She is adorable, the way her cheeks turn pink all the way to her nose, the breathless little sounds she makes, repetitive noises escaping her as she humps my hand with that greed she cannot help.
What I did to her last night was rough, but it was nothing she could not handle. It might even have been what she craved.
“Good girl,” I praise when she is finished quivering wetly in my lap. “You came so prettily for your master.”
She blushes and looks away from me, but I turn her chin gently back.
“Did you like that, Aspel?”
“Yes,” she whispers under her breath.
“And did you like what I did to you last night?”
Her blush deepens to a rich crimson color, which almost makes her look like one of our species. Her eyes seek the ground, and when she answers, it is in the quietest voice possible. “Yes…”
That admission is all I need. She’s mine. All mine. And I’m keeping her.
Chapter Eleven
Isu
She hates me. She loves me. We are two different creatures from two different species and I do not know if we can ever be happy while we are together. What I know for sure is that we cannot seem to be apart. So I will take her with me down into the dark. I will make her mine. And if she has to hate me, so be it. I can withstand her anger, especially when it inevitably melts into lust.
She cries when I pluck her up from the ground, snap the chain off at the base next to the bed, but leave it wrapped around her ankle. I will have to keep her captive in the short term, until she becomes accustomed to her new life. I know she will. She has shown that she is smart and adaptable. She learned a whole culture in less than a year. She will learn ours just as well.
The caves are being dug by hand. Usually we would wait for the wyrm to do its work, but we cannot wait that long. We will bore our way as deep as we can, make ourselves at home.
Already the females are excited. They yearn to burgeon with new life, and the males are just as excited to mate with them. Aspel’s misery is very much out of place as we descend into the first winding tunnel, a place of darkness welcoming us home. She makes a near continuous whine, for which I have little patience and even less pity.
I know she will try to escape again. I also know that I will not allow it. She got away from me once, and she came back. I believe there is some human adage along those lines. If you set something free, and it returns, then clearly it wants to be chained in one’s underground lair. That’s my thinking.
My quarters are not as large as the ones I enjoyed on our ancestral home, but they will grow over time. I will chip away at these obsidian walls until something great is hollowed out. Maybe a separate room for my human captive.
“I’ll die in the dark,” she whimpers as I take her deeper.
“We all die in the dark, Aspel. That is the nature of dying. The last moment of consumption always takes place in ultimate blackness.”
With that, I settle her into my new chambers, and reattach her chain. She’s going to need to be kept captive for quite some time, until she comes to accept that the outcome of her actions is in perfect alignment with her true desires: she wants to be with me.
* * *
Aspel
The hunger of the wyrm has made Isu cold. He told me he loved me, but if this is love, then I don’t want it. Lust is not enough to overcome the depths of despair into which I have fallen at finding myself captive again. Yes, again. Not because Isu captured me upon first meeting, but because I was born into captivity and only escaped it by sheer luck and yet I fled back to it just when I had all the freedom in the universe.
The Erf humans might come to rescue me, but the Nited Nashions have never been terribly organized. It’s basically a loose collection of volunteers, none of whom pay attention to who is doing what. They might notice the ship is missing, but those shuttles are left all over the place. I’m fairly certain I saw one sticking out of a dumpster. Nobody cared.
The future of humanity is not giving a fuck about anyone, or anything, except things that are fun. I understand that, and I know that there’s a decent chance they won’t notice I’m gone, let alone come find me.
Maybe there is some small chance at escape. I don’t think they’ve deconstructed my ship yet. There’s no point now that they’ve all retreated into this wyrm-infested planet.