The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Thirty-One
I was still enjoying a post-coital buzz after a trip to the cleansing closet, humming softly to myself as I checked on Subject 34, who rested in my cabin, on the floor beside my bed instead of in it. I’d urged him to get as comfortable as he could, and apparently, he found the floor more comfortable than the admittedly cramped bed.
He’d awakened as soon as I approached the cabin, so he was already alert when I popped my head in, but I waved for him to remain on the floor, not wanting to disturb his rest any further. He expressed a desire to accompany me as I further explored the shuttle, but I asked him to remain to “guard” my cabin. It was the only way to convince him to return to sleep.
Even though my mates seemed to want to please me and cater to me, I felt guilty accepting all their efforts. Especially when I worried that they were depriving themselves of something necessary. Like sleep or food.
I probably shouldn’t have made love with Nirgal so soon after he left the healing tank. He had been drained even before I went into the sleeping bay. He’d also been determined to remain on his feet as long as I stood in it after our time together. By the time I convinced him to get back into the pod and rest up, he sagged with exhaustion.
Now, he was comfortably asleep, getting the rest he needed, and Subject 34 was also getting rest. I was a little tired myself, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My mind raced with thoughts and concerns over what our future held. I worried about the three alien males I’d come to love and feared what would happen to them if my decision was the wrong one. I also worried that they would wear themselves out trying to please me when all I wanted was for them to be happy in their life with me. I also wanted to please them, and hoped they’d let me. I liked to spoil my man with attention, and even though having three of them was a bit overwhelming, I still possessed the same urge to show them I loved them with my every action and word.
Even after my time with Nirgal, this whole arrangement still felt a little surreal to me. I couldn’t believe that I had three sexy males who called me their queen and treated me accordingly. I wondered what Michael would think about that, a smirk tilting my lips at the thought of his shocked expression if he saw the four of us and knew that he couldn’t even come close to comparing to any of my new loves.
Let him have his youthful home wrecker. She seemed like a consolation prize in retrospect, because I won the damned romance lottery, and I wouldn’t have even bought the ticket if Michael hadn’t dumped me for another woman. I couldn’t believe I had those purple-eyed weirdos who’d abducted me to thank for me being in the right place at the right time to meet the three loves of my life.
I was happy in my thoughts as I made my way to the cockpit of the shuttle to check on Ilyan, who had a fold-out bunk there. When I entered and the sliding door closed behind me, shutting me into the small space, my greeting died on my lips in confusion as I didn’t see him sitting in his chair or on the bunk that was currently tucked away in the wall.
I shrugged my shoulders and turned around to leave, only to yelp in surprise when I saw that he stood right behind me.
He caught me by my arms, his grip hard, and one look at his eyes told me that Evil Ilyan was back as he pushed me further away from the door and into the room.
“Where’s Ilyan?” I asked, my voice quivering as a healthy dose of fear shot through my bloodstream.
Evil Ilyan still confused me. I’d gotten so comfortable with my mates that I’d almost forgotten about this one little detail.
“He didn’t like the thought of you and Nirgal together,” Evil Ilyan said with a mocking smile. “The coward retreated to the back of his mind rather than confront Nirgal and dispatch him the way he should have earlier.”
I tried to jerk my arms out of his grasp, but his grip only tightened. “Ah, ah,” he said in a menacing tone as I opened my mouth to protest his rough handling, “don’t call out for your test subject.” He jerked his chin towards the control panel, where a light was flashing. “I’ll blow this shuttle to pieces before he can get through that locked door.”
My eyes widened in horror as I stared at him, my mouth still gaping open. I hadn’t even considered screaming for Subject 34 yet, not willing to admit that I was really in danger with Evil Ilyan. Despite my nickname for him, I had foolishly doubted that he was truly evil.
Until now.
“You would die too,” I said in a harsh whisper, too afraid to speak much louder lest he decide I was trying to get Subject 34’s attention.
He shrugged one shoulder, his hard gaze still fixed on my face. “I should never have existed, and wouldn’t have if Ilyan had the courage to blow his own brains out. I don’t care if I live or die, but when I go, I will take as many of my enemies out with me as possible.”
“We’re not your enemies!” I lifted a hand to grasp his forearm, wincing as his grip tightened to a bruising degree. “I love Ilyan, and because you are a part of him, I….”
The smirk on his lips made me trail off before acknowledging any feelings for him, because I honestly didn’t really know who “he” was. I knew Ilyan from my captivity, and his patience in trying to communicate with me. Sometimes, Evil Ilyan had been there instead, but he’d been far less patient, and far less interested in communicating with me.
He released one of my arms and caught the collar of the clean jumpsuit I’d put on after my trip to the cleansing closet. With a hard jerk, he unhooked it and pulled the top half of my suit open. I gasped as my breasts spilled through the wide gap in the front of the suit.
He crowded me backwards towards the control console, his hands lifting to the shoulders of my suit to yank it off my upper body. Before my shock retreated enough to return my voice to me, his head lowered, and his lips closed around my nipple.
His hands were rough on me as he tugged open the rest of my jumpsuit until it gaped to the juncture of my thighs. His mouth pulled hard on my sensitive nipple, his teeth nipping just enough to make me nervous. One hand cupped and massaged my breast as he tormented my nipple, shooting sparks of pleasure to my core. His other hand continued to drag the ill-fitted jumpsuit off my curvy hips and over my buttocks, leaving all but my legs bare.
“I like the sight of you naked and helpless,” he said after releasing my tender nipple. “It was difficult to conceal how much it turned me on when we were in our cages.”
He lifted his head, his eyes still hard and glittering like emeralds. “Unlike Ilyan, I won’t lose myself to engorgement. I don’t need you, Ronda.” He grinned and even without sharp teeth, his smile looked menacing. “But I will have you.”
Then his lips crashed down on mine, rough and punishing. His kiss seemed angry, his body tense and aggressive. Yet I still melted beneath the force of it as his hands stroked my naked flesh, running all over my body, while avoiding those places that ached the most for him to touch me.
He chuckled against my lips as my hips bucked when his palm stroked over my belly, his fingers barely teasing over my mound. “Not yet, human. You will wait until I allow you to feel pleasure. Just as I have patiently waited to take you.”
I murmured a wordless protest against his lips that he cut off with his tongue delving into my mouth hungrily. I wasn’t trying to make him stop. I wanted him to go faster because his roughness excited me. Had I the presence of mind to feel ashamed about how much it did, I probably would have. At the moment, I didn’t care. I was in the arms of a madman, and I wanted him to take me, just like he planned to.
My body trembled beneath his touch, both aroused and nervous at his unpredictable nature. He pulled open his own jumpsuit, jerking it off his shoulders with one hand as the other continued to trail over my skin, moving closer and closer to the most sensitive parts of it without actually touching them.
His wings flared behind him after he pulled the jumpsuit off his shoulders and back. He left it hanging off his hips, his two appendages uncoiling from his spine. He then pushed me back until my butt bumped against the cold surface of the console. He continued to crowd me with his tall body until I was leaning on the surface of it.
“Spread your legs,” he demanded, his hands moving to my inner thighs, one of them brushing teasingly over my folds.
My knees parted of their own volition, my legs shaking. He grabbed the fabric of the jumpsuit and pulled it off my thighs, over my calves, and then off my body entirely. He tossed it aside and returned his full attention to the juncture of my thighs.
“Spread them further.” His tone brooked no argument, his hard gaze fixed on my seam.
My heart thudded in my chest as I braced myself against the console. My skin prickled with goosebumps and my muscles shivered with nerves and arousal. Still, I spread my legs wide, obeying him wordlessly. It wasn’t just fear that he would follow through on his threat to all of us that had stolen my voice. I was turned on like crazy.
Right until the moment one of his appendages undulated towards my entrance.
I shied away from it, my knees instinctively trying to close as it stabbed unerringly towards my slick opening, but he caught my thighs, his fingers digging into my flesh as he held them still. He stared down at my slit rather than looking into my eyes, but his expression was intent and unforgiving as stone.
“Ilyan cannot bring himself to hurt you,” he said coldly. “But I don’t suffer that restriction. I may be a weaker fracture than one born of torment rather than only of deprivation, but I still don’t need your approval or agreement for anything I do to you.”
“Don’t hurt me,” I whispered, my throat going dry.
My words caused him to look up, his gaze pinning mine, a chilly grin on his lips. I gasped when his appendage impaled me, the clawed tip slipping inside me.
He pushed it further into me, my inner muscles stretching around the length of it as it began to vibrate. Despite the threat of that sharp point delving deep, the segmented girth of it felt good as it stretched me. He buried it so deep inside me that I felt the point of it poke my womb.
The vibration of it nearly brought me to climax all on its own, but then he used his fingers to rub my clit until I shuddered with a cry of orgasm.
As my inner muscles convulsed around him with my pleasure, the barbs that had laid flat on the last segment of his appendage extended. Without warning, he pulled his appendage free, rapidly dragging their sharp points along all my sensitive inner flesh.
His hand over my mouth muffled my scream as I clawed at his forearm with one hand. Despite the shock and pain, intense pleasure from my orgasm still fired through my brain and nervous system. The combination of sensations left me shaken, unsure whether I enjoyed it or feared it happening again.
My fear was well justified because he impaled my tender entrance with his other appendage, again vibrating as it delved deep, his fingers working over my throbbing clit as it sank inside me to bump my womb.
I tried to brace myself, knowing it would be pointless to protest. He’d already told me as much. Yet I shattered in a second orgasm right after the first, and he used that opportunity to once again scrape his barbs out of me.
My eyes watered with the confusing combination of pain and pleasure as he knelt between my thighs. His hands stroked my inner thighs, his fingers sliding over the throbbing, tender flesh of my seam.
“No other male’s seed will be in you when I fill you.” He slipped two fingers inside me, rubbing them along my tormented inner passage.
Despite the pain he’d caused me, he still had me moaning and writhing my hips as he fingered me, and when his lips closed around my clit I cried out with pleasure, clutching the edge of the console with both hands in a white-knuckled grip.
He brought me to another orgasm swiftly. My ravaged passage convulsed around his fingers as he thrust them into me.
After the last convulsions ended, he withdrew his fingers and rose to his feet. He freed his erection from his jumpsuit, pulling the fabric down beneath the jutting length of it. My aching inner muscles clenched in anticipation as he looked down at me, stroking one hand over his shaft.
“I intend to use you for my pleasure whenever Ilyan retreats, human. If you don’t please him, you’ll have no choice but to contend with me instead.” He leaned over me, bracing his free hand on the console as he used the other to position the head of his shaft at my entrance. “I know you’re thinking Subject 34 or Nirgal can stop me if you run crying to them.” He grinned as he rammed his length into me in one hard thrust that stole my breath.
My inner muscles tightened around the invasion as he lowered his body over mine, his mouth moving close to my ear. “I will always find a way to outsmart them so that you end up at my mercy, Rhonda. The only way they can help you is if they kill Ilyan.” He pumped his hips, dragging his length out of me, then driving it deep again.
He lifted his head and met my eyes, his own as hard and merciless as ever. “I know you won’t allow them to do that, will you? You love him too much.” He laughed wickedly as he began to pound into me, his gaze shifting from my face to my bouncing breasts. “You’re as weak as he is.”
Those words were too true for me to deny, not that I felt like I had the voice to do so, my breaths coming in hard gasps as he screwed me mercilessly. I had to remained braced on the console so I couldn’t even clutch him to steady myself, my body rocking wildly as his rhythm picked up. His lips captured one aching nipple and the tug of them on it was as hard and punishing as his thrusts.
His two appendages that had ravaged my insides darted to my hips, the clawed tips impaling my flesh to hold my lower body steady as he reached his own climax, burying his length so deep inside me that I felt his seed gush against my womb.
Then he bit my breast as his shaft jerked inside me, his fingers finding my clit to rub it. It took just a few strokes of it for me to come, milking the last bit of his seed from his shaft, my entire body aching from both pain and pleasure in a way I’d never felt before. Even the blood trickling from his claw tips still embedded in my soft flesh didn’t detract from the intensity of my climax and how much it shook me to the core.
I was most shaken by the fact that I’d liked what he did to me.
Evil Ilyan withdrew from my aching passage and tucked his shaft back inside his jumpsuit without a word, nor even a glance at my face. A satisfied smirk tilted his lips as some of his seed leaked from my swollen slit.
Then he pulled his jumpsuit back over his wings and onto his shoulders, turning his back to me to return to the blinking light on the console. As his fingers moved over the panel, he finally glanced in my direction, his eyes gleaming as a mocking grin showed his teeth.
“This is a simple notification light, not a self-destruct warning.” He chuckled at my surprised expression. “You are too naïve to survive on the CivilRim.” He straightened, running his fingers over the panel so the light disappeared. “So, I sent a message to the Akrellians instead. They have responded back, and I’ve passed on our coordinates.”
I gasped, shooting up into a standing position, wincing as my sudden change in position reminded me of how tender I was inside. “What? We agreed that we would all be safest on the CivilRim!”
His expression hardened, the mocking smile disappearing into a tight line of his lips. “I agreed to nothing. I won’t allow Ilyan’s cowardice to drive us to the Rim. I have no desire to go there.” He narrowed his eyes on me. “Nor should you.”
“The Akrellians might kill you! And Nirgal!” I stepped closer to him to grab his bicep, but he shrugged off my grip as if it was nothing.
Despite being underweight still, he remained much stronger than me. I wasn’t sure if it was a male thing, or an alien thing that made him so. I didn’t suppose it mattered. He had the upper hand physically, but even if I could wrestle him away from the console, he knew how to control the shuttle so I wouldn’t have any idea how to change our course to get away from the Akrellians.
“They might even hurt Subject 34! Or lock him up in some new research facility. We don’t know what they’ll do!”
He turned to face me, raking my body with an assessing glance, which reminded me I stood naked before him, his seed slipping down my inner thighs now. His eyes grew hooded, and his expression took on a more predatory look as he caught me by the waist, tugging me closer.
I foolishly thought he would kiss me when he lowered his head, but he moved his lips closer to my ear, his silky hair brushing over my naked skin. “Are you really afraid the Akrellians will kill Ilyan? Or are you more afraid that he will find Claire again?”
I sucked in a breath to protest, lifting my hands to shove on his chest. This time, I was able to muster enough strength to break his hold on me, and I backed away from him, my chest heaving with my anger.
I pointed an accusing finger at him. “How dare you suggest I wouldn’t take the best option for all of us out of jealousy?” I poked my own chest. “I know the CivilRim is dangerous for me, but the four of us would have a chance there and at least we won’t be at anyone’s mercy when we get there! The Akrellians will take us into custody as soon as they reach us and will likely separate us. Who knows if they’ll ever let us be together again? And they could still see Ilyan as their enemy and kill him outright without even letting him plead his case!”
He regarded me without a change in his expression, his lips still tight and his eyes cast in the shadow of his lowered brow.
“If they kill Ilyan,” I stared at him with tears filling my eyes, “then you will die too! Are you really that unconcerned with your own survival?”
“Yes.” He turned back towards the console, his wings flicking in what I took to be a sign of annoyance.
I stared at him in shock, noting the hard lines and angles of his face and how different he looked when this part of him took over. “Do you really hate Ilyan so much?”
He glanced at me, and once again his gaze trailed down my body. Fortunately, I’d grown so accustomed to being naked in front of him that I didn’t feel self-conscious. Well, I felt a little self-conscious with the remnants of his seed spilling out of me still and my own blood staining my thighs from where his claws had impaled me.
“We should not exist in this condition,” he said with a scowl.
“If you really hate him that much, why haven’t you already tried to kill him?”
Not that I wanted to give him any suggestions, but I needed to understand how Evil Ilyan’s mind worked, because he was a part of my beloved mate. That meant I had to live with him occasionally showing up and ravaging our lives—and my body—at his will. I needed to know what that will was and how I could keep it from destroying my loved ones.
His upper lip curled in disgust as he looked down at the console. “Because I suffer from Ilyan’s cowardice, apparently. I’m unable to take my own life, just as he could not bring himself to take his when he should have.”
I sagged in relief, closing my eyes as I released the breath I’d been holding while waiting for his answer. He was still in bad shape, but he wasn’t an immediate threat to himself, nor to my Ilyan.
“Maybe you both realize that remaining alive to face the challenges life throws at you is actually the most courageous thing you could do.”
I wanted to go to him and hug him, despite the tension that made his body as hard and unyielding as a steel girder. Somewhere inside him, my Ilyan still existed, and I wanted to draw him out, but first I needed to reason with his fracture.
“You have no idea what we’ve been through, human,” he said in a harsh tone, still staring down at the console. “No idea what we’ve done.”
“I know you’ve done some bad things.” This time I did go to him and put a hand on his arm, but he didn’t look up at me. “But you’ve been given a second chance. You can live a better life now and maybe redeem yourself for your past actions.”
His bark of laughter was harsh with bitterness as he shot a glare at me. “When I say what we’ve done, I mean it, Rhonda. You think I’m the evil one, but there is no good Ilyan.”
I shook my head, stroking my hand down his arm until I reached his hand. To my relief, he didn’t pull away when I linked our fingers. “I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. I believe in redemption, and I think both of you can find it.”
He didn’t resist when I wrapped my free arm around his waist. Instead, he pulled me against his body again, but this time more gently. “Like I said, Rhonda,” he murmured, his hand lifting to my nape to cradle it. “You are naïve.”
I felt the tightening of his fingers on my neck, over my carotid, and my brain didn’t register the meaning behind his actions before blackness overtook my consciousness.
