But to Asier’s surprise, the human bent her head and put on just a little more speed. It was enough for her to reach the forest and slip into the tree line before the Scaeven trafficker could get his hands on her.
She was out of Asier’s sight.
The trafficker stopped at the trees. He paced along the dark perimeter, but did not enter the forest.
After several agitated passes along the tree line, he gave up, and returned to the vessel. He likely knew what lurked in these woods, and wasn’t going to risk his own life for one lost parcel.
But the human did not know the risks she was facing. She hadn’t had much of a choice. Escaping an immediate danger didn’t leave much time for assessing other environmental risks.
Asier folded his scope flat and slid it inside his jacket. He checked the charge on his electron pistol. Not enough to kill any of the bigger spiders, but he primed it anyway. A good zap would at least deter them. He picked up his long-range arc rifle and slung the strap over his shoulder. He had to find the human before the spiders did.
And he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t excited to see one up close.
He heard her before he saw her. Vegetation cracked and rasped as she fought through it. She was breathing hard, still running. He didn’t know much about human physiology, but he was certain that covering two-thirds of a league, on foot, through dense undergrowth, in the dark, at such a speed, was not a small feat.
Asier positioned himself in her path, sinking down onto one knee and crossing his arms over his chest. It was a Scaeven gesture used by enemy combatants to indicate they wanted to negotiate, to speak peacefully. It was a request for parley. He doubted humans had the same gesture, but he hoped she would recognize the unthreatening posture, the passiveness of his pose, and understand he meant no harm.
She burst through a hanging curtain of vines. Her sudden appearance took him by surprise, even though he’d known when and where she would reach him.
Up close, her humanity was even more compelling. Until now, Asier had only ever seen detailed images of humans on comm displays.
Like many young Scaevens, he’d spent his fair share of time as a boy poring over reference archives on human female anatomy—inspecting the images for prurient reasons, rather than the educational purposes they were meant to serve.
The Scaevens were a male-only race, who reproduced through engagement with the females of other compatible species. Once upon a time, human females had been one of those species. But eons ago, in his great-great-grandfather’s generation, the Scaeven judiciary banned Scaeven-human interaction, forbid Scaeven incursions into human territory, and outlawed the pursuit of human mates.
They were too dangerous, human females. The effect they had on a Scaeven was beyond reason, beyond control. More than one Scaeven had gone blissfully to his own death, and the death of his human mate, so lost in the enticement of her body that every other need ceased to exist.
It was because humans were such short-lived creatures, Asier suspected. And because they were so fragile, and easy to kill. The propagation of their species depended on quantity of output. A human woman could bear more than a dozen off-spring in the span of her fertile years. As such, their bodies were engineered to be, in every way, the pinnacle of sexual temptation. To induce mating and conception as frequently as possible. And Scaevens—even with their superior tech, and their vast political domain, and their far-reaching history, and their complex cultural development—were far from immune to that temptation.
So, of course, immediately after the legal injunction against human contact, a black market had sprung up. But for every ship of traffickers Asier took down, two more replaced it. A pattern had begun to emerge. Rather than the disconnected work of greedy, conscienceless opportunists, it was clear the traffickers were being managed. They operated by identical protocols, followed the same standards. They were part of an organization. And after solars spent chasing cold trails and false leads, Asier was finally on the verge of making real headway into the upper echelons of the cartel.
But as he stared at the human in front of him, every thought of justice and righteousness and honor fled from his mind. Instead, he felt only a primitive, bestial impulse that nearly flattened him.
Need. Take. Mine.
His youthful explorations of the biological archives had not prepared him for the mind-obliterating impact of human beauty. The creature in front of him was pure, unadulterated sex.
Beneath the fitted protection of her flight suit, her breasts were round, full curves, and would only become fuller, rounder, if he got her with child. Her narrow waist flared out into the buxom swell of hips wide enough to bear his young. Her skin looked softer than Ravanoth velvet, her hair as fine as Bijari silk. Her parted lips would be always rosy and swollen, forever calling to mind the other parts of her body made of soft, pink flesh.
She was ethereally pale, a blend of different shades of sunlight—all peachy, golden, icy luster. She was tall for a human woman, but still small enough that Asier could so easily pick her up and carry her away and…
Stop. From deep inside him, the smallest, faintest echo of his own conscience fought to be heard. She’s frightened. She’s lost. She’s in danger.
He forced himself into the cool detachment with which he always conducted himself in his role as a Scaeven Enforcer. The creature in front of him was exhausted, injured, and wild with fear.
She hesitated for a moment in the clearing, squinting in the low light, assessing her options. Her night vision was not nearly as good as his. She didn’t seem to register Asier’s presence at all. She surged forward, tripping over Asier’s foot, and went sprawling to the ground. She remained where she’d fallen, gasping for breath.
This close, the scent of her hit Asier like a furnace blast—skin, sweat, female musk. Every muscle in his body clenched as he battled the impulse to leap on her, to claim her. Hadn’t he been warned how dangerously intoxicating human females were?
With only the faintest thread of self-control remaining, he turned stiffly to face her, keeping himself on one knee.
His movement startled her. She sat up abruptly. Her round human pupils dilated even wider, struggling to make sense of him in the darkness. Too late, he realized the mirroring fibers of his tactical jacket would have camouflaged him into the darkness. Even a Scaeven might have had trouble perceiving him.
Trying not to frighten her further, he spoke in a low voice, hoarse from the strain of his self-control. “I mean you no harm,” he said in the traders’ Creole.
As fast as any terrified creature, she leapt to her feet and scrambled backwards through the bracken, away from him.
Opposing needs forced him to his feet. There was the honorable desire to ensure her safety, to see that she was protected and defended from the threats of the traffickers, and the threats of this inhospitable planet. But roaring over the top of that bloodless duty was an incendiary, primitive rage at the escape of a fertile female, and the predatory impulse to hunt her down.
His blood pounded in his ears, and he surged after her.
She twisted to look back at him. Those eyes—round and wide, but as coolly penetrating as shards of ice—met his. Instead of wild, unthinking panic, Asier detected something acute beneath her obvious fear. An analytical gleam. A calculating assessment, done in the space of a breath. She faced forward, running hard. He was closing the gap. In seconds, he’d have his hands on her.