Steel (Dark Monster Fantasy Book 2) Read online

  Dark Monster Fantasy 2

  by

  Cari Silverwood

  This book contains adult language and situations only suitable for adult readers.

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  About Cari Silverwood

  Acknowledgements & Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Find a princess. Rescue one if you wish to be fully repaired. He’d tried for years. In this universe, let alone this galaxy, princesses were rare. Most places went for mixtures of tyrannies, socialocracies, or democratic messes.

  Find a princess, the cybermonks had said. And today, maybe he’d found one.

  Baz tapped a dash light that was stuck on red, careful not to smash it with his fingers. Over the past three years, controlling the force of his cybernetic parts had become second nature. With his right, cybernetic hand and arm, he could pluck the petals from a flower or do the things that needed doing badly, like killing, crushing, maiming.

  The princess memory segued into those others. It always did.

  Pain, loud noises, bright lights, more red-raw pain. Rocking in a corner, when they let him have a place to sit.

  The torture at the hands of CESS agents had gone on for days. Baz Rutland remembered it well. How could he forget the events that had made him what he was? Part machine, part man, part lost soul. Part spacejunker captain with a mortgage on his dick. Part rage.

  The bouts of rage were a glitch carried over from a head wound. Pain could set him off...and other things. Moderation was a neverending task. Dial it down was his mantra.

  He’d also been left with a strange affection for metal. Those first few mornings after the surgery he’d woken to find himself licking his metal palm and fingers. The smell of burning metal could set off his rage.

  Still... If not for the resuscitation of his torn body by the cybermonks on Omm, he’d be rotting in some forgotten grave, or a scatter of bones on a forest floor, left to be eaten by animals. He’d never quite worked out how or why the monks had found and saved him. Those omnipotent little bastards kept most data close to their steel chests.

  “Got a signal from down below still, cap’n.” His 2iC, or second-in-command, Rangoo, looked eager to do something.

  “Good.”

  They’d been circling the war-ravaged planet below in a low, fast orbit for several hours, hoping for business, hoping someone below would beg for rescue...

  They did it at a price, he and his ship of fellow lost souls and star-worn spacefarers – all of them addicted to the rush of watching local wars go down and zooming in like knights of olde. They slew no dragons, and normally saved no princesses, not like on Old-Earth. A man paid, they rescued. No pay, no passage.

  This place below was teeming with Xatar warriors on a Healthsome Crusade to rid the universe of evil. Nasty sorts. Waving blasters, lasers, and banners, they saved the sullied population from immorality – often by granting them death. If only he’d known. All that fuel wasted to get here.

  He toed the base of the dashboard before him, while angling a peaked brow at the fleet of blipping red dots populating high altitude airspace. “All those Xatar Battlesnarkers...”

  “I know, cap’n. Bad news. We are faster though.” The pitch of his voice slid up in a teensy bleat of hope. The orange-skinned Elurian grinned, showing off his face-spanning mouth and rows of triangular teeth.

  Baz grunted. He needed reminding not to hang around above doomed planets when the Xatar might be involved.

  “And less deadly, Rangoo, excluding those fangs of yours. Okay.” He sighed and slid his back lower in his seat then wondered what the squishy thing was his boot had encountered beneath the dash. “Play the message.”

  It couldn’t hurt to hear it, again? He could ignore it.

  Except...

  Princess in need of dire extraction. Emergency message for any CESS ships within the system. Please respond.

  A princess.

  A principle data extractor for CESS was, technically, called a princess, but did that count?

  He’d needed one ever since the cybermonks repaired him with metal, sxsynth-flesh, a few plas-rivets, and a prayer. They’d also left him devoid of a good dick. The CESS torturer had cut it off, thrown it to a pack of whatever rat things he kept for amusement.

  Three years now...and his screams had never left his ears.

  Instead he had a dick that barely functioned and the monks refused to gift him with one of their top-model cyber cocks. Those were far, far better than the original variety, or so he’d heard. They guaranteed them, stamped them with the CM trademark.

  The monks were the best at this, unsurpassed. The gods of cybernetics. Gods of the universe, if you listened to their crazy followers.

  He’d paid for his life and the repair work with every disgusting coin he owned. Paid with info on his past crimes, past everything.

  No CM cyber-cock until you rescue a princess, were their exact words.

  He’d gone silent at that. Tsked at them.

  Then he’d debated.

  Then begged, a little.

  The monks had not budged.

  Though they had given him a ship to use – this one, the Floating Leaf.

  She was a space junk. The solar sail that inspired the name of her ship class rose above her hull and ran from bow to stern. If the photon drive ever failed they could sail to the nearest system, though it might take a few hundred years. The antique Leaf was worth a few billion coin and likely more than he’d paid the monks.

  Somehow, the logic of this would be making sense in the heads of the unblinking, if you didn’t count their on-lights, dick-absent cybermonks.

  Would they count this person below as a princess? It could be male or female. Or some other sexual type. The sound of the voice meant zero.

  It had sounded female.

  Something about potentially getting his hands on a female CESS operative was making his perfectly normal balls get in a tizz. He’d swear they were humming at the prospect.

  “To fuck and beyond if I know,” Baz muttered. He leaned forward to eye the plethora of battlesnarkers again.

  And if he rescued this person?

  Small point, but could he restrain himself from hoisting this princess onto the solar sail and leaving her, him, or it there while the Leaf spun into hyperspace? Maybe not.

  So would that mean he’d wasted his effort if he terminated the aforementioned princess before taking them to Omm? That was assuming he could rescue them without Leaf being turned into shredded metal.

  Today was a bad day for decisions like t
his. His absent cock had been giving him phantom spikes of pain. Baz lowered his right hand...

  He halted. No, make that his left hand. And he squeezed his balls. Just for luck.

  “Cap’n?”

  “Calculate a high velocity route to that signal. We’re going to rescue us a princess, Rangoo.”

  Chapter 2

  The Xatar warriors seemed to have surrounded the skyscraping tower he and Ember hid inside. The thick missile-resistant plas-glass admitted no sound. The quietness was odd, considering.

  Quiet, except for the tap of Ember’s fingers behind him and her little voice as she gave instructions to the core of the building.

  Hid was perhaps the wrong word. This was the CESS headquarters tower and Ember’s mission was to retrieve certain data from it before war consumed the city. His mission was to keep her safe, alive, and enable their exit from the planet.

  He’d failed. Most of the escort team had been killed or captured on the way here. A few cowards had tried to escape and he’d watched them brought down and killed. Their ship was a distant plume of smoke wriggling upward from a park a few klicks away.

  Hoss leaned a hand on the junction of the ceiling and the window frame so he could peer down at where building joined land. Black teemed there. The Xatar did love their black armor. They swarmed like insects in their thousands and thousands, waving their dark banners of war and morality. Outside, the light dimmed. Dusk came.

  Paired red dots of Xatar helmet eyes glowed up at him. A carpet of red dots. Those and the lightning-jagged horns of their leaders waving about were harbingers of doom. Glimpsed flares of light and the occasional shudder underfoot told him they were attempting to breach the building’s defenses.

  Doom. Hoss rather liked the feel of that word. He could hear it roll about in his mind. People thought little went on in his head because he said few words but he merely judged well before he spoke.

  A half breed Orc and Shag, such as he was, needed to learn early when to speak and when to be silent.

  He raised his head and the long tail of hair running partway down his back slid as he did so. He should cut it again. Shaving off body hair, filing his claws, and keeping his head hair short was his means of seeming less Shag, more Orc, more civilized. On a day such as today, some might be planning their death speech. Not he. He planned his next prettification routine. He rolled his shoulders, pleased at the warm, massive strength in them. He was young, strong. The Xatar would be smears if they dared come find him or dared to harm Ember.

  She was his charge, his responsibility, and he took such things seriously.

  Yet, he failed.

  The surrounding city grew darker as power died, or brighter as destruction lit it up with the orange and red of blossoming flames...or the stark white of lasers and missile engines, or the scored red of rail gun projectiles streaking across the sky.

  “Night’s coming in thirty spokmins approx. There is still no answer to your distress message.” He said that in an almost contemplative murmur before turning to Ember. He braced himself for the impact of seeing her.

  “I gathered. I’m pretty near done. So all we need is a ride out of here. Nothing more,” she ended, her tone trailing off in what he read as despair.

  Her hair skimmed her shoulders, the red a flamboyant mix of shades she probably paid a zillion coin to create.

  What a beauty. Little silver-and-black dress with the frothy lace hem. Her long legs sculpted by red tights with pink cats running down the outside seam. His rut was coming and this female sent his male hormones into a frenzy. Her smell was enough. Her looks, my-my, he so wanted to stick something inside her.

  Untouchable though. She was higher-echelon staff. She was a human. He was a scruffy lower-class military orc slash shag.

  How she would make his balls sing, collared and leashed as his pet, at his feet while he roared and faced the ululating hordes of the Xatar.

  He’d scream her name and die gloriously bathed in blood and flames.

  Yeahhh. Dream on.

  “Urrr,” he rumbled quietly. The lace of her skirt edges always pulled his gaze. A hand with claws like his could easily push that upward, or rip her clothes to tatters and reveal the glory of those breasts that jiggled, just a little, whenever she moved.

  Not that he needed to do much to see more.

  When she leaned over, as she was, to probe within the white cylinder she’d pulled from the building’s data core...he felt drool gather in his mouth. When she leaned, her red-clad ass peeked into view from under the skirt, and her scent multiplied in strength.

  “Got it.” Ember spun, eyes still on the white rectangular data storage unit, or DSU, she carried. Coin-sized blue lenses lay over her eyes. “Got it. Now we can go.” She looked fully at him, surely too late to miss his gulp or the flare of heat in his gaze. “Can we? Somehow?”

  “Not yet.” He slowly shook his head then returned to his position at the window, gestured. “Out there we would die in seconds, unless they deigned to make us prisoners. We need a ship.”

  “The building’s air defenses still function. Only a CESS ship can get in and not be shot down.”

  “Yes. Though we can switch them off, if someone else comes.”

  Beside him now, she pressed close to the window then said quietly but firmly. “You’ve got a long gun. Lend it to me. I want to get at least one of them.”

  Hoss peeked sideways. What? The kitten had claws after all.

  “No. You’d have to break the window. You’d attract attention we don’t need. They aren’t shooting up at us.”

  “Fudge buckets,” she muttered.

  Even her cursing was normally tame.

  He subtly pressed the camo switch above the crotch of his skin-tight camo pants.

  Black was good for avoiding being shot but turning on the environment-duplicating camo meant his huge erection also showed less. Now he’d look like a window when he turned and not an aroused beast.

  “Camo?” Ember almost sounded disappointed. “Do you need that? I can barely see you. You’re the only humanoid left alive in here. Please?”

  Fuck. Hoss sighed then switched it off. “The signal will keep going by itself. Shall we seek other things to do?” May as well face her, you coward. They must look to accumulating weapons, maps of the city, the building blueprints –

  “Sure. Sure.” She tucked the DSU into a skirt pocket then perched the data spectacles in her hair. “Let’s get drunk, shit-faced drunk, do some drugs, and...” She hesitated. “Everything I need to do before I die. Because we’re going to soon, aren’t we, Hoss?”

  Said in that clipped tone, with all the syllables tucked away where they should be, he refused to comprehend at first. Besides, she’d said his name. She never did that.

  “What? No! No we aren’t.”

  “I don’t believe you. Tell me how we get out of this?”

  Another boom shook the building. Then another. The lights flickered. This place could hold the Xatar off for a few more hours.

  Choose wisely, he told himself. Go out in a blaze of glory, all weapons firing. Or go out drunk, after sharing some potentially close-up time with Ember.

  “Let’s get drunk.”

  “Good.” Her smile was almost a grimace. “The exec office has a bar. What’s your poison?”

  “Poison?” He trailed after her, still watching that twitching ass. How did human females manage it? They just walked, and everything down below flowed. “Uhhh, coffee. It gets me drunk.”

  “Wow. Cheap. Come, I will brew you a perfect coffee and we will sit somewhere magnificent and watch the sun go down on this world.”

  And so it happened. She sipped and slurped some tea-colored alcohol called Spurghowzer while he drank coffee. It was amazing coffee, and he had a sexy human female sitting beside him at the edge of the executive garden they’d found on the very top floor. Her scent intoxicated him beyond his worst imaginings, beyond the effects of coffee, but he was past worrying over the size of his
throbbing cock.

  Their legs dangled over the edge of the garden terrace. The vast window ahead showed a horizon marked by war and flames. Here was still perfect. Her bare feet even touched his now and then. They’d kicked off their boots.

  “Beautiful.” Ember raised a glass toward the black sky. Glowing specks and squares marked the battlesnarkers that cruised overhead. “Still no one coming. We’re fucked, I think.”

  He only grunted. Not much to add to that. “I am happy.”

  It was true.

  “Have you ever...” Past the slur in her voice, he heard a swallow. “Have you ever thought of making love to a woman, Hoss?”

  His world grew a few cracks. His heart stopped. “No.” Liar. “You mean...a human woman?” He kept his gaze rigid and straight ahead, though hope was rising.

  Be calm, be logical. This doesn’t mean anything.

  But the rut had hold of him. Take. Fuck. Make it yours!

  Oh, fuck off. He could be iron, emotionless. He was orc!

  “I have a thing, you see.”

  A thing? He glimpsed her lower her glass to the terrace floor on the other side then climb to her knees. Then she reached up and laid a hand on his shoulder. Hoss tensed. From the corner of his vision, he saw the approach of the female’s face. “Can I?”

  Finally, he turned his head and regarded her. Jaw clenched he thought through his answer and tried not to squeak as he replied.

  “It is not outside my own desires. However, my job is to keep you safe. This would not be safe. Trust me, you do not want to do this.”

  “I trust you.” She rose to her knees and her hand grazed the top of his thigh then landed gracefully and agonizing over the shaft of his cock. The weight of the girl’s hand... He let out a strangled curse that threatened to become a groan.

  “Hoss. Ummm. Would I fit?”

  Then he did curse and he swiveled to place his hands either side of her waist, lift her over him and deposit her straddling his lap, thighs to either side. But he was so big compared to her that her folded legs slipped and her body split apart as far as it could. Her skirt slipped up her thighs.