Alien Fighter's Baby (Captured Science Fiction Romance) (10 page)

T
he next morning
.

“Men are so stubborn,” Starling muttered for the tenth time. She hadn’t known that about men, because she’d never had one before, but now she had one, she’d found that out.

“Bran, there has got to be a better way,” she called.

Bran looked down at her from halfway up the side of the cliff-face entrance to their cavern. He was shirtless and glistening with sweat from climbing the cliff. Without a safety rope, she might add.

Why did he have to be so hot and so stubborn at the same time?

Just like that morning, when he’d gone ahead and skin-tested the alien meat he’d gotten. He knew she thought that was a bad idea. But he’d just kissed her silly over her objections, then he’d gone on to do the next dangerous activity he was doing right then, while he grimaced down at her.

“I need a camo-stake at the top of the cavern entrance or the z-dimensional camouflage shield won’t work, babe,” he called down.

He’d already explained all that, while she’d explained she thought they didn’t need to camouflage the entrance to the cavern, if it was so dangerous he had to climb up there to do it. He could easily die—he would die if he fell.

Starling cupped the roundness of her belly. Then what would she do? She’d be all alone, pregnant, and not knowing much about surviving.

“Stupid men,” she muttered, then angrily swiped at her tears. She knew Bran was an Alpha-Force trooper and all, but the situation they were in was different from all that.

They were going to be parents!

“Why can’t you use a safety rope?” she demanded.

“This is quicker, Starling,” he yelled down at her. “I am an expert mountain climber. It’s as easy as—”

Then he fell.

And she screamed.

But he caught hold of a branch hanging at the bottom of the top of the entrance. There was nothing after that branch. Starling stood as if she could balance Bran on the branch as she watched him working to get a better hold of it.

She wanted to scream at him, “Now what?” But she inhaled a trembling breath and let it out. He couldn’t hang there forever, but he had a firmer hold.

“If you let go of that branch, Bran Hayes, I’m going to kill you,” she yelled up at him. Then she started running for the Zach.

“We’re in shit,” he yelled back, but she knew he couldn’t really see her.

“No shit,” she muttered, as she hauled open the door on the Zach and climbed in.

She had seen Bran start the vehicle a dozen times, so she knew how, and then it was just a matter of getting it under Bran’s dangling feet. When she got out of the Zach, she saw that the top of the vehicle was still too far from Bran’s feet. He would break his ankles if he dropped from the distance he dangled.

“I could kiss you,” Bran exclaimed.

Starling thought that was how it had all started. The night before he had made crazy-hot love to her, and the next morning he thought he could get away with anything, and she wouldn’t object. She did admit hot sex made one feel so good that they felt invincible, but that was just a feeling, not reality.

She was so mad at him that even arousing sex and the probability of more of it did not cut through her anger.

“Raise the Taser gun turret and I can reach part of it with my feet,” he said.

Starling looked at the Zach for a second. It had a Taser gun turret? She was continually surprised at what the vehicle held, so why not a big turret thingy?

“How?” she demanded, and not kindly.

After she’d raised the big gun up like Bran had told her, she stepped out of the vehicle to see it still wasn’t high enough. But she actually thought if Bran fell right then, he wouldn’t do more than bruise and scrape himself. Not much for a macho trooper.

“You can raise the barrel if you climb up in the turret,” he said, then groaned.

Obviously, it was getting hard for him to hold on. She felt for him, she really did, but still she had something to say, so she made him wait. Instead of raising the long barrel of the weapon, she stood with her finger hovering over the display, where Bran said she needed to touch to get it to move up.

“Bran, if you die your baby will be without a father,” she said tersely. “Your baby will be without parents, just like we were. We need you alive.”

Then she pushed the display where Bran had said to. But once she saw he could reach, she did not stick around, because she was too upset.

An hour later, Bran watched Starling setting up the portable bio-house. Basically, it was a tent, but it had an airbed in it, plus a few other extras. Starling completely ignored him as she read the instructions on how to inflate the bio-h.

Earlier, when he asked, she’d said, “This is where I’m staying. Away from you.”

Since then, he’d gotten the very loud silent treatment.

Damn.

That meant no sex.

He ran an angry hand along the back of his neck, and then popped it. His arm sockets still burned, and it was as if they were a painful reminder of his stupid mistake. But hell, he had climbed a hundred mountains.

With safety ropes.

He turned his neck the other way and popped it.

“Okay, fine, be that way,” he muttered toward Starling’s fine ass, which was bent over to start the bio-h inflating.

And she stayed that silently angry for two days. But so did he. He’d realized that first night, or thought he had, that she was as hot for him as he was for her. Thanks to his killer mouth on her sweet slit, and the passionate climaxes that he’d given her several times by then. So yeah, his baby was hot for it.

She would cave.

But she hadn’t. Even when he’d bathed in front of her and his naked body had been slick with soap, while he’d been very hard. She’d looked once, gotten flushed, and his hopes had soared—until she’d stiffened and turned her back on him. Then she’d left him naked and hard, and gone into her bio-h alone.

He’d nearly jacked off.

Instead, he’d gone and set up the barrier shield at the entrance, which when turned on would zap anything that touched it, such as more of the alien cats with long claws. Once he got the camouflage working, the entrance would look like the side of the mountain, but any creature coming within five meters of the entrance would be able to tell it was open. He didn’t want alien wildlife wandering in where Starling was setting up her home.

And that was exactly what she was doing. Nothing about it was strategic or military efficient from a soldier’s standpoint. But he hadn’t stopped her. Maybe because they were silently arguing, or maybe he liked some of the things she had done, like set up a small kitchen area.

It was early on the third morning, and Bran knew Starling was awake, because he’d seen her washing up and brushing her hair from the Zach, where he’d been sleeping. After she’d finished, she disappeared into the bio-h.

He grabbed his gear, the pelts he’d made, and the Tigs multi-use tool, then walked to the entrance of the bio-h. Starling was lying across the end of the airbed, and she looked amazing. Her soft belly showed, and it looked larger and more rounded than it had before. Immediately, he wanted to crawl into bed with her, but he squashed the impulse, while noticing she was looking at the medi-log.

He wondered what she was reading about, but she must have sensed him, because she looked up. Her eyes swept him and what he held, then she tensed. It pissed him off that she was that uptight at just being around him.

“I need to talk to you about a few things,” he said.

Her eyebrow rose as she set the medi-log aside. Then he tossed the pelts and Tigs onto the bed behind her.

“Those,” he said, indicating the pelts with a tilt of his head, “are to make clothes or whatever you need.”

Her eyes widened, but when it seemed she might finally say something to him, her lips pursed. Cruel punishment for a man that had tasted her sweet mouth.

“I need you to come out here,” he said. He saw her stubborn look, and it made him snap. “There are man and woman things and commander and civilian things. The commander to civilian things cannot be ignored, Starling. This is your commander ordering you out here.”

He turned and stalked away, but not before he’d seen the different emotions flashing across Starling’s lovely face. She’d went from anger, to curiosity, to nonbelieving, and back to mad, before he’d turned.

He had his pack on and his weapon at his side as he stopped behind the Zach. When he turned to look, he liked seeing that Starling came out of the bio-h with the hand weapon he had given her in a grip on the side of her hip. He might feel the least bit better about leaving her alone. But it had to be done.

“I’ve never had a chance to tell you,” he said stiffly, when she arrived in front of him. “But my idea is to put another camo-shield several miles down the cavern tunnel to the other side. I’ll have the shield set to look like a rock slide has blocked the tunnel.”

Starling fiddled with her ponytail as she watched him, and he wondered how far she would take the silent treatment.

“That sounds really smart,” she said.

He didn’t smile, but he nodded.

“I will attach a wireless alarm across the tunnel. Anything that tries to pass it, to move toward us here”—he pointed down in front of him—“will alert us. We should have advanced warning they are coming of about five minutes.”

She nodded. “Okay. Good.”

“I’ll be gone for several hours—” he started.

But before he got his last word out, she declared, “I’ll go with you.”

Of all the things he thought she might say, that was not on the list. He started to reject her request, but then decided what better way to protect her? He’d not wanted to leave her alone. Still, she must have thought by his look alone that he was going to deny her request.

Because she exclaimed, “If you’re the commander, you need to let me learn!”

S
tarling was tired
of being mad at Bran, and she didn’t want to be angry with him any longer. Instead, she wanted to be happy, pressed up against him. Kissing, touching, stroking, and inserting. She wanted lots more inserting. She wasn’t sure if it was the having-a-new-boyfriend thing or maybe it was pregnancy hormones, but she was constantly horny for Bran.

It was a terrible time for them to be arguing. She’d been so certain he would concede and apologize to her within a day. But the man was hard and stubborn.

If only he’d just talk to her.

That was why she hadn’t given him a hard time about the “commander to civilian” ordering thing. First, he was right: she needed to listen to him for their survival, and she couldn’t be mad at him for other reasons and not do that. Second, once she’d heard his plan, maybe she thought it could be a way to get them talking again.

The only problem about going with Bran down the cavern tunnel was she hadn’t anticipated the suffocating darkness. Before when she’d been in the blackness she’d been inside the Zach with its solidness around her. But walking through complete darkness was unnerving, and it was inducing the strange reaction of reminding her about a very bad time in her life.

The night the slavers had captured her.

“Here, put on these night-vision sensors,” Bran said, out of the darkness, after they’d been walking for maybe ten minutes. She knew Bran could see her in the blackness with his enhanced eyes.

Her heart was pounding, and she flinched when he first touched her.

“Are you okay, Starling?” he asked.

She felt him placing the sensors on each side of her head, and suddenly she saw a green glow before her eyes. She grabbed his wrist.

“I, um,” she stuttered. “It’s just really dark.”

“Blink a couple times, then look around,” he said.

When she did as Bran instructed, she soon saw the greenness had gained definition, and she recognized she was seeing the inside of the dark cavern.

“I can see you, kind of,” she said.

She realized she was holding Bran’s wrist, and quickly dropped it. He looked like a green apparition, and she saw his lips firm, as if he was irritated at her tossing his wrist away.

“You can adjust it here,” he told her, bending and picking up her hand to place it by the sensor on her right side. “Push that and it will get brighter or darker.”

His warm hand left hers. “Okay, thanks,” she said.

“Let’s get moving,” he said. “Hopefully that night sensor will make it easier for you.”

Starling appreciated the fact that they were finally talking, and she really wanted to keep it up, so she asked, “Can you see in this darkness without a sensor?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, as they began walking. “I mean, sure—it’s one of the cybertron settings.”

“Cybertron?” she whispered, and she glanced at him, startled.

Full cybertrons were very scary, and they’d started a war at one time in human history. There were always rumors that the military still had them and used them. Everyone knew that Alpha-Force troopers had special enhancements, like their eyes, but everyone thought it was genetic manipulation, not cybertron science.

Immediately, Starling touched her belly and wondered if their baby would have cybertron DNA, plus alien DNA. She couldn’t help the shudder that ran through her.

“Hell, I’m not damn contagious,” Bran muttered. “Back when I became an Alpha-Force trooper that is what they did, Starling. They implanted cybertron parts in my head so I could see z-ray, x-ray, night vision, magnification, and atomic penetration.”

In his head? Oh my Jupiter, Starling wanted to hug him. That must have been horrific.

“How old?” she asked. She could see his green head shaking, as if he wasn’t going to answer her.

But then he muttered, “Lost track of birthdays and my age a long time ago, but it was a year after I was recruited. And I’ll tell you, sweetheart, we’re out here risking our lives every damn day to try to keep the Grubs from the rest of you civilians who don’t have implanted cybertronics.”

“I know,” she said quickly, and she grabbed his hand, then turned hers so they were holding hands. “I mean, I know now,” she said.

She felt his larger hand squeeze hers. “I know it’s probably a shock,” he said.

It was, but she still felt better holding his hand, and they walked that way in silence for a while. Until she’d thought over what he had said.

“Did you know they tell scary horror stories about cybertrons to all of us when we’re young?” she said finally.

“Yes, I know.”

She brought his hand up to her cheek. “So I was surprised.”

He pushed his knuckle until he stroked her cheek. “It’s such a non-thing in my world, in the military, with my team,” he said. “Hell, Wisetech, who is one of the best on my team, has a cybertron jaw and arm, maybe more, and we never think about it. So I forget civilians live in a different universe.”

She wasn’t sure how she could ask him about their baby having it, so she didn’t. Instead she dropped their hands, but still held on.

“Wisetech? Was he the one there when we left your ship?” she asked.

She’d been very confused and thought he was a robot back then.

“Yeah. He will be the one to come back to get us.”

There was someone coming to get them?

That was huge. Starling stopped them with a tug on Bran’s hand, and then stepped in front of him.

“He’s coming to get us?” she asked in amazement.

Bran’s warm hands settled on each side of her face as she looked up at his strong green features, which looked as if they were an apparition that floated out of the blackness.

“After nine months,” Bran said quietly.

She grabbed his wrists as he held her face. “He’ll come?” she asked again, with tears in her eyes.

“He’ll come,” Bran answered emphatically.

“The baby can be on a ship?” she asked.

“We’ll make sure of it.”

“I thought we were trapped here,” she whispered.

“I trust Wisetech with my life, Starling. He’ll come back.”

Later, after Bran had setup the camo-shields and alarm system, he watched Starling as she rubbed her wrist. He was done, and he would have started back if he’d been by himself. But he wanted Starling to get some rest. He’d read in the medi-log that pregnant women should have moderate exercise, but not overdo it.

So she sat on a boulder opposite him as she looked down the cavern, while she rubbed her thumb over her inner right wrist. The place where he’d seen that branding tattoo. It was a slaver’s mark, he was certain. It made sense as to the reason Starling was found out that far on the rim.

He could detect her nervousness, and had since they’d first started to walk in the darkness. He’d thought the night sensors would help her, until he realized most of her anxiousness was about something else, and it made him guess that the slavers had captured her at night. It had to have been terrifying, rough, and abusive for her. After they’d captured her … probably very abusive.

It angered him to think of what they might have done to her. He’d get the rest of their damn names, and if he ever ran across them, he’d make them pay. The one that had branded her with his mark—Otball, that slime—was going to pay the most.

It had to be the slaver Otball that had sold Starling to the Grubs, for whatever experiments they were doing on fertile women. Bran wanted to growl at the foulness of it. Grubs getting their pinchers on human women and breeding them.

Study your enemy.
It was the only thing he could think. He’d known for a long time that he had to run Starling through the med-pack AI interface to try to find out what had happened to her. But he’d been avoiding it. That wasn’t like him. Usually he ran headlong into danger. But this time was damn different.

That baby was his too.

He’d been trying to achieve a place where he could hear the results and not blast off planet and try to kill every Grub on it. He wasn’t certain he could handle hearing what the slavers had done to her—but he knew she needed to tell it, and she needed him to hear it.

Bran scrubbed his chin, then steeled himself and rose to go sit beside Starling. She looked over at him as he gently grasped her wrist and lifted it, until he could look down at the crude brand.

“This darkness reminding you of something?” he asked quietly. Then he stroked her wrist on both sides.

Starling was shaking her head as if saying no, but she said, “Yes.”

He set her forearm down on his thigh. “I want to hear it.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

For the first time ever, he reached out and placed his hand on her pregnant belly. He saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes before he said, “I want hear it, Starling.”

It was a nasty tale that Starling cried through. By the time she came to the part where they’d checked to see if she was a virgin, and how they had done it, she was in his arms weeping. But he held up. It was hard to do, but easier because she needed him to.

After a while, he quietly asked, “Do you have family still back on your planet, sweetheart?”

She nodded, but then said something that was probably more heartbreaking than all the rest.

“They won’t take me back. Not ever, this way.” She hiccup-sobbed, then caught her voice. “They’ll see me as tainted. It’s their culture. It is so strong.”

Then he did get mad, but he could only hold it in, as he realized she was completely alone in the universe.

Except for him.

Later, when they were about halfway back to the Zach and their camp, he finally admitted, “You’re right. I should have been more careful trying to put that camo-stake in. I need to remember that. I’m not used to having to do it.”

They had been walking side by side, but the longer he’d apologized, the closer she came, until she swung an arm behind his back. So he put his arm over her shoulder.

“An Alpha-Force trooper trying to be careful is probably a hard thing to do. I need to remember that,” she said.

That sounded so good to him that he roped her in for a kiss, and it stopped them. Her lips were soft and welcoming as her curves pressed into him, getting an instant reaction, as he hardened. She must have felt it, because she rubbed on it, which made him sweep his tongue more urgently in her mouth. Even her round belly against him felt sexy.

“We’ll work on it,” he told her in the middle of their heated kisses.

“Deal,” she said against his moving lips. Then she couldn’t talk, because he’d swept his tongue deep inside her sweet mouth again.

Heated moments later, Starling cried out Bran’s name as he entered her. Face to face was somewhat hard with her growing belly, so he had turned her toward the cavern wall, where she braced her palms. She’d known that he knew she had nothing on under her little skirt, so once he’d found her wet, it had taken only one thrust to make her cry out passionately.

It was so hot.

He held her up so she wouldn’t fall, as she encouraged him. “Harder, Bran, harder.

“Ah, baby,” he groaned, as he pulled her back and thrust into her faster. One of his wide hands hunted under her shirt and found her bare breast. He squeezed, and then twisted her nipple, making her shimmy back against his driving shaft.

“Bran, oh, Bran. Yeah, yeah. That hard, hot stuff.”

His big body leaned over her and his other hand found her clit. Then she had to stay upright, braced by the wall as she moaned crazy sounds, while pleasure shot through her.

“Yeah, sweetness, that’s it. You’re going to come on me. Yeah, come on, baby.”

With each word Bran used to encourage her, he flicked her clit, until she was mewling high, rapid sounds. Then he went even faster and harder, slapping her bottom with his hips, until she screamed an electric release. His fingertips left her nipple and her clit, so his hands could grab her, as a huge climax rolled through her and her palms slipped down the wall, until she was bent over more.

Bran thrust harder through her climax, until he groaned, and she felt his heat fill her. Afterward, Bran carried her back to their camp and they fell onto her airbed in the bio-h. She didn’t make him leave. Instead, they started making up even more, which lasted most of the night.

It was either him or hormones. She didn’t care, because she’d never felt such pleasure.

It was so hot.