Moon Struck Read online

  Moon Struck

  A Sci-Fi Alien Romance

  Heather Guerre

  Copyright © 2019 by Heather Guerre

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Also by Heather Guerre

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Ghosts

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Thank you!

  Also by Heather Guerre

  Star Crossed (Scaeven Mates Book 1)

  Chapter One

  Leo Cluster, NGC 3842

  The Great Maw

  IG Standard Calendar 236.46.13

  “Doc?”

  Hadiza snapped to full alertness, jerked out of a dream of laserfire and blood, and thrust back into the dim quiet of her present hell.

  Along with twenty other women, Hadiza had been living in lightless captivity for an immeasurable amount of time. She’d had been trying to track it by counting their meals—but how often their captors fed them was uncertain. If they were getting one meal per Earth Standard day, then they’d been captive for a little more than three months. But if their captors had decided to give them three square, it’d only been one month.

  It felt like eternity. Especially since the failed escape attempt. That bungled mess seemed like it had been a lifetime ago. As far as Hadiza could tell, one of the women—Lyra Hallas—had succeeded and made it off-ship. It wasn’t a victory, though. The planet had been unoccupied. If she wasn’t already dead, she would be soon.

  Maybe that was a mercy. There was no way of knowing what their alien captors had in store for them. Some of Hadiza’s fellow captives had decided they preferred the certainty of death over the uncertainty of their captors’ intentions.

  “Hey, Doc,” the voice called again.

  Hadiza turned. On the other side of the dark cargo bay, Aislin—the mech engineer from the survey ship where Hadiza had been captured—knelt over another woman’s prone body. Aislin was pale-skinned, with deeply red hair that made her stand out like a flame in the darkness. Hadiza got up and joined her.

  Like all the others in the hold, the prone woman was a fellow captive. After Hadiza’s crew had been taken, there’d been a group of researchers captured, then some miners, then some wealthy Martian tourists who’d been headed to the water moon of Taurine-5. The prone woman had been one of the tourists. She wasn’t unconscious yet, but her eyes were glassy and unfocused, her golden skin gone ashen and slack.

  “What’s this?” Hadiza spoke gently to the woman. “You need water, Tamris.”

  “Just let me die,” Tamris said hoarsely.

  “Honey, you don’t want to die of thirst. It’s a terrible way to go.” Hadiza gently stroked the other woman’s cheek. She brushed a strand of sable hair from her eyes. “What you want is an electrolaser pistol. Nice and clean. Fast.”

  Tamris’s glassy gaze flicked up to Hadiza. Her brow furrowed faintly. “What kind of doctor are you?”

  “An honest one.” Hadiza got up, and made her way to the cisterns on the foreward bulkhead. Aislin rose and followed her.

  “Is it my place to force her to live when she doesn’t want to?” Hadiza asked in a low voice.

  “She might not want to live through our current circumstances,” Aislin said carefully, thoughtfully. “But if you let her die, she’ll never get the chance to escape them.”

  “If I let her die?”

  Aislin grabbed Hadiza’s wrist before she could turn away. “Wait, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s on all of us. We all have to hold each other up.” Aislin looked down at Hadiza’s hand and frowned. “I’m not a doctor, but this looks like it’s getting worse.”

  Hadiza looked down at the angry, red slash across her palm. Puffy and hot, tender to the touch, it was definitely infected. She’d cut herself several days ago trying to help Aislin take apart the ladder mounted on the portside bulkhead. The others had just stood there, staring like mute rabbits while Hadiza’s blood welled up to fill her palm, then overflowed to spill onto the floor. Hadiza, so used to rushing in to attend the others, had found herself surrounded by a mass of motionless bystanders.

  She stared down at the puckered wound now, reliving the choking resentment. Somebody do something. Anything. Just… somebody help me.

  They all expected Hadiza to take care of them, but none of them could do the same. It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t have her expertise—that they were info techs and artists and land brokers and miners and whatever else. They could still do something. Instead they stood around like lemmings, each one of them, waiting for somebody else to fix everything. And that somebody else always seemed to be Hadiza or Aislin.

  Before Lyra Hallas had escaped off-ship, she’d taken natural command of their group and had managed to corral the entire cargo hold into a nearly-succesful escape attempt. After losing the former military pilot, leadership of the captive women had fallen to the two of them with the most viable skillsets. Hadiza was a doctor. Aislin was a mech engineer.

  “Doc?” Aislin’s voice, worried, cut into her bitter ruminations.

  Hadiza shook herself back into the present. “Yeah. Something needs to happen soon.” She pulled her hand from Aislin’s grasp and examined the injury more critically in the hold’s low light. It needed to be lanced and flushed, but she didn’t have the tools to do it. There were no signs of sepsis yet, but time was getting short. Soon she’d have no choice but to break the stretched, shining skin with whatever improvised edge she could scrounge up, and rinse the festering wound with the warm, stale water from the cisterns.

  She sighed. “Let’s try to get Tamris to drink something.”

  Aislin opened the spigot on the cistern and filled her cupped hands with water. She and Hadiza returned to kneel beside Tamris.

  “Come on, Tam, have some water,” Hadiza urged. “You’re not going to be able to make a break for freedom if you’re not well hydrated.”

  “We already tried making a break for it, and here we still are,” Tamris answered grimly.

  That old choking anger flared hot and high. “Do you give up this easily every time something fails?” Hadiza demanded. “No wonder you’re taking the coward’s way out.”

  “Doc,” Aislin admonished softly.

  Hadiza winced. Aislin’s continued gentleness, in spite of everything, marked her as one of the strongest women Hadiza had ever met. Hadiza was only strong because she had to be. Because there was nobody else who could do what she did. She was tired of being the caretaker, but she had no choice but to keep going. Aislin, on the other hand, was a constant steadiness, always there to hold a hand, wipe away tears, listen to confessions. When her hands weren’t occupied with an escape attempt, she gathered the wrappers from the nutrigel packets the aliens had been giving them, and folded them into wonderful origami creatures. Every woman in the hold hand one or two of Aislin’s creations. Hadiza had a foil orchid tucked into the chest pocket of her flight suit.

  “Look,” Hadiza said more gently. “If you—”

  The light in the hold suddenly brightened. Hadiza and the other wom
en froze. Their gazes lifted automatically to the overhead hatch where their captors had been lowering food.

  But instead of the overhead hatch, it was the cargo door in the portside bulkhead that hissed and slid open. Blindingly bright broke into the hold, making the women squint. Hadiza scrambled to her feet.

  More than a dozen of the massive aliens stood silhouetted in the doorway—a wall of solid muscle. Humanoid in structure, each one of them stood over seven feet tall. Their skin was the color of a landed meteorite—shades of gray, with a subtle iridescence. Their hair was as thick and coarse as a horse’s mane, ranging in color from ice white, to silvery gray, to ink black. Their canine teeth were long fangs, sharp as a jaguar’s. The most off-putting thing about them was their eyes—yellow irises with elliptical pupils. They were cat’s eyes, fox’s eyes, snake’s eyes—the inhuman eyes of an ambush predator.

  Hadiza knew from experience that the aliens were all but invulnerable to physical attack. In addition to their superior size, their strength was magnitudes greater than that of their human captives, and their skin was as impenetrable as armor. As if that weren’t enough, there was also some kind of compound in their saliva—exposure to it sent the human women into an all-consuming sexual catatonia. Even the most hard-hearted, ferocious fighter among them became a mewling pussycat as soon as the aliens envenomated her.

  Hadiza’s heart thundered in her chest. At the first sight of their captors, she compressed her lips into a thin, hard line, sealing her mouth as tightly as she could. The aliens’ preferred method of envenomation was to lick their fingers and stick them in the women’s mouths.

  The captured women huddled into a tight mass, with the stronger pushing the weaker to the center. Even though the woman was far from weak, Hadiza made certain to shove Aislin into the middle, too. The aliens were obviously fascinated by her. Every time any of them came into the hold, they stared at Aislin’s bold red hair, her skin scattered with golden freckles, her luminous green eyes. None of them had yet done anything to her, but Hadiza worried it was only a matter of time until their questionable self-control snapped.

  While their saliva put women into a sexual trance, it was clear that they were at nearly the same level of vulnerability when it came to human sexual appeal. Weeks ago—was it months? It felt like years—when Hadiza and the other captives had tried to escape, they’d used that vulnerability to great effect against the aliens. Despite the efficacy, it wasn’t a method they dared to try again. Five women had nearly given everything—everything—in sacrificing themselves for the escape attempt. They’d been saved, ironically, by the intervention of their alien captors. Other aliens among the crew had discovered them before it was too late, and peeled the envenomated women away from their would-be rapists.

  Since then, their captors had wised up, and begun wearing black cloth masks tied over their mouths and noses. Hadiza had also noticed that the aliens wore earplugs, and could only assume that human voices had some kind of siren-like influence over them.

  As the aliens advanced into the hold, Hadiza could smell the pungent mentholated scent of whatever oil they rubbed into the masks. That was a familiar trick she’d learned from the battlefield—a smudge of mentholated petrolatum in each nostril covered nearly any scent. It was an important tool for a corpsman tasked with toe-tagging bodies that had been laying out in the heat.

  The huddled mass of women retreated from the aliens until their little herd was pressed against the far bulkhead. Hadiza stood at the front of the huddle, staring up into their captors’ hard-jawed, brutish faces. The nearest alien looked down on her. His yellow, feline eyes creased, and she knew that behind his mask, he was grinning at her. He moved like lightning, catching her by both wrists, and hauling her away from the protective huddle of her fellow captives.

  Hadiza struggled against him. Logically, she knew it was pointless, but instinct was hard to overcome. The alien hauled her wrists up over her head, stretching her arms until she had to rise up onto her tip-toes. She couldn’t thrash or kick without jerking painfully on her shoulders. On either side of her, the other women were being snatched up, crying and struggling. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aislin’s fiery hair as she was dragged away.

  The alien holding Hadiza switched his grip so that he trapped her wrists with only one big hand, freeing his other hand to slide beneath his mask, licking his thumb.

  Hadiza twisted her face away, clenching her jaw, pressing her lips as tightly closed as she possibly could. It was useless. She knew that. She still couldn’t help but try.

  His big hand gripped her jaw, his saliva-slicked thumb pressing between her lips. Her strength was no match for his. The tip of his thumb parted the desperate press of her lips, and she felt the instant hit of his venom. He’d gotten her. They always did.

  With the last few seconds of cognizance left to her, she relaxed her jaw, allowing his thumb to slide deeper into her mouth, past her teeth. And then she bit down as hard as she could. It was like biting a rock. She released him quickly, lest her teeth be wrenched from her head as he jolted in pain. Rage flashed through those yellow eyes.

  The languor was stealing through her, eating away her fear, her anger, her pride. With the last of her rage, she sucked hard on her mouth, gathering a pool of saliva, and spit in his face. Her aim was good. It spattered his cheek, just above the cover of his mask. His elliptical pupils dilated to thin crescents. The vicious pleasure she felt at seeing his anger was instantly swept away as the full blow of his venom hit her.

  And then there was only the desperate need humming beneath her skin, simmering in her blood. She swayed towards her captor, her eyes raking over his big frame. He was all broad-bodied, hard muscle. His shoulders were wide enough to land a shuttle on. His skin was charcoal gray, his hair as black as midnight. Against all that dark monochrome, his eyes gleamed like burnished gold. His pupils dilated wide as he watched the effect of his venom sweep over her. He wanted her just as badly as she wanted him.

  Or not. Because he managed to thrust her away from him, trapping her wrists behind her back. He marched her out of the cargo hold, and into the passageway. At the end of the passage, he opened the first hatch they came to, and shoved her inside, alone.

  Hadiza spun around just in time to see the hatch close in her face. Hungry for touch, for skin, aching with an emptiness that could only be filled by a male body, she threw herself at the hatch.

  “Come back,” she begged, pulling on a latch that wouldn’t release.

  She was trapped in a narrow, smooth-walled stall. Several spigots protruded from the overhead. The floor beneath her feet was one giant drain, a slotted grid beneath her boots. Liquid sprayed out from the spigots, instantly soaking her. Hadiza shrieked in surprise. The unthinking lust abated with her shock. After a moment of blind panic, she realized she’d only been doused with water. Then, jets of foam sprayed out, coating her with soap harsh enough to strip the grease off a gyrorotor. The soap sat on her for a few seconds, bubbles slowly deflating. Hadiza swept it off her face, tried to scrape it off her braids.

  The foam ate through her filthy flight suit, disintegrating it. Panicked, she frantically tried to swipe all of the soap off of her body. But whatever it was, it didn’t eat through her skin or hair. When her clothing had been eaten away to only a few threads stuck to her skin, water sprayed out again, rinsing her completely clean. Aislin’s foil orchid had fallen to the floor. It coasted over the grid on a sluice of water. Hadiza let out a sharp cry, dropping to her knees, reaching for the orchid—and then it slipped through the grate, gone. Hadiza stared at the space where it’d disappeared, overcome by a grief so acute, it was as if she’d just watched Aislin herself slip away.

  The water cut off. Numb at the loss of the orchid, disoriented by the alien venom still humming through her system, she looked up in time to be blinded by a flash of bright purple light. She gasped, screwing her eyes shut against the flash. Through her eyelids, the light flashed again. She was pretty sure sh
e saw her own retinas. The light flashed once more, leaving her completely dry.

  To her left, she heard the sound of metallic movement, but she couldn’t see a thing. She blinked hard, again and again, until the blinding whiteness faded. There, in a small compartment built into the bulkhead, lay a folded square of indigo blue fabric.

  A deep, growling voice spoke to her in the Creole, piped into the small cabin through a speaker. “Dress yourself in the provided clothing.”

  No longer wet and blinded, the venom was taking over her mind again. Moving quickly, she pulled the garment on, before she lost her sense entirely. It was a simple gown of Bijari silk. Far from revealing, it covered her from neck to ankles, with sleeves that went to her wrists. A long sash was attached at the back of the gown. She tied it around her waist to keep herself from stumbling over the trailing ends.

  When the hatch opened, the venom was stealing her mind away again. She braced herself against the bulkhead, muscles quivering as she fought against the urge to throw herself at her captor. Need was a demon inferno inside of her, burning beneath her skin, molten between her thighs. When his big hand closed around her arm, she couldn’t hold back the breathy sigh of pleasure. Touch. Even just on her arm, through the silk of her new gown, it was a balm to the hot, aching want. She curled into her captor, needing more—more of his touch, his body. What did he taste like? What would it feel like, to be pressed beneath the crushing weight of his powerful body? To be taken completely—filled with his big, hard flesh?