Page 7 of Crash Landed: The Daranthiki

His lips twitched in amusement at himself. He was a prized cybernetic legionnaire, and he was captivated by a female who barely came up to the center of his chest. For her slight size, he had to admire the bravery she demonstrated in attempting to disarm an obviously augmented being.

She had no hope of succeeding, of course, but he had to admire her persistence. When he had realized that the human believed him to be a droid, he had expected to it to give up when he ignored its demands. It would have been the expected reaction from anyone encountering what they suspected to be a malfunctioning droid. Instead, his human followed close on his heels, barking out commands as if it held some authority over him. He had not been able to help feeling amused at the strange behavior of the human, even as he attempted to ignore it.

There would be no more ignoring the female now. He swallowed back a frustrated groan as he silently acknowledged that he was taking the human with him after all.

“Very well,” he bit out slowly, making certain that there was little chance of her translators failing her as he slowly withdrew his arms from around her. “You will come with me.”

Her mouth opened and closed a few times as she eyed him warily, considering his sudden change in attitude. He dropped his arms and let them hang lax at his sides, keeping the spiked biometallic ridges running down his arms directed away from her. She snapped her mouth shut, and a hard light entered her eyes as she drew herself straighter with a dignity that he greatly enjoyed. She gave him a stiff nod.

“About time you see reason,” she muttered as she stepped back a pace, her eyes scrutinizing him from what she clearly presumed to be a safe distance.

Little did she know that there would be no place, no distance truly safe from him if he decided to pursue her, not with his speed and certainly not now that he had her scent. It was one of the highly desired qualities of the superior legionnaire models. He was a better hunter, and with his greater cybernetic enhancements, he was infinitely more dangerous than any battle droid.

Even though he was superior in every way to his small human, it perversely delighted him that she was not buckling with terror nor trying to flee now that she knew that she was confronting a flesh and blood male rather than a machine. The cool regard with which she now looked at him made his cock twitch with interest, even as he wondered what might come out of her mouth next.

He strangely looked forward to it.

Perhaps she would continue to be entertaining to have around until he returned her to where she belonged at the space station. He recalled that there was a station at the sector’s border which had a small human embassy. He could dump her there before her entertaining qualities became overly annoying. After that, she would then be their problem. Until then, he would have to establish the way of things quickly. If she thought that she was going to command him around his own vessel, she was going to be disappointed. He was in charge. Not her.

Somehow he doubted that the concept would ever occur to the stubborn female without direction.

Zil grunted and narrowed his eyes on her.

“There are conditions, though, and the first is that I am solely in charge. You will listen and abide my decisions.” As expected, she promptly made a face at that, but he strived to ignore it—this time. “If you object to my stipulations, I can leave you here with the beacon if you prefer,” he drawled.

Her face tightened with a pained grimace, but she shook her head, her arms crossing over the tattered material wrapped snugly around her chest. He hadn’t looked too closely at her body until that moment and was instantly fascinated by the fleshy mounds that peeked out from the top. Cybernetic legionnaires were all male and kept strictly isolated from the citizens of Daranthaknar. He had never seen a Daranthiki female—outside of his mother long ago—and in many species he had encountered since deserting the legion, the few females he had encountered seemed to be largely indistinguishable from males.

He knew that Daranthiki females had glands that swelled with milk when they were nursing young... but he did not see any young with his human. His ears twitched, straining to listen for any sounds of a youngling that he might have missed as he ran through the ship’s systems looking for any other signs of life. Nothing came back from his scan, and all he heard over the protesting machinery was the unhappy sigh of the human beside him.

“No. I would rather not stay in this wreckage if it’s all the same to you. Thanks anyway. If it means getting the hell out of here, I think I can manage dealing with a tyrannical male for a short time. I’ve done well enough with it in the past,” she muttered.

Satisfied with her quick agreement, and with the fact that there was no sign of a youngling on board, he grunted in acknowledgment.

“Good. Just do not expect much, human,” he growled. “Regardless of your own expectations, I am the property and under the command of none but myself. I will return you to your embassy at the space station, and nothing further. That is where my obligation ends.”

This was clearly exactly the response that she wanted because some of the tension in her rigid posture eased. It put her attractive softness on display, and he wished to investigate her further despite her peculiar alien appearance. An instinctive rattling sound vibrated in his throat as he neared her, his interest heightening as she eyed him gamely. She did not move away from him again, even when he brushed close to her in the narrow confines of engineering. His hard body brushing against her softness made her draw in an audible breath, but otherwise she showed little visible reaction. She couldn’t hide from him, though. He scented a deepening of her natural perfume as his muscular frame slid against hers. Although foreign, he recognized it for what it was—a female’s call to mate.

He held back a lustful hiss and silently laughed at his own reactions as he adjusted the component under his arm and strode out of engineering, leaving her to catch up. He was certainly not a sexual novice. Pleasure droids fulfilled bodily biological urges when they came up and served well enough. He did not need to be distracted by such entanglements with an alien.

Still, Zil was aware of her every move as she trailed behind him, just beyond the swish of his tail. She was keeping up but maintaining distance. Good. She was obviously intelligent, which made him all the more grateful that he was not dealing with an overwrought or terrified female whose intelligence might have made her brave enough to try something stupid. Despite his initial irritation at her demands, it would have been infinitely worse to have to haul her out of the ship, kicking and screaming, to satisfy his inconvenient, newly acquired conscience.

Chapter 6

Daisy squinted at the swishing tail of the cyborg. How had she even missed that this wasn’t a droid? Sure, it had been easy enough to write off the fluid movements as due to technological advancements, but the confident swagger and brutal lethality conveyed in his movements could have only been from a living male. A malfunctioning droid was a headache, but an alien male was entirely unpredictable.

Hadn’t her brother drilled such warnings into her head about trusting strange men, especially aliens? Alien males couldn’t be trusted not to whisk away human females when the opportunity presented itself. When news came to Earth regarding the events on Turongal, everyone was suddenly taking it much more seriously. The idea of being stolen by a strange alien had been frightening, but not more than the thought of remaining on United Earth and directly under the yoke of her family. She would rather live on an alien world far from their immediate supervision, where she had at least a chance of finding some small measure of her own happiness, far from the strict rules of society on United Earth. It had been worth the risk. And it still was. She wasn’t going to give up now just because there was a small hiccup in her transportation.

She suppressed the guilt that immediately rose over such callousness, but she didn’t have time or headspace to break down over what happened to the crew. She was grateful to be alive, and if this alien was the means of remaining alive, then she would take it. She could allow herself time to process once she was safe.

The first step to feeling safer was getting clothes. She couldn’t parade around in a sheet forever. That meant she was going to have to make another request of her reluctant rescuer.

“Umm, hey, you... whatever your name is...”

“I am Zil,” he cut in.

“Zil,” she repeated. She drew in a deep breath. Okay, maybe there was hope. If he was offering her his name, he couldn’t be all that bad despite his rudeness. Clearly he was going to treat her respectfully, like a person. “I’m Daisy McGillin.”

“Not Fuck?” he asked, his voice dismissive as if he were not only bored with the conversation already but just couldn’t care less.