7. Undisclosed Desires
I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask,
I want to exorcise the demons from your past,
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart.
"Undisclosed Desires" - Muse
Sleep, her mother used to say, was the final frontier. Its mysteries plagued humankind, troubling them as much as the depths of space or the unexplored fathoms of the deep sea. As a child, Marie had held onto the ridiculously naive notion that her mind was a private haven, somewhere her dreams could dwell in peace, without the nagging touch of another. The night after her dalliances with Steve in the brig, Marie yearned for a return to this naivety. In a futile attempt to wash him away, she had scrubbed her skin raw in the shower, dousing it in overpriced shower cream. It did not matter how hard she soaped, how vigorously her shampoo doused finger tips attacked her scalp, she should not brush him from her. His fingers, long absent, still ran their way over her now slick skin, his tongue continued its dangerous work in her mouth, the blissful sensation of him moving deep within her still haunted every waking thought.
Now, as she lay in bed, tired eyelids threatening to close, she knew he would invade her dreams.
She was right.
Her eyes opened to find an alien landscape; the inside of what she could only assume was a hive ship. An eerie mist danced around her ankles, creeping like ghostly fingers up the legs of her flannelette pyjamas. Her arms automatically crossed across her chest, in a futile attempt to warm and protect. It was a movement that caused her captor to chuckle.
"Leave me alone."
The Wraith stepped from the shadows, clad only in stern black pants. She could not dredge her eyes from his chest, though she had spent over an hour stroking it the day before. Leanly muscled, he had a line of almost tribal tattoos that caressed his shoulder, travelling to his naval. They danced upon his back, twining their way down his spine ridges to end with a flourish at the base. She yearned to touch them again now.
"I seriously doubt you want me to, Marie Cromwell."
"You're seriously wrong then," she snapped stupidly, wishing she had something a touch more articulate to say. Danger flashed in the Wraith's eyes, but she ignored it, her own anger bubbling over. "What were you playing at, leaving your pants outside the cell? Did you want to get yourself killed?"
"Concern for my welfare? How touching."
"Don't patronise me, Wraith. I have to live with these people! I don't want them to think I'm some kind of whore that sleeps with the first alien male I've met!"
His head tilted. "Is that not exactly what you are?"
Her hand steered back to slap him, but his fingers curled around her wrist. "There is little point, Marie. This is not real."
Wrenching her wrist from his grasp, she stormed away. "It still would have hurt!"
Her feet ached with the cold of the hive floor and she dutifully wished she had had enough initiative to wear socks to bed. The air was pungent with the peculiar combination damp earth, leather, death and sex.
"Where do you think to hide, Marie? This is your mind."
"Then my mind is a pretty fucked up place," she fumed back, not turning to face her pursuer. "Haven't you had enough of me?"
"If I had, why would I be here now?" Strong arms snaked around her tense body, bringing her brisk gait to a halt. He drew her around in his embrace, so that her face rested pitifully against his bare chest. "Why do you struggle?"
"Oh, I wonder?" she stabbed sarcastically. "Perhaps it has something to do with my career being on the line. Not to mention being called whingy and dull by a slimy green alien who wants nothing more than to suck the life out of me!"
Had Steve been in possession of eyebrows, he would have raised them at this comment. "You have the irritating tendency to jump to the wrong conclusions. I never called you whingy and dull."
"You insinuated it."
Steve's deep amber eyes absorbed her sleep-ridden image. Why he had once again invaded her dreams was a mystery even to him. At first, he had thought their coupling in the cell would expel her from his system, but now he found himself drawn even closer to her.
It severely annoyed him.
"If you cared so much for your career and friends, why did you visit me this morning, knowing full well my intentions?"
The human female shrugged against his form, fruitlessly trying to escape his grasp. She was a peculiar creature, even for a human female. A demon in bed, she still managed to maintain a stigma of innocence which intrigued him and aroused him further. The physical evidence of his arousal merely caused the weak little creature to struggle harder against him.
Cupping her chin in his hand, she drew her eyes up to meet his. "Speak, human."
Defiance curled her lip. "It was a mistake, one I do not wish to repeat."
"And let you allow me easy access into your dreams?"
"I hardly have any choice, do I?"
He smiled, only making her defiant sneer harder. "I can teach you." His voice lowered to a mere whisper. "Though your mind is inferior to my own, it is not unheard of for a Wraith to teach his Worshipper the art of blocking the mind."
"I do not worship you."
"What do you call our rendezvous in the cell?"
"Sex, good sex, but sex none the less."
"We shall see."
oOoOo
Before Marie could embark on more useless struggling, Steve thrust her against a nearby wall. The surface of the bulkhead was strangely warm, and thrummed as though it possessed a life of its own. Against her nightwear clad back, the wall felt like a firm leather couch.
Finger guards angrily tore at her flannelette pyjamas, until all that remained of them was a piled of pink and green confetti strewn across the floor. Sharp teeth followed the path they had bit earlier that day, drawing tiny glimmering drops of blood from her skin. She yelped in pain, only to groan as his tongue brushed over the new wounds. The razor sharp metal of his finger guards, having destroyed her clothing, now cut deep into the tender flesh of her thighs, drawing her legs tightly around his leather clad pants. His erection was freed from its confines with a delicate hiss of his fly, thrusting within her without warning. Unlike their first embrace, this was animalistic, his thrusts hard and relentless. Tears dripped down her cheeks, both in pleasure and in pain, mingling with blood as his teeth scarred her jaw.
Growling loudly, he pulled her from the wall, throwing her to the ground and him atop of her. The thrusts increased in tempo as he drove her into the misty softness of the hive floor. He came loudly, leaving her unresolved, yet caring not.
"You are mine, Marie Cromwell, remember that."
