Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (20 page)

Tariq’s eyes narrowed. “I’m afraid the
answer to that is too complicated for your minuscule brain to
process,” he said tightly. “We need knew contributors to the gene
pool—new blood.”

“
These women—they big like
you?”

Tariq blinked at him. “Hardly,” he
said tightly.

“
But they must still be
big. All you fellas I seen was.”

“
Tall,” he agreed coldly.
“Yes.”

“
They ain’t gonna have a
problem with me bein’ short next to them?”

“
They want the dick and
the seed.”

“
What if I git stuck with
an ugly one?”

“
Luck of the draw. Close
your eyes. You’re no beauty yourself.”

“
But I cain’t git no hard
on if I think she’s ugly.”

Tariq grinned evilly. “Oh, I can
guarantee you’ll be able to get it up, whatever she looks like. You
may not be able to get the son-of-a-bitch to go down, but you’ll
get it up.”

Pete looked uneasy—as well, he might.
“Maybe you could help me git with a purty one if I help you
out?”

Tariq studied him through narrowed
eyes for a long moment and it abruptly occurred to him that he
happened to know a woman who would be deeply appreciative to get
her hands on a good breeder—and as wormy as the little bastard was,
he was potent—not ill equipped to please an Anunnaki woman, if it
came to that from what he’d heard. Even Merrick, their medic, had
been impressed with it. Of course, she was no great beauty, but she
was a powerful, influential woman. A slow smile curled his lips.
“Lady Seana.”

The man blinked. “Lady,” he repeated,
clearly pleased with the idea. “She purty?”

“
She’s rich and powerful,”
Tariq responded.

Pete’s brows rose. He frowned,
considering, and finally nodded. “We found one of them alien
ships.”

Tariq’s heart skipped several beats.
He struggled to keep his thoughts to himself and his expression
merely politely interested. “Those who attacked?”

The man nodded vigorously. “It got
shot down when the war started, I guess. It looked all banged up,
like it crashed, but it was still mostly in one piece.”

Tariq narrowed his eyes. “What makes
you think I’d be interested in that? We’re looking for
survivors.”

“
Thing is, the way I heard
it, they got bunches of them.”

Tariq stared at him. “They took
prisoners?”

The man nodded vigorously.

Tariq’s expression hardened. “Tell me
how to find it and I’ll make a gift of you to Lady
Seana.”

Pete frowned uneasily. “Don’t know if
I can tell you how,” he said slowly, “but I can take you to
it.”

Doubt flickered through Tariq and the
instant suspicion that the little bastard thought that the offer
might give him the chance to escape. He got up to leave. “I’ll
consider it. You may be certain, however, that if you’re lying to
me you will deeply regret it.”

Chapter Nine

Emerald wasn’t as convinced that she’d
achieved orgasm when she woke up a little later as she had been
when she fell asleep. The familiar discomfort was back. Although it
seemed to lack the intensity of before, she felt warm and achy, as
if she was coming down with something. The question was, was it
just … residual arousal because she’d been teased so long without
being allowed release? Was it possible that they’d somehow trained
her body from so many ‘sessions’ to always be on edge or maybe
simply because she wasn’t allowed anything to wear and that kept
her focus on the sensitive areas of her body?

Maybe she hadn’t actually achieved
orgasm as she’d thought and it was simply that her body had reached
such an unbearable peak without the ability to release the tension
that it had simply shut down as she’d suspected before?

It was a dismaying thought in some
ways, but she didn’t suppose it posed any real threat of harm or
they wouldn’t do it. In another way, it was almost a comfort. At
least, if it was true, she knew there was some escape, some
relief.

It didn’t seem to her that
she could look forward to anything else in the near future.
She
was
trying to
learn how to behave as they expected. She might’ve subconsciously
been pushing them before Koryn had spoken to her. She knew she’d
very consciously pushed them at times, but even then she didn’t
think it was because she wanted them to punish her. Because
it
was
punishment, almost more than she could bear most of the
time.

The problem was that she still didn’t
fully understand the finer points of being their sex slave slash
breeder.

She considered that and
amended it. She thought she did. She was supposed to be—like a
robot, she supposed, with no thoughts or wishes of her own, always
prepared to do just what they wanted. The problem was trying to
grow accustomed to at least behaving as if she was an empty
vessel.
That
was
what she was trying to do and yet she’d discovered it was a lot
harder than it seemed on the surface because she had to fight a
constant battle with her instincts and her personality. Even though
she’d been trained, as a soldier, to follow orders without
question, their orders were so personal, so unlike what she was
used to, it always sent just enough of a jolt of surprise through
her that she couldn’t prevent an emotional response. Beyond that,
their method of training was almost as demoralizing as real
torture.

She supposed she should
count her blessings that she was important enough to them that they
preferred the ‘gentle’ discipline they’d thought up—actually
she
was
grateful.
The pleasure might be nearly unbearable a lot of the time, and was,
but it could have been so much worse it didn’t even bear thinking
about.

She didn’t know why they hadn’t simply
made her that way if that was what they wanted. Surely it wasn’t
beyond their capabilities if they could grow a fully functional
adult from a few cells in a very short time—days or weeks? From the
things she’d heard, they hadn’t actually been on Earth long and she
doubted they’d found her right away.

She didn’t understand that part, but
maybe they couldn’t do that without creating something so mentally
deficient that it was repulsive?

Or maybe they just weren’t willing to
go that far? Maybe it was against their principles?

She would’ve thought it would be
against their principles to enslave another race, but she didn’t
suppose any race ever completely advanced beyond their basic
nature. And it seemed to be in the nature of most to use anyone
weak enough for them to use if the mood struck them.

Sexual slavery had been an ongoing
problem for humans, for that matter, for centuries. It hadn’t been
eradicated because there was still profit in it, still plenty of
men willing to pay for a woman they could use as they
pleased.

The breeding thing was a new twist,
though. That didn’t make any sense to her. They seemed capable of
reproducing so why did they need to enslave another race to
reproduce? She’d heard them mention males, so it wasn’t just women
they were after. They wanted, or needed, both.

Koryn was a geneticist, she thought
abruptly. She’d assumed his presence was purely for the purpose of
reviving humans since she knew he was responsible for her own
resurrection, but they hadn’t known about the war. They hadn’t
known what had happened on Earth. They’d expected to merely come to
Earth, select what they wanted, and leave again.

Something was wrong with their
genes?

What could possibly be wrong if
introducing their ‘children’ as they called them would eliminate
the problem?

It hit her
abruptly—limitation. At any time the gene pool became extremely
limited, problems began to appear in the offspring—defects. So did
that mean something had happened to the Anunnaki to reduce their
gene pool so drastically that they
had
to have fresh
contributors?

It seemed to her that that was the
only answer.

War? Disease? Natural disaster? She
realized it could be any of those things or even none of them.
Maybe they were practicing population control and simply
underestimated the numbers they needed and limited their off-spring
too drastically? Or maybe, since they seemed fond of ‘playing’ with
genetics, they’d done something to themselves?

Did it matter beyond the fact that
they’d decided to collect what they considered belonged to them,
the human race, and that included her?

She realized it did. It didn’t change
the fact that they were unbelievably arrogant and too single minded
to consider that their ‘children’ also had rights, but a true need
to take breeders to insure the survival of their race put an
entirely different complexion on the matter—at least insofar as her
perspective on Tariq and Koryn.

She
still
didn’t like the fact that they
considered her their possession, but, despite their arrogance, she
believed they had made every effort to be gentle with her and she
could at least concede that they weren’t careless of their
possessions.

Maybe they thought of her as a pet
they were particularly fond of, but it almost seemed as if they
were more inclined to treat her like a lover than an object for
their lust and to breed for them.

Tariq had seemed genuinely concerned
after he’d broken her hymen that he might’ve done far more damage
than he’d expected or intended—remorseful, not just upset that he
might have broken his toy. Maybe she’d misinterpreted it, but it
seemed to her that his discomfort afterwards arose from the
realization that he’d given more away than he’d intended. She
hadn’t thought about that at the time, but in retrospect it was
hard to interpret his abrupt reversal any other way. He’d picked
her up so carefully and cuddled her with such … tenderness, and
then abruptly plunked her down again and scrambled out of the room
as if his coattails were on fire. What else would explain
that?

He’d suddenly remembered he had
something far more important to take care of?

He’d said as much, but he hadn’t
behaved as if he had anything more pressing when he’d come in than
spending the afternoon disciplining her and he hadn’t gotten any
calls.

Then again, maybe she just wanted to
put a positive spin on her situation because the future unfolding
before her looked pretty grim otherwise?

* * * *

Reluctant for once to rise and leave
his bed the moment he woke, Tariq lay in his bunk with Emerald,
going back over everything Pete had told him and the ramifications
of it. He wasn’t in the habit of yielding to impulse. He was
decisive and tended to make quick assessments of any given
situation and act, but he never acted until he’d considered every
conceivable angle. It was his uneasiness that too much of his focus
was on Emerald and that his judgment, therefore, was impaired that
made him consider Pete’s proposition far longer than he ordinarily
would have.

That plus the fact that he’d wanted to
act immediately and he never trusted impulses.

Even his rage at what had been done to
their children was firmly wrapped up in Emerald now. He was certain
he would’ve felt much the same regardless. Like everyone else, he
was accustomed to thinking of the humans as theirs, which by
extension, meant that an attack on their children was an attack on
the Anunnaki. It had become even more personal, though, when he’d
chosen Emerald as the mother of his children.

It wasn’t as if it hadn’t occurred to
him that he would never have had the opportunity of choosing
Emerald if things had transpired differently. Even if the humans
had increased their life-spans because of their own growing
knowledge of genetics and she had lived a normal lifespan and still
been alive when he arrived, it was highly unlikely she would’ve
been capable of bearing children—not impossible, but not likely.
Nevertheless, it infuriated him every time he thought about the
attack, because he couldn’t help but see it as an attack on
Emerald.

He wanted to retaliate. It had
frustrated him no end that it seemed unlikely they would be able to
discover who the bastards were that had decimated their nest of
purebloods and the possibility Pete had dangled under his nose made
him all the more anxious.

He dismissed any plot Pete
might have hatched fairly swiftly, didn’t even dedicate any time to
considering possibilities. He would be on guard. Whatever the man
had thought of would be impossible to execute when
he
would be expecting
treachery.

It had occurred to him
fairly quickly that this was no private war. As angry as he was
about it, as distracted as he was by Emerald, he knew he wasn’t
alone. There had been brooding menace among the entire ship’s
personnel since they’d realized the devastation they’d found was
premeditated. To their minds,
they
had been attacked.

Everyone on Niribu would feel the same
way, he realized. Once he reported what had happened, there would
be an uproar and they would be calling for blood.