The third human female, who called herself Sonya, shuddered in his arms and consented to her examination. By then, Rychor knew he had to put some distance between himself and her; her heated flesh and the scent of her sex intoxicated him. A current seemed to run beneath the surface of his skin, and deep in his abdomen, a hollow, painful lust was brewing like a storm.
He was to perform the same series of tests they had performed on the other humans they had secured from the first ship, but his hands did not want to release her to the others when the time came. She gave her consent, so his directive was complete. But he wanted to linger, smelling her, holding her fragile body in his arms.
It was difficult to pry himself from her. To hand her over to the testers, to stand away from them as they prepared her for the examination. He left the room, raising no eyebrows; the medical examinations had not been of keen interest to him in the past. He alone knew that he was leaving the room not out of disinterest, but because of the desire that burned inside of him.
He hoped that they couldn’t guess that he didn’t trust himself to be objective with the human, Sonya. His curiosity had gotten the better of him when he had seen it matched in the human. In spite of her predicament, she had fearlessly probed their species.
This was very different from the others, who had been fearful and mistrusting, submitted easily with very few treatments and training sessions, given consent almost gleefully, and were now being matched with mates and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
He was experiencing attachment to his subject, he told himself. It was a known hazard, and part of the reason the Ryvokia Authority had concluded that it was time for Rychor to breed: emotional attachment to the female had produced better results in the past, particularly in cross-species breeding.
Ordinarily, breeding was a rare honor, one that was earned—as his was—from a lifetime of service to the Ryvokia reproductive project. He knew he should embrace it, complete his tour of service, and return to Ryvokia society to reap the benefits of having made the final sacrifice in the circle of Ryvokia life: to mate with a compatible alien species. The sacrificial part of the experiment—to trigger the mating instinct and live forever with the pain of separation from the impossible to retain object of his desire and bonding—was his duty and honor.
But the other humans had not appealed to him in the same way at all. It had been easy to imagine breeding any one of them and then setting them free, because he had felt very little for them one way or the other. He was fully aware that, like any Ryvokia male, he would be enslaved by thoughts of his mate, linked forever to her by the forces of his nature, doomed to feel her absence acutely for the remainder of his life. But this had been much easier to envisionacceptingin the context of the other humans.
She was different. From the moment she had responded to his touch, after he disciplined her, he had felt the tiny strings that eventually ensnared Ryvokia males. She was small, weak, and pale, but these attributes thrilled him and attracted him to her. The protective instinct that had lain dormant inside him for so much of his life began stirring to life, and was now violently flaming into an inferno.
As he settled into an adjacent pod and called up the observation portals to the examination pod, an unsettled feeling began to brew inside him. He pushed the feeling deep and forced himself to remain an impassive observer. This was his duty, and he would complete it.
This technique had worked on all the humans they had so far encountered, and this human did not seem fundamentally different. They would quickly determine what techniques to apply to her training, and then she would be, most likely, assigned to him for breeding.
Sharing his thoughts through the rapid interface, he ruled out a need to verify the rituals of spanking and public discipline for Sonya: these had already been determined, their relative weights established. They would now need to determine if the same stimulations given to the other females were functional for her.
He assigned the tests, and then looked on as the trio of Ryvokia underlings prepared her for them. The platform she was on would read her biosignals, giving them a truthful telling of her biophysical reactions to the treatments. It was unfortunate that he had allowed her inhibitor-blockers to wear off, and that she had refused the additional fruit. But the others had done so as well, and they had still, after very few treatments, recognized what Sonya would eventually recognize as well: the Ryvokia were very good at determining true sexual desires and replicating those circumstances.
Still, as he watched through the portals, the unsettled feeling grew. He didn’t like what was happening here, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t understand why.
* * *
Rychor had guided her to the platform, holding up her weight as they walked to it, and he had lifted her as easily as she might have elevated a platter of food onto the high table. She was delirious and weak, her limbs still shaking with echoes of pleasure, and so she lay down willingly and allowed her limbs to be manipulated into place.
During her ordeal, stirrups had been procured from somewhere, and someone had placed her feet in them, and she felt a heavy material, similar to leather, being wrapped around them. Her legs were pulled apart, and the bulky, muscular arms of the Ryvokia stretched over the table, exchanging devices and wires, sticking sensors to her skin, moving her arms above her head to affix them to the table in straps that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere like the stirrups.
She blushed with white-hot heat as the softest part of her was exposed. Her legs were opened, and she knew that her sticky juices coated her thighs and gushed from her pussy. She turned her head to one side and closed her eyes to try and suppress her shame. She moved her arms against the restraints, even though she knew she couldn’t free herself from them. It was a reflex, a desire to cover herself.
But as they stood back from the platform once she was secured, she realized that she couldn’t do anything at all now. She was splayed open and exposed for all to see—and probe—however they wished. She glanced around in furtive confusion. Rychor was gone, or at least not visible to her. She wanted to ask about him, but didn’t dare.
A throb of fear swelled in her chest again. And then longing: a longing for her captor to be present with her. She knew this was a psychological trick of her own mind, the psychology of kidnapping was simple and brutal: she was clinging to him because she was afraid, and he seemed to care for her.
She reminded herself that it was an illusion and stared at the ceiling, shame pouring through her for the thoughts that pervaded her mind, the arousal that still plagued her. The longing that she felt for Rychor to return.
Her captors were no longer catching only glimpses of her privates. They were the bullseye focus of their attention. Her own humiliation competed forherattention. She breathed deeply to quell the feeling. Sonya Williams: scientist, astronaut, explorer, was no more. She had been reduced to breeding stock. The science experiment of another species. Soon, if they succeeded, she would carry their offspring.
Every so often she would open her eyes and try to catch a glimpse of him. His presence reassured her, somehow. Despite his crude display of dominance, she felt in him a protective streak. Was she imagining it? Was she imagining that the way he was looking at her was… almost affectionate?
She chased those thoughts away, too. They were preposterous and what did they change? Nothing. She would not allow herself to harbor any hope of knowing protection, or any sort of affection while she was in the custody of these beings. Those would come later. When she was returned.Ifshe was returned.
“We are going to proceed with depilation,” one of the attendants told her, finally. “Prior to your examination.”
She looked around, moving her head frantically. “Where… where’s Rychor?” she asked, hating the desperation in her voice. What, did she think Rychor would save her from these creatures? Her heart started beating wildly, and panic began to grip her. She knew it made no sense, but she wanted him there.
“It is not distressing,” one of the attendants said.
“Where is he?” she asked again, turning her head from side to side and lifting it to look over her spread legs and around the room. He was nowhere in sight.
One attendant moved a hand to the back of his neck and pressed against the same device that Rychor had shown her—what seemed like years ago, when she first spoke to him.
“He is observing in an adjacent room,” the attendant said, without looking at her. “He urges you to be calm and reminds you that you have consented to the exam, and it will not be distressing.”
