Hunted By The Alien Assassin by Ella Maven

Ten

Karina

By the time we arrived back at the farm, the sun was setting. Bosa told me to stay inside while he went out to gather firewood, and I looked around for the expeller. Finding none, I wondered how the Pucin relieved themselves, but then I wasn’t quite sure of their anatomy. Needing to pee, I quickly stole outside. I could hear Bosa in the distance working at some dried logs.

Finding a well-hidden area in the nearby forest, I pulled my pants down and squatted, exhaling happily when my bladder vacated. All I could hear was the distant sound of Bosa chopping wood and the splatter of my urine.

A breeze rustled the trees above my head, startling me for a moment. “Calm down, Karina,” I muttered to myself. As soon as I finished peeing, I yanked up my pants. A lock of hair fell into my eyes, and I blew it away just as the rustling grew louder. Freezing for a second, I listened more carefully before peering up to the branch canopy.

The leaves weren’t moving. They were still, and yet the rustling sound was louder than ever. Panic sent my heart plunging into my feet just as the sound stopped abruptly, plunging the forest into silence. I blinked into the dark, wanting to scream for Bosa but also not wanting to draw attention to myself.

Black shapes emerged slowly, creeping around the tree trunks. Frozen in terror, I watched as the starlight caught on a large, round, shiny orb. An opaque film descended over the orb before peeling back again, like a blink. It was a giant eye—or really, a hundred tiny eyes that made up one large one about the size of a beach ball. Below that were two fangs, slick with what I could only imagine was venom.

And attached to that eye was a spider-like body, the size of a sedan, covered in thin hairs. Six legs crept toward me and rising from its back were two massive scorpion-esque stingers that waved in the sky threateningly.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, my muscles locked in horror. The rustling sound came again, louder now, and I realized the spider-thing was making the sound with its mouth by rubbing little skin flaps against its fangs.

Before I could open my mouth to let out a shout, a leg swept under my feet and sent me slamming onto my back. The air rushed from my lungs, and I gasped for air just as small hooks on the ends of its feet snagged my pants and tugged me under the massive body. My arm brushed the hairs on its legs, and a burning pain singed the skin there, like my skin had been held on a direct flame.

I tried to focus through the pain and the fear as the spider thing continued to walk backward, tugging me with it. Probably taking me to its lair where it would lay eggs inside my live body so its young could eat me from the inside out.

What had Bosa told me? Find its weakness. Exploit it. Then run as fast as I could. I scrabbled with my hands on the forest floor, still gasping for breath through the pain. My hand closed around a stick and I swung it, catching the spider on one of its legs. The spider shifted to the side, and I caught the sight of one of its stingers plunging down. Rolling to the side at the last second, the stinger sank into the dirt at my side with a force that would have completely caved in my chest cavity.

The rustling started again, and I noticed when the stinger retreated, the spider had to angle its body, revealing a hairless section of lighter, thinner skin under one leg—like an armpit. If I could jam the stick there…

I hit another leg, knowing that stinger was coming for me, but needing the advantage its attack gave me. Sure enough, the spider shifted to the other side, smashing the stinger right at my head. With a yell and a lunge, I jammed the stick into its armpit.

The thing shrieked, a sound that nearly blew out my eardrums, and fell to the side. I narrowly avoided getting crushed by its body as I scrambled onto my hands and knees and then my feet. Pumping my arms, I took off without looking back, racing blindly in the forest. “Bosa!” I screamed with all the energy I had left. “Help! Bosaaaaa!”

I glanced over my shoulder to find the spider had recovered. And that wasn’t all. Another two had joined it, and they weren’t creeping anymore. They were full on skittering toward me, covering way more ground than my short legs could.

“Bosa!” I sobbed. Where was he? He said he’d be by my side. But as I ran, no bronzed god appeared in front of me, nothing but darkness and trees that I dodged through my tears.

I tripped over a root and stumbled onto my hands. The rustling sounded right over my head and dropped onto my back just as the large spider reared above me, both stingers held high and that giant orb eye alight with glee at its next meal.

“Bosa,” I whispered.

Suddenly the eye exploded. Just like that. Before my eyes, the spider eye seemed to spontaneously combust, sending liquid and goo all over me. I screamed and scrabbled back on my palms and feet as the spider rent the air with another ear-piercing shriek. I couldn’t see well in the dark, but something was happening to the spider—it was rolling onto its side, and blood and guts seemed to be pouring from a hole in its side… what the hell? Was it sick?

As the first spider lay motionless, legs akimbo and body a mess of smeared guts, another one of the spiders began to shake and shriek. I watched as the same thing happened to that one. I told myself to get up and run, but just as I stumbled to my feet, a series of clicks echoed in the forest. I’d heard that sound before—back when I’d run from Frenz… and right into Bosa.

I blinked into the near darkness, trying to focus just as a bronzed figure appeared on a branch over top of the last living spider. Bosa stood there, materializing out of thin air like a damn magician. He was covered in a sticky fluid, and his chest was heaving. Hair loose and wild, he let out a roar as he leapt from the branch, Babe over his head. He smashed it into the head of the third spider, which didn’t even get a chance to shriek as its body collapsed in the bloody pool of its comrades.

Holding my burned arm, I panted as Bosa lifted his hand. Streaked with dirt, guts, and grime, eyes wild and filled with blood lust, he had never looked more like a warrior.

Sobbing with relief, I collapsed forward onto my knees. Bosa rushed toward me, catching me just as my body pitched forward. “Kotche,” he whispered, brushing my hair from my face with shaking hands. “Are you okay? Did the wittow sting you?”

I shook my head and pointed to my arm. “Burns.”

He twisted my arm to peer at it. “The hairs have an irritant. I need to make a poultice, but it will heal.”

With Babe strapped to his back, he lifted me into his arms and began to run. I stared at him, still processing what had happened back there. “Did you… was that you who fought all the spider things?”

“The wittows?” he said, barely panting as he sprinted toward the house. “Yes.”

“But you… I didn’t see you…”

His eyes shifted down for a brief second. “I can blank.”

“Blank?”

He burst through the door of the house and kicked it shut behind him. “I can blend into my surroundings to appear invisible.” Setting me down on the bed pallet, he immediately began digging through his pack for supplies.

“You can?” I blinked at him. This was brand new information to me. How did I not know this yet? “Why haven’t you done it before?”

He glanced at me. “Because you can’t blank. Why would I disguise myself when you’d be the only visible one and the target?”

He pulled out a packet of dried leaves and then spit on them before mashing them into a paste. I didn’t even question when he smeared the whole saliva mess on a bandage for my arm. Sure, spit on me. At this point, he could have peed on me, and I would have thanked him. That was how to treat jellyfish stings after all. What was a little spit in an alien galaxy?

“So wait, you could have blanked when we were running from the orhanus and you didn’t?”

He wrapped the bandage around my arm, and immediately the cool paste soothed the irritated skin. “Yes. I’m a bigger target. Better they hit me than you.”

My jaw dropped. Even back then he could have easily gotten rid of me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he wanted to save his own skin, but instead he’d… protected me. At his own risk. “Jesus, Bosa.”

“I don’t know what that first word means.” He finished wrapping my arm and sat back on the balls of his feet. “Does anything else hurt?”

I could really only stare at him in awe. “Show me.”

Confusion flickered in his eyes. “What?”

“Can you show me how you blank?”

A small smile tilted his lips. It was almost shy. “It’s not that exciting.”

“It is to me.”

“Anything for you, kotche,” he said softly. Still crouched on the balls of his feet, he seemed to shimmer before my eyes as a series of clicks echoed off the walls. In seconds, he was gone, disappeared before my eyes.

“Holy cow,” I whispered before reaching out. My hands grazed the familiar feel of his scales, but I couldn’t see him. Squinting, I could just barely detect a faint blur in front of me in the outline of his body, but it was nearly undetectable, and I wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t know how he was positioned.

A thumb swiped at my lips, and I turned my head to give the digit a play bite. My teeth closed on nothing, but I heard a chuckle near my ear. “You’re hurt,” a disembodied voice said from somewhere behind me. “Just relax.”

I turned my head to look behind me, even though I knew I couldn’t see him. “What are you—”

Hands settled on my shoulders and tugged me back. “Relax.”

I felt a warmth on my outer thighs, and when I lowered my hands, I felt the smooth surface of his pants. He was behind me, straddling me, and when I let myself fall back, I rested on a solid form—his chest.

“I’m not that hurt,” I protested weakly. My arm barely hurt anymore, thanks to his spit concoction.

“No?” He sounded amused.

“Not really.”

I squeezed my fingers, marveling at the oddness of feeling him but not seeing him. What would this look like to an outsider? Me, leaning back against…nothing?

Something brushed my upper chest, and I sucked in a breath as the ties of my shirt loosened slowly, one by one, until all that was revealed was the band I wore around my chest for support. Fingers plucked at the pin I kept there, and I squirmed as the band fell open to reveal my breasts. They felt full, and my nipples pebbled in the cool air. “Bosa,” I whispered.

“Kotche,” his voice sounded strained, and I could feel the pulsing heat of his cock at my lower back.

Invisible fingers plucked at my nipples, distending them until I ached. I pressed my head back into his chest and moaned softly as he cupped them and flicked a claw at the sensitive flesh.

Next were my pants, which he shoved down to my knees, and I kicked off the rest of the way on my own. Naked, I looked behind me but again saw nothing but the faint shimmery outline of Bosa’s body. Feeling vulnerable, I asked, “It’s still you, right?”

His hands, which had been caressing my stomach, paused. “It’s me, kotche,” his rasp was firm. “Only me.” His hand dipped quickly to palm my pussy in that possessive way that made me slick. “This is mine.” A thumb tapped my clit and I jerked. Fingers spread me wide, and I moaned loudly as a thick finger slipped inside. “Only mine.”

His finger pumped in an out of me, and I moved my hips in time to his movements, seeking pressure on my clit. He finally fulfilled my wish when what felt like the heel of his palm pressed there. His other hand cupped one of my breasts. “Listen carefully, kotche,” he growled, adding another finger inside of me. “I’m a selfish yerk, but I’m claiming you, just as you claimed me from the moment I saw you light those Gattrix on fire. In this galaxy and the next, we belong together.”

Those thick fingers were driving me out of my mind, rubbing against my inner walls with a delicious drag that made me dizzy. “Wh-what does kotche mean?”

My body shifted forward, and I let him manipulate me onto my hands and knees. Those thick fingers never stopped teasing me. I glanced behind him, eager to see him, but frustrated at the empty room.

“Kotche means my only,” he answered just as he withdrew his fingers from my body.

I reared back, seeking the fullness again. I felt his cock against me, the shaft pulsing and throbbing while the cap on his cock slowly rotated against my clit. “Oh God,” I murmured, nearly delirious with the need to come. “Please.”

Fingers gripped my hip, and claws dug into my skin. “Don’t move,” his strained voice echoed in the room.

“I can’t—” I was nearly crying. “Please, Bosa.”

I heard a few thuds, and his hands left my hips. Frantically, I looked over my shoulder. “What—?”

A tongue dragged up the center of my pussy, and I pitched forward, falling onto my elbows, nearly smashing my face into the floor as I cried out. “Yes,” I hissed as he buried his face into my wetness and sucked like a damn vacuum. I wasn’t even sure where his tongue was as I could feel him everywhere—my clit, my entrance, and even my back hole. He laved me with his tongue until I was a babbling mess, and only then did he concentrate on my clit, suctioning that bud until I screamed so hard that my throat ached as I came like a thunderbolt.

I panted into my arms, as he worked me through it, and when I whimpered and drew away, his hands returned to my hip. His cock cap spun near my sensitive clit, and I let out a small sob of pleasure-pain.

“Will you let me spend inside of you, kotche?” He sounded like he spoke through a locked jaw. I fell onto my side and rolled onto my back in what was probably the least sexy move I’d ever made, but that was what happens when an alien with a wicked tongue turned your muscles to goo.

“Let me see you now,” I said to the barely visible outline of his body.

Clicks sounded immediately, and Bosa appeared above me on his knees, naked as me, with his cock in his hand. The markings were a blinding white against the dark bronze of his shaft, and his cock cap looking angry and engorged as it spun and undulated.

His hair fell around his shoulders in a silver sheet, and his eyes… they glowed so fiercely that I felt like I was looking into the sun.

“Do I call you kotche or is there another word?” I asked.

He hadn’t expected that question. Shock parted his lips before he answered me. “Same word.”

“Then yes,” I reached for him.

His nostrils flared. “Yes?”

I nodded. “Take me, kotche.”

His eyes flashed like a solar flare before he slapped his hands on either side of my head. His tongue dove into my mouth, and cinnamon whisky flooded my tastebuds. I drank him deeply, eagerly, drunkenly claiming this alien just as he claimed me.