The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley

Six

“Now, human,” Nirgal said in a business-like tone, “tell me when you first detected Subject 34’s presence. Was it the sound of him—or his scent—that let you know he was there?”

“Why should I answer any of your damned questions?” I ground out between teeth that wanted to chatter with my terror.

His eyes flicked up from the tablet, and the hardness of them made me shudder. “I think it would be in your best interests to cooperate.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway!” My voice shook and I hated myself for revealing my fear, but I figured he was already well aware of it.

“That isn’t necessarily true. We held off on using you in our experiments because of your advanced age and general genetic unsuitability. We had much better subjects, but they all… perished when introduced to our hybrids.” The corners of his eyes crinkled again, and I had no doubt he was amused by the death of all those others. “You, on the other hand, have managed to delay your demise, and we want to figure out why. If you cooperate with us, perhaps you will earn a stay of execution.”

“So… the others that were taken with me—Amy and the other woman—they’re… they’re dead?”

Now I felt like a total asshole for thinking Amy was a petty little witch. The poor woman! Both of them. I teared up again, blinking away tears that tickled as they slid down my face.

Nirgal waved a careless hand. “As if I paid attention to whatever names these creatures used to refer to themselves. I have no idea which ones you might have known.” He studied my face for a long moment before adding, “if it makes you feel any better, Kiari had dropped off some of her slaves prior to our troops apprehending her. Those females might still be alive out there, though I doubt they are enjoying that life much.”

“You’re a real monster, aren’t you?” I whispered, my throat bone dry.

“If you please,” Nirgal said in a neutral tone, “let us continue with the questioning. How did you first detect Subject 34?”

I didn’t answer for a long moment, glaring at him, wishing I had the power to kill him with my mind. Someday, if I ever escaped this nightmare, I would paint the bastard and add the horns that he should already have. Then I would burn the fucking painting.

He sighed with clear impatience and tapped something on the table out of my sight.

My muscles seized up in agony beneath the punishing pressure of the blanket as I was shocked by the table. It hurt so bad I couldn’t suck in enough air to scream. The pain seemed to go on and on, every muscle in my body tensed and twitching from the current running through it.

Then it was over, and I sagged back against the table, struggling to breathe, my chest bruised from the blanket’s pressure. Tears dripped down the sides of my face, soaking my hair as I openly wept. All my bravado had disappeared. I couldn’t “whistle in the dark” anymore and pretend everything was okay. I was so screwed and there was no humor to be found in my situation.

Hopelessness filled me as I mustered the breath to answer the question. “I smelled him first,” I croaked out through an aching throat.

“Did the scent of him arouse you?” Nirgal asked in a very clinical way.

Still, the question caught me off guard and made me sick at the same time. I didn’t think he was a pervert, given the tone he used, but at this point, I almost wished he was. I might have been able to seduce him in that case. I was certain he was a sadist, so I wasted no time in providing the answer.

“N-no. Not… at that time.” When he raised his brows as if still expecting more from my response, I struggled to fill in details. “I only noted that it was different from anything I’d ever smelled before, and it unnerved me. I was… scared.”

“Curious.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you certain you felt no arousal whatsoever? Perhaps a hint of it beneath the fear?”

“I’m pretty damned sure I’d remember!” I cried out, then flinched as his gaze hardened and shifted down to the table. “I mean, I don’t remember feeling any uh, arousal, until he stung me the first time.”

“Hm.” He seemed genuinely taken aback. “I wonder why he did not emit a mating pheromone to attract you immediately.”

Since I was certain he was only speaking to himself, I didn’t respond to that. Fortunately, I must have been right because he didn’t proceed to shock me again at my lack of response.

“So, you didn’t experience any heightened emotions other than fear until he stung you—and then…?”

I struggled to recall every detail of the encounter, because I had a feeling Nirgal would demand them. “Then, I felt an intense need. So intense that I crawled towards him, even though he’s terrifying.”

“And your arousal… did it cause you to produce lubricant at that time?”

“Lubricant?” It occurred to me what he was asking, but my fear was too great now to blush in embarrassment. “I was wet, yes. Wet enough to uh, lubricate things.”

“But prior to him stinging you, you were not ‘wet’?” Again, his tone was clinical and held no hint that he was turned on by this horrible line of questioning.

“I wasn’t, no.” I frowned, curious despite my fear. “Why is that so important, anyway?”

He tapped away on his tablet, not even looking up at me as he answered. “Arousal releases detectible scent signals that can alter the behavior of an imprinted male, particularly when the female is lubricated with it.” He finally glanced at me. “However, it appears that you were not releasing any remarkable signals until he stung you. Yet, instead of venom, he injected you with a powerful aphrodisiac. One we have never seen him produce before.”

“So, what does that mean?” I licked my lips because they were so dry they cracked when I tried to speak. “He was supposed to kill me, but he screwed me instead?”

“Precisely,” Nirgal responded coolly, returning his attention to his tablet. “Even more interesting is how his prescience seemed to increase during this trial, with him foreseeing not only immediately incoming obstacles but also, apparently, your ultimate path, in time to intercept you while working around our efforts.”

The fingers of one of his hands drummed on the edge of the table, making me very nervous.

“I wonder… I have always doubted the efficacy of the ‘cure’ we used on Subject 34, though it appeared to work on one of our other subjects. However, if it did work, that means he made the decision to mate you rather than consume you of his own will—which does not seem likely, given his nature.”

“Maybe he just thought I was hot.” I wasn’t able to muster a joking tone, so the comment came out in a monotone that he must have taken seriously.

“Your temperature would not have been an attractant. There have been plenty of other targets that were just as warm, if not warmer, than you in the past.”

I didn’t bother to correct his misunderstanding. I was certain he would only use it to insult me if he understood what I’d actually been saying.

“If he is not imprinted, it is possible that he was just curious,” Nirgal muttered. “Toying with his food perhaps, since he is so well fed he doesn’t require constant consumption. In that case, his curiosity could make him even more dangerous than if he were imprinted.”

Again, I figured he was talking more to himself than me, so I didn’t make an effort to answer. I was having trouble breathing. Not from the relentless pressure of the blanket, but from my anxiety over what he would do to me next.

“I’ve observed the video feed of his mating with you, but it was difficult to interpret some of the actions both of you took.” He tapped the tablet with the fingers holding it, not in a way that implied he was using it, but rather like a habit he had while thinking.

“Maybe because you’ve never had good sex before,” I muttered.

He cocked his head as if he were able to pick up on my words, which scared the shit out of me. Or would have, if I had any left inside me. Then his eyes narrowed, and I realized he’d definitely picked up my words. I wondered if his translator was more advanced than mine, then realized that I was an idiot to even think it wasn’t.

“I have not, but I am aware of the activities that take place during a mating. Still, it is useful to gain the perspective of the actual participants. Subject 34 is not communicative, despite the control chip we’ve installed in him, so we lack his perspective. You, on the other hand, do not seem capable of remaining silent.”

I heard the warning in that tone, letting me know I should keep the insults in my head. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that the bastard was still a virgin though.

“I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking for,” I said, flinching as his hand lowered to the table again.

He returned his hand to the tablet’s surface and swiped as if passing through several screens before turning it towards me to show an image of myself with lips pressed against the hard, chitinous mandibles of Subject 34.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“It’s called kissing,” I said, a hint of sarcasm creeping into my shaking voice. “I’m not sure if your species knows what it is but it—”

He waved an impatient hand to cut me off. “We know what ‘kissing’ is, human. But Subject 34’s mouth is not exposed at this point. What is the purpose of pressing your own to his mandibles? Were you aware that he has sensory receptors in them? Is that why you tried to increase his intake of your pheromone by doing this?”

My mouth gaped for a long moment as he glared down at me, still showing me that damning image. Wow, I looked really ecstatic in that still shot as I tried to meld my lips with Subject 34’s mandibles. Despite my fear of Nirgal, my inner muscles clenched in recollection of how good 34 had felt inside me as I’d climaxed again and again.

“Answer me, human.” Nirgal swiped a hand on the tablet, revealing another image of me kissing Subject 34 with obvious desperation.

Obvious to me, at least.

“I don’t even know what all you’re talking about with the pheromones and shit,” I cried out as the lines between his frowning brows deepened. “I just felt like kissing him because I was really aroused. Kissing is a natural reaction to arousal for me!”

His frown lightened, though his glare still pinned me, clearly suspicious. Though how he believed I could possibly know anything about Subject 34 was a mystery.

He swiped over the tablet again, revealing another image. This time, 34’s mandibles pressed against my neck as my head dropped back, a look of absolute bliss on my face that I’d never seen before. I had to admit, I looked almost… beautiful with that expression. I wasn’t even aware I could look that enraptured.

I wanted to paint that image of myself, with my graying hair spilling behind me somehow looking far fuller and more voluminous than it was, my eyes half hooded with not a crow’s foot in sight and my lips sensuously swollen and parted as I gasped with pleasure. I wish I could always see myself as that sexy. If I’d looked like that with Mike, maybe he wouldn’t have moved on with a younger woman.

If Mike had inspired that kind of passion in me, maybe I would have looked like that with him.

“What is he doing here?” he asked, as if genuinely confused.

Dude needed to get laid, seriously. Although I pitied any woman who hooked up with him.

“I think he’s nuzzling my neck,” I answered distractedly, studying the image of 34 with genuine curiosity now that I wasn’t running for my life in terror from him or needing him so bad my eyes crossed.

His head was humanoid shaped, the chitin plates formed like a helmet around it. In the close-up image of him, I could only partially see the hard ridges along his spine. The large, black eyes and the hard mandibles were a bit off-putting, but not so much that I didn’t experience residual arousal from just the remembrance of what he had felt like against me and inside me.

“Why would he do this?” Nirgal asked.

I wasn’t certain if this was a question aimed at me, or spoken to himself in confusion, but I answered just in case. I wasn’t trying to get shocked again.

“I don’t know, to be honest, but at the time, I thought it was like he was sniffing me, even though he doesn’t have a nose.”

Nirgal huffed. “He has a nose, but it is redundant given the sensitivity of his mandibles. Tilhur insisted we keep his facial features similar to our own, though I don’t see the point of it. Still, he will look better on the promotional materials because of it.”

“Promotio—” I shook my head, feeling the hard surface of the table against the back of it. “You know what, I don’t care. That’s weird, though. Not gonna lie.”

His brows drew together again in a hard frown. “It’s not pertinent to you anyway, human. Now, did Subject 34 make any sounds that might have been too low for our sensors to record?”

“He, uh, vibrated, and there were a couple of chittering sounds, I think.” Nothing had stood out about the sounds he’d made. At least not that I think would be relevant to this guy. “Honestly, I was being pretty noisy myself, so I wasn’t necessarily paying attention to whatever sounds he made.”

“That’s hardly surprising,” Nirgal said in a mocking tone.

Man, I really wanted to punch this guy!

“So, he didn’t attempt to communicate with you in any recognizable way?” he continued without seeming to realize—or care—that I glared daggers at him, my lips now mutinously pressed together.

I shook my head, but when he remained silent, his frown deepening, I quickly gave a verbal response. I was pissed at him, yeah, but I’m not an idiot, nor a glutton for punishment. “No, he didn’t try to talk to me.”

Nirgal’s hands clenched on the tablet. “How frustrating. He is quite stubborn. Why do they hate speaking?”

That last question he said in a rhetorical tone.

“Maybe they just don’t like talking to you.” I slammed my lips shut as I realized I’d said that aloud when he turned a fearsome glare on me, and his hand dropped to the table.

I tried to lift my body off the table without much success as I stuttered, trying to make up for speaking out of turn. “I think he wasn’t interested in talking! He seemed to have only one thing on his mind.”

This seemed to distract Nirgal. “And yet, he didn’t ejaculate. That is another curiosity—and a disappointment, as we have yet to successfully harvest his sperm.”

“Uh, eww.”

He turned as if he were about to go, and I didn’t dare hope I would get off the hook easily. “If it wasn’t his intent to seed you, then why go through the motions? I do not understand his behavior, but we will put you in his enclosure this time and see how he responds. Hopefully, we’ll gain a better understanding of his motives.”

“Wait!” I struggled again, grunting as I writhed unsuccessfully under the blanket, my skin stinging from being dragged along the slick underside of it. “What if he kills me this time?”

Nirgal huffed as he stalked to the door. “That is the hope. If he can kill you, then he isn’t imprinted, and we haven’t wasted years of our time on yet another failure.”