Venomous: Erotic Science Fiction Romance (Alien Warrior Book 1) Read Free Page A

shrieked as I plummeted, my stomach crawling into my throat.
    The circle of metal slowed a foot from collision, setting down with a clang on the rocky ground.
    It crushed the squidgy body of a dead slave, popped its skull in a mushy splat of oozing puss.
    The alien trampled over the dead challenger.
    Jarring to a stop at my wail, he reared back, stopped charging me as if about to lop off my head.
    Now as he advanced it was with a look of passionate focus.
    The vast rise and fall of his powerful chest halted as he inhaled deeply then held it.
    Fisted hands, all four of them, clenched and unclenched as the aggression leached from his frame to be replaced with another kind of tension.
    Considered by me a far more dangerous kind of tension.
    His jaw tensed and his nostrils flared. A slash of blue-black flickered past his lips too fast for me to see.
    The manacles of energy holding me bound snapped open.
    Weak in the knees, I tumbled forward into a solid wall of flesh.
    My arms throbbed as blood rushed into my fingertips.
    The shakes of my body were so violent I barely kept upright.
    I looked up, and up, and up.
    Obsidian eyes peered down at me.
    The alien’s mouth parted as it let loose a throaty hissing-growl.
    A strangled, “ Ugnh? ” gurgled from my throat.
    Another snarling-rumble from the beast.
    I helpfully translated it for him into an outburst that explained in excruciating detail my upcoming rape, torture and death.
    Annoyed I didn’t respond with anything other than a strangled rasp, the alien bared twin rows of sharp teeth.
    Oh Jesus, oh Lord, take me now.
    I swayed on the brink of blacking out as I took in the lethal enormity of the elongated, curved fangs dripping with viscous fluid.
    Again, the slash of black with a sheen of electric blue pushed past his lips.
    I saw it this time.
    A forked tongue flickered at the seam of his lips.
    His angular face creased into a scowl, and a clawed hand shot out to grab me by the throat.
    Another nabbed my arm as its twin took possession of my thigh.
    The last clutched my waist, his hand span so large half my middle was engulfed.
    The edges of my world turned dark.
    Strength flowed from my limbs in a lingering tingle, and white noise roared in my ears.
    Pungent sweat plugged my nose, and the macabre scene bleached into a colourless smudge as the floor rushed me.
    Hot points of pressure burned my flesh where his hands held me.
    He plucked me off the ground as if I weighed nothing.
    Crushed to a hard chest, arms of steel banded about me.
    Tight.
    Too tightly.
    Claws dragged down my back in a spine-chilling stroke.
    The world rotated as I was slung over the hard round of a shoulder.
    Sucking in a much-needed gulp of air that stuck in my throat, my self-preservation finished kicking in.
    Lumen, you are utterly fucked.
    I passed out.

CHAPTER TWO
    I woke to footsteps.
    Hanging limp with rest of my body, my arms swayed in the snarled nest of my curly hair.
    My hands bumped into the back of the alien that carried me, fingers grazing over scaled flesh.
    Ropey lengths that grew from its head slithered along my naked skin.
    Dread had me tensed into rigid, broken lines, and the arm hooped around my legs tightened its possessive clutch.
    An acknowledgment of my waking.
    Claws landed on my backside in a distracted pat as another hand stroked my calf.
    Cold air stung my teeth as I inhaled in slow pulls, and I sucked up a lungful of woody aroma, smoky, spicy.
    Rather than relax me, the exotic fragrance made it harder to shake off my disorientation.
    The scent reminded me of hot days at the beach, lazing on sand dunes as warm breezes tugged my hair, and the underlying muskiness to the bouquet made me realise the snaking tunnel we haunted smelt as I remembered, dank and mouldy, overlaid with a chemical bite that stuck in my craw.
    The heady scent came from the alien.
    We forged deeper into the black.
    The sound of sodden, guttural breathing.
    Scuttling feet.
    Decay.
    Dozens of unblinking eyes