Wrax Read online

  She gasps, lustily, as she impales herself on me right to the hilt. I reach behind her and yank and tear at her bra clasp until her breasts are revealed to me again, her pale nipples pointed and her skin so impossibly smooth. I kiss her nipples and the skin of her breasts as she lifts off of me again, teasing, slow.

  I can’t have it like this. I’m being driven to the brink of madness and back by a golden-haired siren.

  With a noise like a snarl, I grip her hips and begin to control her movements for her, giving all control of the act to me and me alone. The way I like it. She goes almost limp at my touch, as if she loves the idea of surrendering to my filthy whims. I drive her up and down on my thick cock, her clit grinding against my purple skin with every beat, until soon she is just about screaming with the pleasure. My name is on her lips, my cock the reason for the red heat in her cheeks.

  Luckily she comes just before I do, clamping down against my pulsing cock with a cry just as I release my seed deep inside her, filling her up fully — exactly as I promised myself I wouldn’t.

  But it felt so right. It’s impossible to see, from here, how it could have been wrong.

  She collapses on top of me, and we lay there. I feel the gentle pressure of her hot, spent body as it presses against mine, my cock still inside her, and I kiss her neck. I never want to stop.

  “Ahem.”

  I look up with a frown at the cascading lights on the far wall, trying to delicately get my attention. “What,” I say, unimpressed with my AI’s sense of timing.

  “Apologies, Wrax, Cara. But I can’t help but notice that your food is well over its optimal temperatu—” A trail of smoke curls upwards from the kitchen that I can see over the top of my woman’s head, just as an alarm begins to bleep. She sits up and looks around curiously. “I did not want to interfere with your, erm, evolutionary imperative.”

  I roll my eyes and get to my feet, standing proud with my hands on my hips. My cock is spent, but the second Cara stands and looks up at me, her breasts still hard, and with her smooth skin and grabbable curves … I am rock hard again in almost an instant and I have trouble remembering why I’m on my feet and not still buried deep inside her.

  “Wrax,” she says, lightly slapping my arm. “Get your head in the game, buddy!”

  In three strides I am in the kitchen, Cara at my heels, and I manage to dispose of all the burned ingredients in under a minute. “Done,” I growl, and she squeals as I hoist her up and set her down on the kitchen counter, her hard nipple between my teeth before she can say anything.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cara

  Two more times and finally we end up in Wrax’s bed — our bed? — swaddled by his soft bedsheets and tangled in each other. He presses kiss after kiss against my skin, and I tingle with every single one. When we have caught our breath, and he has played every inch of my body like some kind of sexual virtuoso, he pulls back slightly and looks into my eyes. Once again I am struck by how his one mechanical eye makes his face look even more perfect, somehow. Having one imperfection stops him from looking too perfect. And, by doing that, somehow ends up making him look even more gorgeous.

  “Do you miss Earth?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “There are plenty of things I might miss in the future, but it hasn’t happened yet,” I reply.

  He leans in again to kiss me, and I feel warmth flood once again to my crotch, and wrap my leg around his waist.

  “It will all be over soon,” he says, his voice filled with sadness … but acceptance. I cup his cheek with my hand and force a smile, but inside I feel broken.

  Paxia has not spoken to me yet. Not at all. Not a peep.

  Maybe this is the end.

  “When is it?” I whisper.

  “We had a month,” he says, “but I couldn’t handle how difficult that would be for you, so … I had it brought forward.”

  I widen my eyes and let my hand drop from his face. “Without consulting me?” I ask. I had thought I had so much more time to come to terms with my potential position as the Catalyst! I had so much time to learn how to save him!

  “When?” I repeat, keeping my voice level. I am close to flying off the handle here, and I’m not sure I want him to know that. That after such a short period of time I already feel like I love him. He might think I’m ridiculous.

  He glances away before looking back at me. Good, at least he has the decency to feel bad about what he did. Behind my back, without even mentioning it until now.

  “Tomorrow.”

  My stomach drops like a stone.

  I leap out of his bed and snatch up a robe and tie it clumsily to myself the way it’s meant to be tied, and I leave the room, trying to get out of his eyeline before the tears start filling my eyes.

  “Cara,” he calls after me, clearly feeling terrible. Good.

  “Don’t follow me,” I snap, and the door slides shut behind me.

  To my slight surprise, he respects my wishes. I am certain that a human male would have barrelled after me and it would have ended in a fight, but Wrax stays put. I sit at the kitchen table in a soft red Firosan robe and bury my head in my hands.

  It’s typical, really. Classic me. I find the man of my dreams and he moves the date of his death up to tomorrow.

  I almost find a way to fix everything, but it doesn’t work. “Come on, Paxia,” I whisper. “I know you’re there.”

  I hear nothing.

  Tears — big fat tears, the kind I haven’t cried since I was a kid — roll down my cheeks and splash against his table, and I sniffle and will myself to think harder. I don’t want to go back to Earth. I don’t want to be without Wrax. “Please, Paxia,” I mumble. Still nothing.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Cara?” Aphrodite chirps, making me jump out of my skin.

  “I forgot you could hear me,” I hiss. “You scared me.”

  “I heard you calling for Paxia. Can I help you with anything instead?”

  I laugh darkly. “Unless you know how to activate the powers of the Catalyst, then no, I don’t think you can, Aph.”

  There is a pause where even the glittering lights that appear to be present in every modern feature of this planet — the lights that I think Aphrodite exists in — dull and I am thrown into darkness.

  “This is really a peculiar question, Cara. I am checking every part of my system, and I cannot find your answer.”

  I look up. “Aphrodite,” I say, wiping at my eyes. “You said you didn’t know if Paxia existed, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, she does. Down deep underground, I spoke to her. Where you can’t go.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  I can’t help but laugh. Paxia, with the help of the last Catalyst, created Aphrodite, after all.

  “Sorry I disturbed you,” I say with a dismissive hand wave. “Go back to, uh, whatever a disembodied voice does to relax.”

  “I cannot relax.”

  “Right. Well then, tell me how I can save Wrax’s life tomorrow.”

  “Invalid input.”

  “What?”

  “It was a joke. Isn’t that what computers are like back on Earth? I thought you might laugh. Oh well — I still have to learn about humor, I suppose. Even if I do know pretty much everything else.”

  I sigh and bury my face in my hands again. “I have to listen to my instincts, Aph, but they’re not saying anything to me. Nothing.”

  “I don’t have instincts, so I cannot weigh in,” she says. “I understand what instincts are, though, if an explanation would help.” I don’t say anything, but she carries on anyway. “Instincts are what organics tend to call their peripheral observational skills.”

  “Huh?”

  “When you notice things but your brain does not push the information to the forefront of your mind. So the sound of a twig snapping when you are alone in the woods will bring the ‘tingle’ of fear to your body but your brain has not yet processed why. Is that helpful?”
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  “No,” I huff. “I don’t have any feelings like that. No fear, no ideas. Nothing.”

  “Perhaps you do, but since it is peripheral you aren’t giving it its full attention, Cara,” she says smoothly. “Listen. If the Catalyst truly is a real thing, I will tell you that I am glad it’s you.”

  I sit up with interest.

  “You are one of the most interesting organisms I have interacted with in a long time.”

  I can’t help but smile. I don’t think she is capable of lying, or pointless flattery. “Now why would you say that?”

  “Because it is the truth, and because on the off chance that the Catalyst is truly a real thing, and you are able to fill that position, the rebuilding of this society is something that would bring me … joy? Anyway. Think about what I have said. If anyone on this planet can do this, it is you.” Her lights are blinking excitedly. “When you arrived on this planet, you looked at the ground, did you notice that?”

  “...what?”

  “When you arrived, you looked at the ground before each step. And now you are sure-footed, you walk easily, and you look straight ahead. You are more confident already. Being here is good for you, Cara. I am observant. I can tell you these things with certainty.”

  I stand up before I really realise I am doing it. Outside the faint but recognizable song of the territorial but loved-up tousorin drifts towards me.

  Filled with resolve, I turn on my heel and blow back into Wrax’s room like a hurricane of confidence.

  Beside the bed, Wrax has set his mechanical eye on the table, and he appears to be asleep, though it is a fitful one. I feel bad for yelling at him, but I was so angry that he could have done something like that without even consulting me.

  But, I guess, he didn’t know that I had any chance of figuring out how to help him out. I didn’t want to tell him and have it turn out that I couldn’t help him, but we should have communicated more.

  I grab his eye before I really know what I am doing, and return to the table.

  My concentration has been set on it the entire time I have known him, and he has said that he could win any battle, really, with it functional.

  And Paxia is the only being left that knows how to fix it.

  So I sit down and hold it, take a deep breath, and turn it over in my hands. I run my hands over it and find an invisible groove with my fingernail and it click open. I see wires and colorful circuitry that could not look more alien to me if it tried. My hands should be trembling as I poke around invasively inside my mate’s prosthetic — which he needs — but they are stock still. I try to force out any feelings of doubt.

  “Alright, Pax, let’s do this,” I mutter, and my fingertips dart in and out of the eye, moving things aside that I couldn’t even guess the names for, or the Earth equivalent, blinking rapidly to keep my vision clear, and then I hear something click … and I can feel an almost imperceptible whirr.

  As something inside the eye turns on.

  My eyes fly open and I very carefully shut the tiny orb and sweep back into Wrax’s bedroom and set it down on his bedside table.

  I plant a kiss on his lilac cheekbone and snuggle up beside him, and a snuffle alerts me to the fact that he is still asleep. But in his sleep he still manages to wrap his big, warm arms around me. I fall asleep with a smile on my face and my excitable heart hammering hard in my chest.

  “My lifemate,” Wrax says as he leads me to the hovercab that will be taking us to the arena. I had to reapply my eye makeup — freshly imported through the teleportation pads just for me — twice already because a single tear slipped away and smudged it. “My divine Cara.” I have to crane my neck to peer at him to see if he is making fun. He is smiling, but it is a sad smile. “We cannot be late.” He speaks softly and swipes a thumb underneath my eye.

  “I just…” I hiccup. I am almost certain that I have got this whole thing in the bag — I don’t know why, I just feel it. My instincts aren’t klaxons or alarm bells, they are gentle thoughts and feelings that blend into the rest of my mind; I understand that now — but I still cannot stand the thought that I am setting off to watch my husband potentially die.

  Because we have consummated our relationship now. I settled Wrax’s worries by letting him know that I wanted to be officially his, even just for a short twelve hours. It was what I wanted.

  He responded by kissing my neck and calling me strong and beautiful over and over again until my eyelids fluttered shut…

  But now we are in the cab towards the arena, and the atmosphere is somber. Even Aphrodite is keeping it shut. I think she knows that our conversation last night, and what she saw me doing to my mate’s eye, should be kept quiet.

  “Last chance, my mate,” he says. “You do not have to watch this.”

  I sidle up to him so that he has little choice but to wrap me up in those solid arms of his. “I will be there with you, Wrax. Whatever happens, I’ll be there.”

  He taps on his mechanical eye and for a moment I freeze. Have I broken it? Then his frown fades and he looks out of the window. “Something feels strange,” he says. “Like I am noticing more.”

  I can’t help it. I squeeze his hand. “I … I should tell you something.”

  We are still a minute away from the arena. Enough time to tell him everything that has happened to me. I relay my conversation with Fello, then with Paxia, and Wrax’s good eye widens to the size of a flying saucer. I skip my sobbing conversation with the AI and go straight to how Paxia enabled me to fix his mechanical eye.

  “Didn’t you say that at its full working capacity, it allowed you to see movements a second before they happened?” I ask, unable to stop bouncing in my seat, I’m so optimistic.

  His jaw twitches and he looks away. “In a sense. It’s all about acknowledging micro—”

  I lean forward and cup his face in my hands, and kiss his full, soft lips. He sinks into it and kisses me back, and soon we are making out in the back of the cab like a couple of teenagers. He manages to run his palm over my breast underneath my traditional clothing, and I nip at his bottom lip just as we alight. “Didn’t see that one coming, though, didja?”

  He can’t help but chuckle. “I just felt no need to defend myself against you.” He buries his face in my hair and kisses me one more time on the head.

  We straighten up our clothes and my hair and step out of the cab — after he readjusts his now steel-hard cock quickly. I smile over at him, devilishly, and he smiles back. But he looks a little stunned by the whole thing.

  I realize what it is that I can see in his expression. It’s something I haven’t seen in quite a while.

  It’s hope.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wrax

  “What?” Cara asks when I continue to eye her sideways as we walk. Her steps are light, as if she feels no fear.

  “It’s just … you have every right to still be angry with me. I did not tell you that I would be fighting to the death today, and now I have thrust you into this situation too soon without thinking about it fully.”

  She shrugs. “I’ve thought about it, and I can see no future without you,” she says. She is trying to sound like it doesn’t matter too much to her to say, but I can tell that it was difficult to get that out.

  I wrap an arm around her as we descend into the arena. “I love you,” I say suddenly, and even I can see that that was a strange thing to do.

  But she turns to me with sparkling eyes and rises onto her tiptoes to look right into my eyes. I can see her every movement, her every muscle twitch.

  I cannot wait to use this eye with her in bed. I could predict her every movement; her every wish. I am going to make her come so hard around my cock that she will take hours to recover.

  “I love you too,” she says softly. “I wish you didn’t have to do this.”

  “We will get through it,” I assure her. And for some reason I find that I actually believe what I am saying.

  If she truly has Paxia’s will behind he
r … there is hardly a limit to what we can accomplish together.

  With a renewed sense of courage, I hand over Cara to the men she will be sitting in the stadium with: Riven, Fellopian and Kivak. And then I stride behind the scenes to change and wash myself, as is tradition. My trusty hatchet is a comforting weight on my belt.

  For the first time since I found out about this, now that I have my amazing mate at my side, I think it’s a real possibility that I might come out of this death match alive.

  When I come out onto the battlefield the crowd roars. People stand and wave their arms, pump their fists, place their hands, palm-out, on their foreheads and hope to catch my eye. I spin in a small circle, slowly raising my arms. The muscles in my biceps and back, completely exposed, bulge and ripple in just the way I want them to.

  Then the announcer shouts, his voice cutting through the crowd like a knife. “And Anaxis … the Eroder!”

  The crowd whoops and screams, not any louder, but more amped up than ever before. As a gladiator representing the people, I gain a portion of the money earned by the ticket-buyers if I win. If Anaxis were to win, he would gain the tickets’ money as well as a very generous payout from the defendant he is representing, possibly worth up to ten or fifteen times as much as I earn from the tickets.

  That goes a little way to explaining why I fight so many battles. Nobody else wants to fight representing the people when they could potentially earn enough to retire honorably. So I do it.

  The Eroder is one such money-grabber. So far he has successfully avoided battling against me in the arena. He has won many, many battles in many different cases and disagreements, and he surely has more than enough money to retire forever. But he doesn’t. He still fights.

  Now that I am up close to him, circling around him on the battlefield, my heartbeat eerily calm, I can see why that is. His face, it is twisted into a mask of pure pleasure.

  He likes this. No — he loves it.