Shalia's Diary Book 6 (13 page)

When I continued to cry, devastated by all that had happened and continued to happen, the men did their best to soothe me with gentle kisses, whispered comforts, and loving caresses. When that failed, Oses went for what only a desperate Nobek who couldn’t beat someone up would think of: sex.

I was jolted from my despair by him flipping up the nightgown I’d been dressed in by the orderlies, exposing me from my swelling waist down. I gasped as he spread my legs and planted a wet kiss on my pussy.

“Are you insane?” Betra hissed at him, looking as shocked as I felt. “This is not the time for sex!”

“She’s stopped crying,” Oses pointed out. If not for the heat in his purple eyes, the look he gave me would have been quite bland. “It’s a good distraction, I think. It’s up to you, Shalia. Do you wish me to stop or continue?”

I stared at him, flabbergasted. “Oses, I’m being taken over by an alien organism!”

“Yes, I know. But right now you are still Shalia, the woman I crave. You were also getting hysterical, which does you no good. I have snapped you out of that.”

He had a point. However, my mind was far from wanting a lurid encounter. “I do not feel like fucking, Oses.”

“Not yet,” he shrugged. “Maybe I can change your mind. You are helpless under a partial stasis field. That puts you unequivocally under my power, something that usually makes you happy. I can give you a little sexual pleasure to help you feel better. If Betra will stop looking so affronted, he could help too.”

Betra shook his head at Oses. “Only a Nobek would think of fucking at a time like this.”

Oses rolled his eyes. “I said nothing about actual fucking. It’s against regulations for intercourse in Medical anyway. However, Shalia can be serviced. Maybe she can even achieve climax. Maybe not. But we can try to take her mind off her troubles, if only for a little while.”

Betra looked like he was getting angry. It was a crazy idea, all right. Plus I had another concern, which I voiced before the Imdiko could give Oses the verbal tongue lashing he was no doubt planning to unleash.

“Oses, you can’t want to touch me. Not with this – this awful
thing
on me. In me.”

The Nobek looked at me. There was love in his eyes, but not the soft dewdrop love of poetry. Not a sappy, silly love. This was hard love, the love of a man who would kill in its name. It was an uncompromising love that said nothing would keep Oses from doing what had to be done to shelter me.

“It is not you,” he said. “The invader can never take you from me. Nothing, not even death can take you from my heart. I see only you, Shalia. The It cannot change that, and it cannot have the part of you that matters most. If the only way I can show you that is through lovemaking, then that is what I will do.”

With that, he buried his face in my pussy. My instincts were to buck him off, to slug him, to pull on his hair to get him off me. Yet I was helpless to do anything but take it.

That thought was enough to switch my gears. My mouth had been opening to tell Betra to kick the Nobek’s ass when I realized there was nothing I could do physically to ward Oses off. Damn the man, he’d been right when he said that was one of my triggers. My pussy gave an insistent throb of need.

Even now, I’m not sure how lust could have overcome my terrors at such a moment. Maybe it was the love I’d seen in Oses’ eyes. Maybe it was simply an animal instinct to hide, at least emotionally, from what tormented me. Whatever it was, it had me gasping all of the sudden as desire lit its familiar but still wondrous fire.

I moaned, my vision turning hazy as I looked at the dark head moving between my legs. Lips, tongue, and teeth worked my sweetest flesh. Oses’ breath was warm on me, its heat seeming to seep into my core.

I guess my reaction to those most intimate kisses convinced Betra that Oses was on the right track. The Imdiko’s mouth found mine, and his hands curled over my breasts. While Oses concentrated his delicious attack on parts south, Betra handled everything from the waist up.

Mouths and hands played over my body, taking me away from the horror for too brief a time. It was the best they could do however, and I sank into the pleasuring with gratitude.

With one hand moving over my belly, as if he sought to comfort the child in me, Betra’s other hand and mouth teased and tormented my breasts. One moment he nipped and pinched. The next he kissed and caressed. Then he sucked and squeezed. The sensations went from twinges of pain to soft pleasure to stabs of excitement. One bled into the other until it was a continuous pulse of bliss that suffused all of me.

Meanwhile, Oses plied me with fingers and mouth. His fingers worked in and out slowly, putting pressure on all the best, most sensitive parts. His lips surrounded my clit, sucking it into his mouth, trapping it carefully between his teeth, and lashing it with his tongue.

I lay beneath the two men, unable to move. Rapture swelled within me as they took advantage of my inability to even twitch, devouring my frozen body until billowing delight shattered me. When those first surges of ecstasy quieted, they resumed with more intensity than before. They made me climax twice more before they deemed their work done.

I floated in a hazy aftermath, my body sated and my mind quiet for the moment. I felt strangely secure as Oses and Betra straightened my nightgown and bed sheets, making me presentable once more.

Some semblance of sanity asserted itself. It told me my lovers would protect me as best they could. If the day came when they no longer could keep me safe, then they would guarantee my child’s well-being. With my earlier hysteria bled out, I could think again. Thanks to Oses and Betra, I once more knew exactly where everything that mattered most to me stood. The universe was still a catastrophic fuck-all, but at least now I had stable bits to keep me sane.

May 21

Today could have been better.

Tep wanted to do some of his tests with me conscious. That was fine and dandy for the blood tests, urine analysis, that kind of thing. For taking skin samples ... mine and the Its ... local anesthesia was employed. It didn’t go so well.

I was never in pain. However, the It does not want to be tested, not when it is aware of what is going on. It had a few surprises in store for us all.

I first felt it stir as a separate entity when Tep programmed the medibed computer to take blood. When activated, the medibed sends one or two ‘arms’ to move from beneath the bed to cover the patient. These arms are panels that contain computers, injectors to deliver medicine, scanners, and extractors ... like for taking the samples Tep wanted. I had two of these panels over me for the tests. One arched over my chest, and the other covered my abdomen.

“I might keep these panels in place to track where those alien feeder veins are going,” Tep told me. “That way, scanners will pick up if they start moving in the direction of the baby.”

“Sounds great,” I said absently. I was interested in what he had to say, particularly when it comes to my daughter. However, I had detected some concern and a twinge of anger from the It.

Oses and Betra were there. So was a squad of four security Nobeks, headed by Oses’ second Ebnad. They were present just as a precaution. I was still in partial stasis, my body frozen from the neck down. How much trouble could I cause?

I didn’t want to find out there was a scary answer to that, so I duly reported, “I can feel it’s aware of what’s happening. The It is not happy.”

Dr. Feru, the psychologist who was helping Oses and me get past our PTSD of being kidnapped and held prisoner, was also in attendance. He moved closer, his kind face concerned. “Is it separate from your thoughts, or do you feel them as your own like before?”

“Separate. It can damned well stay that way too.”

Feru grinned at my bravado. I wasn’t being bad-ass to impress anyone, though. I had to be strong to protect us all, my baby the most.

“Blood sampling complete,” the bed’s computer reported in Kalquorian. I frowned. I didn’t think I had gotten so far in my language lessons. The It still felt separate. Was I retaining some of the things it had learned when it infiltrated the ship’s systems?

“Send samples to lab,” Tep told the computer. “Tag it as first priority.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Set for local anesthesia. Left arm and lower abdomen.”

“Scan indicates alien exoskeleton on subject’s left arm, requiring piercing of bone. Continue with procedure?”

“Confirmed.”

“Carve the damned thing off if you want to,” I muttered.

Tep arched a brow at me. “I’d prefer to recover you in one piece.”

I felt a couple of tiny pinpricks on either side of my belly. I felt nothing from my arm, but there was a jolt from the It. Its need to fight was on the rise.

“Somebody’s getting cranky,” I warned. “It wants to resist.”

Feru cupped the top of my head with his palm. “Let me know if the sensations you receive from the parasite start feeling more like your own thoughts.”

He hoped to talk to the It if it gained control over me. From the nightmares and the little bit of thought I’d experience from my unwelcome guest, I doubted he would find his efforts useful. The It didn’t want to be reasoned with. It had a goal, and the goal was to destroy. That’s what it had been made to do. I thought the only real question that needed answering was who had made it? And did its creator know how to reverse its effects on me and Candy?

My stomach went numb. Tep ordered the panels to collect samples of the exoskeleton, the feeder veins, skin, and placenta. That’s when the It went full-blown crazy.

Rage filled my skull. It was enough that I couldn’t transform this body as quickly as I was programmed to do. It was unthinkable they had captured the other one like me and sent it to sleep for the moment. But for them to think I would allow them to test me in an effort to find a weakness? No. I could not be stopped. I would not be stopped, not by these weakling creatures.

Then I was back to Shalia, tearing myself free of the It to shout a warning. “I’m losing myself to it!”

Now I had two separate consciousnesses in my head, both fighting for supremacy. Feru was asking or telling me something, but I couldn’t pay any attention to him. I had to keep this thing from taking me over, from erasing me from existence. I was terrified that would be what happened if I gave an inch to the It.

From then on, it was the two of us shouting from the same mouth. One moment I was saying stuff like, “It thinks it can get free. Watch out!” Then the It vented its rage with, “Lower creatures will be eliminated. Purity will be maintained! Order will prevail!”

I could feel the It trying to assert itself on my brain. It didn’t hurt, but I could almost sense a clawing, a grasping, a bid to get a real foothold over my psyche.

“No! I will not let you! My name is Shalia Elizabeth Monroe. My name is Shalia Elizabeth Monroe. My name is—”

I interrupted myself with the It’s big play, one none of us saw coming. In perfect Kalquorian, words shot from my lips like machine gun bullets. “Emergency override of all Medical systems. Dr. Imdiko Tep authorization one-five-zero-four—”

Over me, Tep’s eyes widened in horror the instant I started speaking. As I yelled his authorization code he shouted, “Voice recognition! Cancel emergency override! Erase Tep authorization from the system, security protocol!”

Ebnad roared, “Acting Weapons Commander Ebnad confirmation of head medic’s removal, authorization beta-seven-three-three!”

“-seven-two-delta!” I finished screaming.

There was a moment of absolute silence. Then the computer said in its usual flat, emotionless tone, “Head Medic Tep’s authorization erased from system. Dr. Zaw currently with sole full Medical systems authorization.”

Before the It could start rattling off more codes, I yelled, “It’s got all the authorization passes for this department. You have to take them all out.”