Breeding Ground Part 24

She wanted to vomit, could feel bile churning in her belly.

"Look at me!" he shouted, his voice angry. "You will look at me!"

Oh no-oh please no.

She drew her knees up impossibly closer against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She didn't want to look at him. Anything but that. Sweet G.o.d above, anything but-

"Look at me!" he bellowed.

And then he was in the cage, his hideous claws jerking her up from the ground, forcing her to her feet. She wanted to fight him, but she could barely speak or stand, let alone rage against him.

"Look at me!" he demanded, shaking her. "Open your eyes!"

No! No! No! Oh G.o.d, please don't make me look at him!

She'd never been more frightened. Her heart was thumping like a rock against her chest, her breathing sporadic and growing more labored by the second. She was afraid to know what he looked like for she'd seen his kind before. Hideous. Freakish.

Monsters.

"I said look at me!"

Startled awake by the loudness of the bellow, it took Alex a moment to realize that the last sentence had really been spoken. She hadn't dreamt it. Not that part.

Her eyes flew open. Her gaze met and clashed with a serpentine gold one.

In the dream, she had feared looking at him. In reality, his dramatic reptilian appearance no longer registered as significant. She was too weak, too close to death, to care. Some things about the dream, however, remained unchanged...

Alex was broken. She had never thought to be so desperate for life as to beg the enemy for mercy. Then again, she had never been so hauntingly close to death before. Genetic imprinting took over and the need to survive overrode all other thoughts and emotions.

Her head was too weak to lift it from the red earthen floor. She moved a shaky hand as close to the beast as she could. Her dry, cracked lips worked up and down, but it took forever to get out the two words she so desperately wanted to say. "Help me."

A large, deadly, reptile's hand enveloped her trembling one. Alex closed her eyes and fell asleep, uncertain if she would ever wake up again.

Chapter Fifteen.

"Are you in need of aid, Your Greatness?"

Malik waved away the servant that had entered the bathing pond. He could and would attend to Alexandria the Great himself. Already he had fed her, though she hadn't been awake to know it. She would live.

In his man form, Malik looked down into her unconscious face. Guilt was an emotion he hadn't much experience with, and yet he found himself consumed by it now.

It had never so much as occurred to him that Alexandria would be nigh unto dead from a mere four days without nourishment. Takuri could last for weeks. Malik had thought four days without food and drink would make her more compliant, but kill her? He'd never heard tell of such a fragile creature as this one.

What are you, little one? You are an enigma to me and my race.

He ran his hand through her golden curls, as mesmerized by them as he was by her. Alexandria the Great, the prophesized queen of humans, was an anomaly. A contradiction of bodily frailty and superhuman mental strength. Her mind was superior to Takuri, and he begrudgingly admitted, perhaps even to the Xandi. And yet her body was a delicate vessel, small in its stature and quick to deplete the nutrients which kept it going.

She had told him she was no Takuri. What had once seemed impossible was quickly becoming more and more probable.

What manner of creature are you?

Malik bathed her naked body, running a large hand over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. In the coolness of the bathing pond, her pink nipples stiffened and turned a riper, redder color. He bent his head and drew one into the warmth of his mouth.

Suckling from her nipple, his erection was fast and furious. He wanted her so badly that his entire body ached with need.

Now was not the time. But soon. Very soon.

Taking one last hard suck, he released her nipple with a popping sound. She moaned slightly, but otherwise didn't awaken. That was just as well. It gave him more time to think.

Malik gently bathed her, was.h.i.+ng her hair, her body, her everything. His mind, immortal though it now was, couldn't fathom what this female was. The G.o.ds had prepared him for many eventualities in the dreamstate, but for the possibility that the queen of humans was no human? He didn't know what to make of this.

The war between Takuri and Xandi had raged on for millennia. It was so old that none knew why it had even begun, only why it continued-

His race needed human wombs.

Only captured humans-Takuri they were certain couldn't escape-knew this. To those who still lived as freewomen in the matriarchal societies high in the mountaintops, the reason for human females being hunted down was shrouded in mystery. It had to be that way. If they knew the reason why they were captured and mesmerized by the Xandi, it could very well give them the upper hand in the war.

Two cultures, two races, two opposing ways of life. The Xandi were ruled by males, the Takuri by females. The Xandi coveted the humans, but the Takuri loathed the Xandi. Such was how it had always been.

In the early stages of the war, when the Xandi had first discovered that human females could mother their offspring, their males had taken to the skies and attempted to steal as many Takuri as possible. It wasn't until a few generations later that they realized not all Takuri could be impregnated of Xandi seed-only certain females could. It took them another several hundred years to figure out exactly which human females they needed.

Those whom males of their race could enter the dreamstate with.

Naked, Malik carried Alexandria the Great's nude body from the bathing pond and up to a favorite smooth boulder where the red-tinted sunlight would dry her off naturally. The sound of the waterfall whoos.h.i.+ng beside them was comforting in its familiarity. The people Malik had loved in his mortal life-his sire, his human mother, his brothers-all were long dead. But this glorious waterfall had not changed in a thousand years. It had been his favored retreat from the pressures of ruling Tongor a millennium hence, and so it was now.

Lying the human queen flat on her back, Malik came up on an elbow and stretched out beside her. He stared down at her through the gold gaze of his race, a large, strong hand running over the contours of her limp body. He plucked at her gorgeous, stiff nipples, went lower and gently rubbed her belly, then lower still until his fingers were sifting through the soft golden hair at her p.u.s.s.y.

He felt a connection with this woman, human or no. He had raged against it, told himself to be firm and unwavering, but in the end he couldn't deny it-killing her wasn't an option.

He had paced the ziggurat for days, angry with himself for feeling this weakness. What path was left to him was foggy, but that she could not die was as clear as the mirror-silver liquid of the waterfall. Malik could only be glad he figured these things out before she had expired from lack of nourishment rather than after.

He had shared the dreamstate with her. Whether this was indicative of the fact that she was the one-the only one who could sire his offspring-or indicative of the fact that they had experienced the mutual connection together solely because the G.o.ds had meant to prepare him for all that the prophesized queen was...

He didn't know. Verily, Malik didn't even know if an immortal could produce offspring. He was the first of any race to be gifted-or perhaps cursed-with this state of being.

"What are you to me, woman?" he rasped, powerful fingers still sifting through the softness at the apex of her thighs. He could run his fingers through her curls all day-a simple but serene pleasure in a world where fate was anything but.

He sighed as he stared down at her. He might not be able to mesmerize her, but he grimly conceded that she wielded that power over him.

"I still needs bring you to heel, Alexandria."

The future was ambiguous, the destiny of the war's end unknown. All that Malik could do was follow the instinct inside of him, the primitive impulse that made him desirous of keeping Alexandria the Great as close to him as possible.

"You're going the wrong way."

Fija stilled, immediately recognizing the voice. She slowly turned on her heel until at last she faced him. She realized her warriors were shocked when she deigned to speak to him. "And what would a male know, hm?"