The utter astonishment on Alexis' face made the difficulties of his arrival on the Planet Renth, the time involved figuring out how to get his holo-form through the security field and the many times boiling over vexation that had stayed with him since the sting of indignity from finding her no longer working in the repair shop or even living there, nearly worth it. But before Sunny left he was going to make sure things were righted, and the offense that the female had once again caused him was forgotten by whatever means needed.
Responding to his valid declaration took Alexis several long seconds. She seemed determined on just staring at him. Her eyes were large, her full mouth slightly parted, her fingers involuntarily pinching the soft fabric of her long flowing dress.
She looked good, abnormally good, better than he had allowed himself to image. Alexis was healthy, her brownish red hair longer and hanging over her right shoulder. She appeared to have gained muscle mass, and looked far from miserable. Even the Vildan style of a simple dress she wore complimented her slim figure and clung to her flesh as she shifted, forcing his eyes to move along her figure with every subtle movement of Alexis' hips.
They had tried to hide Alexis' provocative human figure with the cuts and folds of the cloth, but instead they only made it more pronounced. Unintentionally showing off her curvaceous form in a way she had never done on her own.
"I'm not leaving," Alexis finally spoke up, her words confusing the Autobot. Her vibrant eyes exploded with further light. Her mouth shifted into an expectant smile as she looked over and past him. "Is Josh with you? Did he..."
Muscles tightened in his back. Sunstreaker didn't like to be looked through, nor to not be enough for someone. He wasn't accustomed to either, and it put him in unfamiliar territory that he wasn't going to occupy long.
"Why would you possibly want to stay?" he asked, blatantly ignoring her question before closing the distance between them. He involuntarily cringed when he noticed the conjugal band along her upper arm, and scanned the device around her wrist, his processor analyzing the components of what he soon found was a coolant band.
His cringe turned into a vengeful pout. "You enjoy being someone's property?" Sunny asked with stark confusion, his mouth shifting upwards as he took delight in his next words. "Then I will take ownership of you. The transition will not be a difficult one since you do in a way belong to me already, although I do have some added responsibilities."
"Property? What are you talking about?"
He laughed at her stupidity. Even the band she wore was engraved with the family crest of the Vildan, an indicator of ownership if there ever was one.
"The Vildan did pay off my debt in order to acquire you. I'm rather disappointed that creds are all it took to have you. But if that is what it takes..." He threw a small bag at her feet. The pouch contained all the creds Sunstreaker had managed to pull together and earn in the last several months, some of the currency made in ways he hadn't resorted to in a long time. But he had no other option. He was quite capable of paying off his own debt. The idea of interference from an outsider was unacceptable.
Alexis stared at the spilled out contents of the bag. Her expression changed from confusion, to shock, to pitiable resentment. That was when he knew she really didn't have an idea what he was talking about. And when her hand came crashing against his jaw, the pain creeping along his muscles and reverberating down into a rush of sensual gratification, the shock of the pleasure from her unexpected assault heated his senses exquisitely.
He thought of when he had hit Alexis the last time he saw her. Did she feel what he was feeling? Did her skin awaken and her heart stir?
"Let go of her hand, now." A familiar voice behind him ordered.
Sunstreaker didn't even know that he had grabbed to Alexis' arm. All he knew, all he saw was the fire in her eyes, and now the rush of exhilaration that came from gripping her flesh inside his own.
He didn't move. Alexis, however, continued to try to get out of his hold. His grip was firm. The pressure allowed him to feel the sudden rage of her heartbeat through the thin skin of her wrist. He stared down at where their flesh met. He wanted to...
"I will not repeat myself."
Sunstreaker smiled and chuckled loudly. "Perhaps if Alexis asked me to, I will." He said, his attention remaining on the female in front of him. He was mindful of the presence behind him, knew who it was, and the confidence, the sickening flicker of admiration that washed through Alexis' face made the affront of her disappearance from the barge come upon him as if it was occurring all over again. She left him a note in the care of her employer, the smugness on the Rhiflo's face another insult that wasn't erased by Alexis' short, concise and insultingly polite farewell.
He had tried to communicate with her, but even that she took away from him. Blocking his texts and leaving him with the company of an insufferable kind of misery that he refused to tolerate or acknowledge fully.
And when he found out some time later that it wasn't he that paid of his debt, but someone else, a sly comment given to him by Gruffous, he could just imagine Alexis allowing herself to be bought as some sort of procreator in order to let the others get back home. At first, Sunstreaker thought it was funny, exceedingly so, until the humor ran out and the feeling that his Energon was low, and his tank near empty came upon him whenever he happened to think of her, which really, he hadn't meant to do.
Oddly enough, none of his human charges wanted to leave with him. Three remained working on the barge. One joined the Trivorian army. Another left on a supply ship that everyone who knew anything knew was really a cover for highly expensive assignations of harlotry and the indulgence of narcotics and liquid poisons that could cost as much as the females.
That, Sunstreaker supposed, is what he got for picking the most self-indulgent humans he could find.
Alexis pushed him back and managed to remove her wrist from his hand. A flash of movement and Airaih took her place, his staff weapon drawn and gripped firmly.
"I don't know how you got permission to be here, Autobot, but I suggest you leave before your presence is discovered," the Vildan spoke evenly, a hint of something exploitable layered along his inflections.
"Such graciousness," Sunny mocked. "And I suggest that you point that little stick of yours elsewhere. We both know what happened the last time you tried to get the best of me." He huffed out, sighed with boredom and sparkfelt regret. "Frankly, I was really hoping to have broken your nose."
"We Vildans are known for our strong musculature," the Vildan spoke, his brows lifting upwards, his voice dignified and cultured and infuriatingly smooth.
"Yes, and your boring lifestyles. Which does explain why you would have to buy a female," his attention flickered over to Alexis before returning to the Vildan. Satisfaction came again from the hurtful look of affront and confusion written clearly on her. "Afraid of the lack of inquiries from your own species that you have to dabble with the animalistic humans?"
Airaih only frowned tightly.
Scoffing openly, seeing he was going to have to work harder at getting a reaction from the red-skinned annoyance, Sunny made himself comfortable on a nearby bench, stretching his long legs out, his mouth lifting up on the side.
"Go ahead, explain to the foolish female how she is little more than property."
But it was Alexis that spoke, "He didn't buy me, Sunstreaker. He asked me. I wanted to go with him. I want him." The confidence in her voice was overshadowed by the bitterness that swelled in the Autobot's human body, especially when he felt a tangible tension that drifted between Alexis and Airaih, no, that grew.
"Have you fragged him?"
Alexis paled, and the Vildan's far too yellow eyes narrowed dangerously. A step in the right direction, but not quite there.
"Have you rutted him?" Sunstreaker modified his question, pleased to borrow Alexis' own word from a still remembered conversation of not so long ago. She flushed delightfully, and his hands gripped painfully to the stone bench he was sitting on. The vegetation in the conservatory suddenly seemed obscenely green and purple, the surrounding budding flowers too plethoric in their overly cheerful hues.
Airaih tensed openly, sensing the bodily shift of increased endorphins and hormones that raced through Sunstreaker's human body.
Sunny smiled wide, his eyes narrowing, his flesh pinching tightly from the forced stretch of skin. "Must have been like opening your thighs for an automaton. Slag, as a mech I could have given you more pleasure with my smallest digit."
Sunstreaker almost laughed when he was thrust off the bench and thrown brutally back, when the blood gushed and poured out of his mouth from the contact of the Vildan's solid weapon, nearly praised Primus himself when he was finally given an excuse to attack.
He ignored the prickle of utter distaste that came from the knowledge of what the Vildan's emotive response meant.
It took him three days for his holo-form to function again after his confrontation with the Vildan. If it hadn't been for the gushing blue blood that he managed to spill on the tiled floor of the indoor garden, the terror in Alexis' eyes and the feel of bruised flesh under his organic knuckles, he would have been further enraged. Instead, when the Vildan finally, purposely, calculatingly, managed to stretch things out long enough until some sort of holo-disruptor was activated, Sunstreaker felt glorified satisfaction.
Sunny didn't like that the Vildan was able to last against him. However, he had no problem blaming that on the weak shell of humanity he had been forced to use to visit his little, disobedient, disruptive human.
He took that opportunity to scan the Vildan's home. To monitor and come up with a simple but purpose-driven task that was initiated when her servant excused herself and went off to recharge. Alexis was left alone, stretched provocatively on her belly and studying something on her bed.
She noticed the shift of weight on her bed far quicker than it took for his human form to stabilize. The female could be quite perceptive sometimes, something that he mentally added to her many faults.
"What..."
"Nobody was in bed with you. I thought I might as well be," he smirked at his own asinine words as he watched her shift, roll over and scuttle off the bed. His belly knotted in on itself. Alexis wore nothing but sleeping attire that was short and thin and left the flesh of her legs and lower thighs highly visible.
She grabbed a robe, tied it tightly around her middle, lifted her shoulders with a heave of a loud breath and turned back around.
"You can't be here." Alexis frowned. Her eyes darted back and forth, looking for something. But the holo-disruptor she had installed on her tablet would do her no good, so he felt no need to mind.
"Why not? I've been in your room before, and..." He bent his fingers, brushed them slowly along the material of her soft but evidently well crafted bed. It was sturdy under his form, more so than the one on the fighting barge had been. His imagination took off. He still wasn't used to such human orientated lust, nor the physical inclinations that came with it. "I've even been on your bed before. Although I must admit," He shifted and reclined on his back, his hands folded behind his head. "...this bed has more merit than the flimsy thing you used to occupy, far more durable."
"I suggest that you get off my bed and leave immediately, or..."
Alexis half screamed when his form shimmered away and appeared directly behind her.
"Or?" He flashed her an indulgent smile. "Please do finish your threat, Alexis. Or do you think alerting your servant is enough to make me leave?"
Alexis shifted on her feet. His eyes traveled down toward her bare feet, a sight he had not seen in some time. He had the impulse to incline himself toward the naked skin and taste the flesh of her ankle. He wanted to feel the press of her...
"Just say whatever you came here to say, and leave," she said, her body rigid, her legs parting defensively, distracting him. She kept her distance from him. Her hands formed fists, an anger present on the soft lines of her body. She obviously hadn't forgotten how he had incapacitated the Vildan. But the unworthy fleshy did attack him first. He had to. He was forced to defend himself.
Once again, she was looking beyond him, shifting her attention, however inadvertently, away from him. He wouldn't allow that, not this time.
Sunny spoke slowly, "You asked of your brother before. What if I told you that if you left here with me right now, I could have you back to Josh in less than a week? Or have you also abandoned your family along with your integrity?"
He expected many things. What he did not expect was the hurt that tugged along her mouth, the pain that filled in her eyes.
She blinked hard and then spoke with a soft quaking tone that shouldn't have rattled him but did, "Why? Why do you have to do this? First, you try to make me believe that Airaih... purchased me, then you attack him, then you question how I feel about my brother, the only family I might have left." Her eyes became hard as steel. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
"Are you trying to say you don't want me here?" he purposely teased.
But the strain in her words, the anger in her tone was not what he was aiming for. "Of course, I don't want you here. Every time we are together you put me down, mock me, hurt me, make horrible comments or try to control me. And while I try to be kind, our times together are far from pleasant."
He chuckled derisively at that, ignoring the twist under his chest, focusing on his purpose, the meaning for his visit. By then there was pounding on the door, the sound of muted voices. Nobody would be interrupting them though. He had seen to that.
"And that is why you have been playing this game with me. Trying to draw my attention, gain my interest. If I want you, you wanting me goes without question."
This time it was she who chuckled, an entirely vulgar sound that made her eyes darken, her mouth press tightly together. "I told you, Sunstreaker. I don't want you." She shook her head. "You don't understand, truly don't get it, how different we are. That what you want is just another way of you trying to..." she paused, bit down hard on her mouth and continued slowly, "No, I don't have to explain things to you. If you don't get it, if you don't see how things really are, whatever I have to say to you just isn't going to matter."
"Do you have feelings for that Vildan?" he asked, his words more of an accusation. He wouldn't believe it though, no matter what she said. Not when she could have him, however briefly.
She flinched. "If I answer that question, will you leave?"
"No."
"You are suck a jerk," she said, and he knew she wanted to use a far different word.
Sunny pulled in a puff of air and shifted taller on his feet. "And you, human, I see now, are just like every other female, an unworthy tease. Fragging you would have probably been a disappointment anyway, if the choice of your partner is anything to go by."
His words made her cheeks burn with color, a reaction that confirmed what she was unwilling to say. Scowling, he grabbed onto her shoulders and shook her twice, forcing her hair to fall out of the loose, unattractive bun it had been in, making the soft follicles tumble against the skin of his knuckles.
"I am leaving," he told her. Alexis would never know that his time was up, that the manipulations he had made to the planet's security field were reaching their conclusion. Someone had discovered his intrusion and was trying to shut him out. "And when you contact me and ask me to take you away from the monotony that is this world, rest assured, that you will have to do more than just beg to get me to take you with me." He let his hands move down her arms and tugged her toward him, forcing her to jerk awkwardly toward him. "Much more." He hovered above Alexis, asserting himself over the female.
She began to laugh, a soft female thing that tickled the flesh of his arms as if making physical contact. Repelled by her reaction, he dropped his hands off her.
Alexis spoke quietly, smiled far too indulgently, "Don't worry, Sunstreaker. I don't think I will ever be bored here. Not with him."
"Your choice?" he asked with disbelief and hardly hidden disgust, not allowing her to see his fury.
She didn't speak with animosity or ill-will but a cool detachment of unintentionally ruthless truth, "Ten minutes with you, or a lifetime with someone I care about? Do you want me to pretend to choose, or can you just leave already?"
Hardly one to react mercifully to ridicule, he tugged back on Alexis and tried to drag her to the bed. She kicked him hard, even managed a good jab to the right side of his face. Blood released along the top of his teeth. When she tried to hit him again, he caught her curled hand and gripped it tightly.
He stepped forward and crowded her space. "I am going to take longer than ten minutes with you," Sunstreaker told her, his thumb rubbing insistently hard against her wrist. He really was far too stirred by touching her. He felt the inclination to punish her for making him feel so needy. Felt the desire to bring her captured wrist to his mouth, to bite hard into the vulnerable skin there.
She stilled, rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Doubtful. And to think, I actually believed I wouldn't have to use this. My past encounters with you though, have prepared me well."
"..."
His words crashed away when he felt her press something metallic against his hand. Darkness flashed, and his optics immediately came back on-line. He was back on the shuttle he had borrowed, floating behind the second moon of Renth. He tried to reactivate his holo-form and get back down there. But when he identified the acidic smell of smoke burning behind him, he knew his holo-projector had been damaged. He knew by the time he got it fixed that there would be no returning to the planet. Getting through the first time had been difficult, getting through the second time had been near impossible. And now that they had figured out how to block him there would be no circumventing the planet's security measures without using further precautions. Ones that he no longer cared to take.
"Where's Alexis?"
If Sideswipe had been paying attention to his mental state, he wouldn't have been so surprised when Sunny bashed him in the face. That's what his brother got though, for inquiring about that female the first thing after finally seeing him after so long, after his arrival back on the Autobot ship.