I fuck you into a whimpering mess. Sounds like a fair exchange to me.”

She was really laying it on thick, but she humored him as she turned away and stepped gracefully back into the shower as Eriksen snuck a glance at her perfect ass, the glass made opaque by the steam. He had to stay focused on the plan, but the feeling of her fever-hot, silken flesh gripping his finger like a vice bubbled up from his memory. God, what would that feel like wrapped around his cock? He shook his head as if to dispel the intrusive thoughts, removing his shirt as he inched closer to her, trying to gauge if he could free the weapon from its holster before she realized what was happening. Would he even be able to fire the damned thing? It was enormous, the kick might break his wrist. Oh well, there was nothing for it but to try, he was already committed.

He removed his pants as he got closer, then his underwear, making sure that his belt clattered on the tiles so as not to arouse her suspicion. If she turned around now, he was fucking mincemeat. Fortunately, the glass was steamy enough that they could scarcely see each other.

He reached out a hand and un-popped the button that held the gun in place, lifting the strip of leather gingerly, electing to do it as slowly as possible rather than rushing. He felt the cold metal of the revolver on his fingertips and reached inside the holster to take the gun in his hand. It must have weighed twenty pounds, it felt like it was made of fucking granite, and he struggled to pull it loose. He finally succeeded, hefting the giant weapon and needing both hands to aim it, his finger on the oversized trigger as he pointed it at Nazka.

She was standing beside the shower again, her arms resting at her sides as she eyed the gun, she was remarkably calm.

“I’m surprised that you can keep that thing steady,” she said. “It’s made for my kind, after all. It’s a powder weapon, archaic by your standards perhaps, but it gets the job done. As you’ve seen, you need a large caliber to bring down Borealans. If you’re wondering if it will kill me, then the answer is yes.”

He pointed the barrel at her head, not wanting to take any chances. If he merely wounded her, then he wasn’t likely to get a second shot in. She was fast, and on her long legs, she could close the distance between them in the blink of an eye. She would remove his head from his shoulders before he even realized that he was dead.

“I’ll give you one chance to put that gun back in its holster and join me in the shower,” she said, “or you’re going to make me very angry with you.”

“I didn’t want to do this,” Eriksen said, his hands trembling as he tried to keep the gun level. “I didn’t want to hurt you or your crew, but you created this situation, not me.”

“So noble in the face of adversity,” she crooned, her tone mocking. “You’re so naive, so innocent, but that’s one of the things that makes breaking you so much of a turn on for me. I’m going to ruin you, Eriksen, and you’re going to enjoy every moment of it.”

The next few seconds were like a blur. Time seemed to slow down, as if in his moment of need his body had heightened his perception. Nazka ducked, her fingers making contact with the tiled floor like an Olympic sprinter preparing for a race, and he watched the steely muscles in her thighs bulge as she powered forward. That something so large could move so fast shocked him, but by the time that the message to pull the trigger had traveled down his arm to reach his finger, she was halfway across the room. He fired, but her head was no longer in the bullet’s path, and the tile where her face had been not a moment earlier exploded into a fountain of white dust. The kick on the revolver was absurd, and it rocked back, pointing at the ceiling as he tried in vain to get it under control for a followup shot. She was on him before the fragments of tile had even hit the floor, her strong fingers closing around his wrist as she wrested the gun from his hands, a well-placed kick knocking his feet out from under him.

When time returned to normal, he was on his back, the tiles cold against his bare skin as Nazka crouched over him with the gun in her hand. She had closed the gap and disarmed him in the time that it had taken him to fire off one solitary shot. He knew that she was fast but this was absurd, he had scarcely seen her move.

“I’m fucked,” he muttered, resigning himself to his fate.

“Oh, not just yet,” Nazka whispered. She was shaking, with rage or arousal it was impossible to tell. Her eyes were dilated into massive, black circles as she glared down at him, her sharp teeth bared like an angry lion. “That’s twice now you’ve almost killed me,” she hissed, droplets of water from her wet body raining down on him as he lay beneath her. “If you were a Borealan I’d carve my fucking name into your chest with my claws, I’d flay your flesh from your bones, I’d fuck you in a pool of your own blood.”

She was crazed, she looked like a demon, but Eriksen felt oddly unafraid. If she was going to kill him then so be it, he couldn’t do anything about it now. At least she would remember the time that he had almost blown her head off with her own sidearm.

“You’re too fragile for that kind of treatment, your flesh is as soft as butter, you take weeks to heal from minor injuries. If I treated you the way you deserve, you wouldn’t last an hour. Oh, how I want to hook my claws into the skin of your back and fuck your face for the rest of the night, but...” She lifted her head towards the ceiling and closed her eyes, as if imagining some unspeakable torture that she couldn’t subject him to, her claws scraping at the tiles an inch from his ear.

“No Borealan would ever dare to take things this far, you’re driving me crazy, and I can’t even punish you for it. You can’t imagine how frustrating that is.”

He felt a warm strand of liquid fall from between her thighs, landing heavily on his belly. Frustration must have had a double meaning here. She was so wet that she was dripping, and he felt the beginnings of an erection in his own loins. What the hell was wrong with him? How could he be aroused at a time like this?

She bit her lower lip, and cradled his face in her enormous palms, her claws drawing blood from his cheeks as her hands trembled.

“Whatever am I going to do with you, Eriksen? You need to be taught that rebelling against your Alpha is wrong, but how can I teach you if I can’t paint the lessons in your skin?”

He felt her fingers wrap around his wrists, her tail coiling around his ankles and tying them together, Eriksen’s expression remaining neutral and resigned as she positioned herself on top of him. Whatever torture she had planned, he could take it, she would kill him before he spoke a single number of that door code to her.

“I think some tough love is in order, try not to pass out,” she said as she clamped her thighs around his hips. He had been sure that she would kill him for this second attempt on her life, but as her dripping, swollen sex brushed the tip of his erection, he realized that their game wasn’t over yet. There was a fire in her golden eyes, a burning heat that threatened to consume the both of them, and his apprehension was replaced by a flood of guilty anticipation as her glistening body moved atop him.

“No foreplay today,” she whispered, leaning down close to his ear. “I’m going to fuck you until you beg for it to stop, and then I’ll do it some more. You wouldn’t survive my claws, but you’ll probably live through this. Albeit, with some nice new bruises to remember me by.”

She dropped down on him, letting her immense weight drive his erection deep into her tunnel, Eriksen’s eyes almost popping out of his head as he felt her luxurious insides slide against his shaft. She was already so wet. Not just wet, her viscous juices leaked around his member as it lay buried in her twitching hole and ran down her polished thighs. If she hadn’t been so excited she might take taken his skin off, such was her tunnel’s grip on his throbbing erection. She had knocked the wind out of him and cracked the tile beneath his butt, Eriksen catching his breath again as she sat on him, shuddering gently as his cock jumped and flexed inside her. She wasn’t putting all of her weight on him of course, that would probably have crushed his pelvis, but she let enough of it rest on him that he could appreciate the control that she exerted.

He couldn’t choke back the gasp that escaped his lips, the walls of her passage were like velvet, impossibly soft and slick with a layer of syrupy fluid that made him glide as she lifted herself off him again. She poised above him with only his tender glans still lodged inside her, her muscles sucking at him like an eager mouth as she prepared to drop again. She slammed back down, Eriksen closing his eyes and arching his spine off the wet floor. He wanted to cover his face with his hands, but they were pinned above his head.

He could feel every contraction and tremor that passed through her body as she gripped him like a cruel fist, her passage moving around him as if a hundred tongues were pressing against his cock, each one licking and thrashing as they explored his anatomy and painted it with their honeyed saliva. Every nerve in his body was on fire, she was exquisite, almost painfully tight as her powerful pelvic floor muscles milked him in rolling waves that traveled from the base of his member to the sensitive tip. The heat, the delicate flesh that cocooned him, the slippery juices that glazed him ... it was enough to make his head spin.

“Driven half-mad by a few thrusts,” Nazka said as she looked down on him, “such a sensitive creature. You might as well be untouched. How I wish that you were, but your first time with a Borealan won’t even compare. Have you ever been fucked so thoroughly that you could no longer tell where the pleasure ended, and the dull ache of your pain began? If it starts to hurt, beg for it to stop, plead and grovel. It won’t move me, but it might get me off a little faster.”

She circled her hips, grinding his shaft against her walls, feeling him squirm beneath her as she drove bolts of harsh pleasure up his spine. He was already breathing hard, his eyelids drooping, unable to conceal his arousal as she stared down at his red face. She was furious, but also hungry, her yellow eyes betraying her desire as they played over his naked body and drank in his pained expressions.

“You’re beating inside me like a heart, I can feel every twitch. You can’t hide anything from me. I wonder what will break first, your resolve or your bones?”

She slid up his shaft again, then impaled herself, coming down on him hard enough to bruise. She kept it up, finding a slow, heavy pace as she fucked him into the floor. Her abdominal muscles bulged and flexed as she moved, her massive breasts bouncing in rhythm with her thrusts, her flesh clapping against his as droplets of moisture that might have been sweat or shower water rained down on him from her dark skin.

The bathroom was steamy from the hot water that still cascaded from the shower head, it sounded a million miles away to Eriksen as he watched the giant alien bounce on top of him. She almost looked like she was dancing, her wet body shining beneath the bathroom’s lights, breasts swaying and hips rolling as she moved. He didn’t know how his human member compared to those of her own kind, but she seemed to be enjoying herself, her cruel expression softening a little as their coupling grew more frantic. He felt the ache that she had described, a soreness in his battered loins that seemed to reach to the core of his being, but it was a satisfying ache that amplified his senses and made the wracking pleasure all the sweeter in comparison.

His thoughts were muddled, he didn’t know what to feel. All he could do was reel as her ceaseless motions knocked his thoughts around in his head like pinballs. The pleasure was overwhelming, harsh and pitiless, but it drowned him in a sea of euphoria that set every inch of skin aflame with sensation. He wanted desperately to break free of his bonds and reach up, not to strike her or push her away, but to run his hands over her satin skin and to trace the contours of her figure with his fingers. Love and hate, pleasure and pain, it was all becoming a confused tangle.

Was this what she meant when she said that she was going to break him? Was this what it felt like? He had to keep it together, he had to resist her. She was a tyrant, and he couldn’t afford to be at her mercy. But like a tiny raft floating on a stormy ocean, he could do nothing but ride the waves.

Nazka started to thrust even harder, her pace remaining constant but the force of her blows increasing, his member scouring her narrow passage as she squeezed her muscles around it with all the fine control of a hand. There was so much suction, as if she was trying to draw out his emission through that alone. Eriksen was unable to suppress his gasps and groans as her slippery flesh caressed the exposed head of his cock. He was going so deep, and she was scraping his rigid erection against her walls as if trying to satisfy some terrible itch.

“What do you think of me?” Nazka panted, not missing a stride as she ground her hips against him. “Do your own women pale in comparison? Is there a taboo associated with interspecies sex in your culture, does it humiliate you? That would be delicious...”

She was like a machine, tireless and vigorous even as she mocked him.

“You want to taste my skin, you want to bury your face in my cleavage and breathe in my scent. I can see it in your eyes. But I won’t let you, I’m going to fuck you right here on the floor, because your place is beneath me.” She grinned as she felt him flex inside her, her muscular tunnel wringing him as she chuckled.

“Oh, I felt you swell inside me, was there something about that sentence that you liked?” She leaned down closer so that she could whisper in his ear, her hot breath washing over him as she gyrated on his member.

“I love the face you make when you’re trying to hide how hot you are for me ... yeah, that’s the one. I saw it when I made you fill my hand with your seed back in the kitchen, and when my juices were dripping from your face after I forced you to get me off. You look at me like you hate me, yet you’re as hard as a fucking rock. I can feel the hot blood flowing through your cock. I can smell the pheromones in your sweat. I can see where you’re looking, your body is already giving itself to me so why don’t you stop resisting and do the same?”

“You don’t know humans very well,” he replied, trying to keep his voice from wavering as she subjected him to her barbarous attentions. “The fact that you want it so badly, that it would make you happy, means that I’ll die long before I give you the satisfaction. I’d cut my own throat if I thought that it would spite you.”

She cut off his bitter laugh with an especially hard thrust, his eyes rolling back into his head as his spine rose from the tiles in response, and she cocked her head at him curiously.

“When a Borealan loses a fight they stop resisting, the arousal lasts a while longer but once the confrontation is over it starts to fade. We get maybe ten, fifteen minutes of sex that would probably split a human in two, but the bloodlust only lasts so long.” She closed her eyes as if recalling some old memory, Eriksen struggling to keep his attention on what she was saying as she crushed him against the floor, pleasant shivers crawling up his spine with every stroke.

“There’s nothing quite like being torn up by a male who weighs twice what you do. You know what my first sexual experience was? I had my eye on this one guy who used to load cargo at the docks near where I grew up, he had arms as large as you are, and scars all over his chest from dominance fights.” She bit her lip as she remembered him, Eriksen confused and wondering where she was going with her story. She took a minute to catch her breath as she bobbed on his shaft, her steely thighs pressing around him, the hard muscle beneath her delicate fat digging into his hips. “When I came of age I walked right up to him and cut him straight across the belly, dug my claws in deep just to get his attention. He lifted me clear off the ground, threw me over a nearby crate and fucked me so hard that I could scarcely stumble home when he was done. I must have come a dozen times in the space of the ten minutes it took him to lose interest.”

She rose on his shaft and then lowered herself more slowly this time, savoring the sensation of his member dragging against her tunnel, sparks of pleasure dancing in Eriksen’s brain as she continued to speak.

“That’s about how long it lasts for us. Even when you make a point of pissing someone off, the lust and the anger fade. But you, Eriksen, you just keep pushing. You reach the point where even the most ambitious Borealan would realize that they’ve lost, and you keep going. You’ve been dragging out that lust and anger for two fuckin’ days and you show no sign of stopping.”

She slowed and brought her face down close so that her pink nose was almost touching his.

“I’ve never been so turned on in my life, certainly not for this long. It’s like a sickness or a fever, and it almost scares me.”

Eriksen wanted to protest, to tell her how fucking crazy she sounded, how twisted her view of sexuality was. But he couldn’t muster the strength. It was as if her insides were wringing him of his willpower, sapping his strength as her damp flesh scraped against his skin. If she were to release his arms now and free him from her iron grip, would he try to fight her off, or would his primal urges betray him and cause him to sink his hands into those otherworldly breasts? Was there even any point in fighting this war that he couldn’t hope to ever win? Maybe he should just enjoy it and resume his fight when it was over...

No, he wasn’t going to give her an inch, not on his life.

She saw the flash of determination in his eyes, and he felt her shudder, a powerful tremor rolling through her body and translating into his member to make him wince. She began to move again, rocking her wide hips back and forth, her thighs gripping him ever tighter as if she was trying to crush the life out of him. She was like a force of nature, vigorous and immovable, there was nothing that he could do besides lie beneath her with his throbbing erection lodged deep inside her as her relentless pace drove them both towards an inevitable climax.

His staggered breaths seem to sync with her thrusts, as if he could only take a lungful of air when she fell back down to drive him into her warm depths, their bodies moving as one in their throes of passion despite the animosity of their conscious minds.

“Damn it Nazka,” Eriksen muttered, his face contorted as he tried to resist the welling pleasure that coursed through his beleaguered body. “Slow down, you’re ... it’s too much.”

She gazed down at him with her damp hair falling across one eye, her dark body shining with moisture and sweat, and she released his wrists from her hands in order to plant them to either side of his head as she fucked him. She wasn’t faring much better than him, overcome with arousal, her gaze unfocused and her eyelids fluttering.

“No way,” she panted, “endure it. If you come before I do I’ll ... I’ll...”

Her voice seemed to fail her, cracking as she drove him against her slick walls, Eriksen sinking his fingers into the fur on her forearms for purchase. She grinned, seeing that once released, he made no attempt to escape her.

Everything was so wet. Their sweat, saliva, her juices. The moisture in the air and the water on the tiles beneath him. Hot and slippery, so many sensations mingling and blending until they were hard for his mind to distinguish. His hips were bruised where she drove him into the deck with the force of her pounding, the bite on his neck still hurt, miscellaneous cuts and scrapes stung his skin. But the pleasure drowned it all out, his body pushing off the tile to meet her downward thrusts, slamming together with an audible clap that made his cheeks flush with embarrassment. He was sore, but he wanted more, the ache wasn’t enough. He could sense a monumental orgasm creeping up on him, and he needed it desperately.