Azar's Prize Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Azar’s Prize

  ISBN # 1-4199-0422-1

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Azar’s Prize Copyright© 2006 Reese Gabriel

  Edited by Pamela Campbell.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Electronic book Publication: April 2006

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Warning:

  The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E–rotic by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

  S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

  E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

  X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

  More Than Male:

  Azar’s Prize

  Reese Gabriel

  Chapter One

  Look in the galactic dictionary under death wishes, and you would find the name of Theryssa, first female officer of the Star Guardians…

  At this very moment Theryssa was floating weightless off the starboard bow of her class one solo cruiser, two parsecs from nowhere, deep into pirate space, happily ripping out the nav-com beacons and hyper-drive relays, without which she had no chance of ever getting home.

  Why was she doing such a damn-fool, idiotic, black-hole-for-brains thing? Incredibly enough, it was a top secret mission—one she had devised for herself and sold her superiors on. Certainly, it had seemed a good idea at the time…sort of.

  A lot of people said Theryssa was only doing this to prove that she was fit to be in the Guardian Corps, and not there merely because of the special entrée given her by her parents, who happened to be the two most important people in the galaxy. Others thought she was just plain reckless and unstable.

  What kind of normal person, after all, would be willing to set herself up as bait to be captured by a sex-crazed pirate king so they could spy on him and see if he was in bed with the Narthians?

  Bed being a highly charged word in this context, given how much time this particular pirate king was said to enjoy spending in them with his captured females. Azar Xenelion was his name, and supposedly he was irresistible to the female sex. According to space lore, a woman need be brought to him chained or tied only one time—that being the first. After that, she would return to him willingly, begging his touch.

  Theryssa knew that was ridiculous, not to mention an insult to female dignity. She would just as soon believe that little yarn as she would some of the other tales about the man, such as the time he purportedly eluded an entire Guardian escort flotilla, capturing an armored freighter loaded with fifteen cosmic tons of priceless velocite gems.

  What was not an exaggeration, unfortunately, were the many accounts of how incredibly ravishing he was. His holoid images made her wet each and every time. Her favorite one showed the man bare chested, with his razor-sharp energy sword and scabbard, the leather belt swung over his muscular shoulder. He was beautiful and sexy and manly in a raw and primal way. Not like the genetic perfection of the primales, among whom Theryssa’s father was one of the finest.

  It was hard to pinpoint the appeal. Perhaps it was just the idea that this Azar was so alien to her own carefully planned world. That his body had grown strong purely through labor and war, that his skin was bronzed by the sun, his biceps and triceps and rock-hard abdomen forged in the wilds. Not to mention the scandalously earthy method of his birth—out of the womb of a mother, from the planted seed of a father. No genetic planning, no seeding laboratory. No test tubes, no endless statistics.

  Even his age was hard to pinpoint. In some of the holoids, he looked to be in his early thirties, while in others he seemed closer to her father’s age. If that was the case, he was certainly maintaining his raw vitality.

  Or was savage the better word, what with that long, tawny hair hanging down his back, the fierce blue eyes, quick as a jaguar’s? And that mind—cunning as anything the geneticists could devise and yet free of all the restraints that could possibly be put upon it by society.

  Azar Xenelion. Free in thought. Dangerously so, choosing an outlaw’s life, living off the wealth of the liners and freighters unfortunate enough to cross his path. His prey, he called them, and their contents, booty.

  The women were booty, too. Fems, obedients, aliens, no distinction was made. He took as he wished, making the women want him in every way possible before casting them aside for new ones. An abhorrent philosophy, yes, but still there was a magnetism to the man that even Theryssa, a female with three quarters primale blood, raised by the most powerful two members of the government, could not deny it.

  Some said it was even worse than that, that the reason he attacked Guardian ships had to do with his desire to destroy the genetic system itself, creating a world of natural birth. The very thought made the skin crawl.

  Living with Azar’s images burned into her brain was not proving easy. So far it had been touch and go. She could have sworn the bastard was grinning at her from the other side of those holoids when she’d sat in her quarters on the edge of her seat, her coveralls hastily pulled open, her hand shoved down between her legs, absorbing the wet heat, her fingers simulating the action of a cock. His cock. Thrusting. Thrusting. Thrusting.

  She had come harder than she had in months, maybe ever, soaking the plastiseal seat and leaving herself open and vulnerable in a way that defied description. It was crazy. All she had done was masturbate to his image and yet she’d felt like she had been physically and mentally had by the man. Possessed in the fullest sense of the word.

  Twice that night she had buried the holoids as deep as she could in her backup system. If she could have destroyed them outright, she would have. As it was, she had pulled them back up on her personal monitor both times, again achieving mind-blowing orgasms.

  She even went so far as to fabricate a dildo from the objectifier, one that she thought would appropriately simulate the shaft of a man that size—six foot five, two hundred plus pounds of sheer muscle, broad shoulders, tapered waist, rock-hard thighs.

  Oh my fucking stars. She was sure her screams were audible all the way to the next galaxy. She shoved that thing so far inside herself, so deep that she was actually shivering and panting and grunting, hot and cold, filled to the point of explosion and totally fucking needy and empty all at the same time.

  She shouted fuck a million times, and every other swear word on top of it. Colors poured into her brain that she had never seen, and sensations in her breasts and belly that she had only ever associated with the intoxication of bubble juice. In short, she went supernova, suns imploding inside suns, collapsing down to the
tiniest little pleasure points, and then expanding all over again, rushing to fill the void at hyper-light speed.

  Her pussy had a life all its own, contracting and bearing down on the dildo like they shared some secret language. The liquid just kept flowing and her clit, so very full and swollen just hung there, like a laser trigger, locked on constant feed.

  Nonstop firing. Blast. Blast. Blast. Eye-dousing pinks and purples and reds.

  Then she got really wacky and ordered her auto-grid host to sim the holos up a bit, showing the pirate in various fun poses. Sans clothing of course. She had to stop herself from putting her own holos in the mix, simulating sex acts. What was next—scribbling their initials in her notepad like a first term adolescent?

  She put up a sex blocker against him—part of her Guardian training—and tried to figure what was wrong with her. Was it all that silly talk about his being so sexually invincible? Was she just more nervous about the mission than she was willing to admit to herself?

  She knew better, of course, than to complain to her parents. As far as her mother was concerned, she was getting everything she deserved after pushing so hard to be the first female cadet in the all-male Guardian service.

  She would never forget her response when she’d first told Mom she wanted to join up.

  “You ought to be taking this time to explore,” Nyssa, the current Head of the High Council, had counseled. “You’re only twenty-three. You should be sowing your oats, making sex and music like I did at your age. You’ll have responsibilities soon enough.”

  Pointing out that she was not her mother’s clone and that she might wish to lead her life differently would have been pointless. It was times like this that Theryssa found it hardest to be one of the precious few persons in the world whose genes had come from two specific people rather than an abstract, engineered mix.

  The program was experimental and highly secret. Her own parents were two of the first. While her real origins could not be made known to the general public, she did manage to grow up with both of her progenitors as opposed to being raised in a cluster with many other children. Having a biological mother and father to live with, and who saw one as reflections of themselves, Theryssa learned, could be a real drag.

  Her father was initially a lot more helpful. As Commander of the Guardians, General Theron had smoothed the way for her groundbreaking entry into the Service, not only with its primale members, but with Mom, who in Dad’s opinion was a far more fearsome adversary.

  Once she had joined up, however, he’d become like a second drill sergeant. Worse really, because he could interrupt her any time day or night, even if she was on leave. As far as he was concerned, the tougher the assignment she took on, the better.

  His daughter was, after all, the best of the best, destined for great things.

  Shooting comets, how many times had she heard that lecture? Since she was a little child, four or five solars old they had been telling her the story of how they had been engineered themselves, just so they could come together and support each other and so their DNA could be used to make a new, stronger kind of human being…of which Theryssa was the first.

  That story became the template for everything. The time she’d played tag with her robo-dog in the house when she was six and broke one of her mother’s prize holo-acting trophies, she was betraying her destiny. The time she only got a ninety-nine instead of a hundred on her interdimensional geometry final when she was fifteen because she had stayed out too late kissing a boy the night before—that had been betraying her legacy, too.

  Did they have any idea how hard it was to live with that kind of pressure? Didn’t they see that Theryssa was just a person, trying to live out her life like anybody else? Besides, from everything she had grown up seeing of her parents exploits, battling the Narthians and fighting back the anti-geneticists led by Malthusalus, they were the real heroes, not her.

  Theryssa did have an aunt, her mother’s younger half sister Seria, and her husband Raylar. Raylar was second in command of the Guardians and would take her father’s place once he retired. He was a good man, though a bit stiff at times. Aunt Seria was a lot easier to talk to and pretty sympathetic when it came to sharing her frustrations with her parents.

  Seria had a legacy of her own thrust upon her, as the chosen mate of Raylar. Since she hadn’t been engineered to serve in a leadership position, she tended to be a little more laid-back about things. Seria shared the same father as Nyssa, the dynamic Marax. Her mother, however, was a very beautiful obedient who had died a long time ago.

  Theryssa had been a little girl when Seria’s identity was revealed to her. Theryssa had bonded with her right away. In some ways she was like a big sister. Although half obedient by blood, she was pretty bold and independent in her own right. She still worked part-time in the Diplomatic Corps.

  The bulk of her time was spent with their son, her cousin Saymar. Saymar was barely ten, though he already fancied himself a great warrior. Theryssa wondered how in the world he was going to have the patience to wait for his own turn at leading the Guardians after the eventual retirement of his father Raylar, who had yet to assume command himself.

  Theryssa would have been perfectly happy with a normal, unremarkable military career, albeit as the first of her gender to serve in the Corp of Star Guardians, responsible for defending the humanoid planets against all barbarian or Narthian bug invasions. But destiny has a funny way of catching up to a person. Case in point, Theryssa’s current mission. It didn’t take a robo-surgeon to figure out this was no ordinary assignment. She was about to go seriously undercover, unarmed into pirate hands, with no hope of backup.

  In the back of her mind, Theryssa had to know that she might never get home again—most especially if she succeeded in passing along the information about the Narthians, thereby engendering the pirate’s eternal wrath. Still, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. For a decade Guardian Command had been after Xenelion and now, through Theryssa, fresh from the Academy, they had a chance to infiltrate his operation and link him to the Narthian Bug Hordes in one fell swoop.

  All because Theryssa was a woman. Talk about ironies.

  She was a little surprised they had let her do it, to be honest. Her superiors had balked at first. And while no one ever said so, Theryssa’s father, and therefore her mother, must surely have had to sign off on the idea.

  Theryssa wasn’t sure whether to feel good or bad about them letting her do this. At one level it meant they really did trust her as much as they were always saying they did, which was cool. But they had been so damn calm when they said goodbye. What was up with that? Were they just being callous, all disciplined and command-like, or did they have some kind of ace up their sleeves that was going to keep her safe? Some secret bit of knowledge that changed the equation she thought she was dealing with?

  Would the possibility surprise her? Not really. After all, that was how her grandparents, Nyssa’s mother and father, the former Head of the Council and Commander of the Guardians had always worked things. With bigger purposes, as they put it.

  Or as Theryssa preferred to think of it, playing things the sneaky way.

  Speaking of being sneaky, she had to work fast to finish sabotaging her ship and get back inside. She had to be careful, of course, to make it look natural, like meteor damage, or space shrapnel. Never mind that any halfway competent star pilot would never allow himself to be hit by a flying rock in the middle of a million mile wide void—Theryssa was just going to have to play dumb on that one.

  Tee, hee. Look at me, the bimbo woman astronaut.

  They’d probably buy it, too, the way all chauvinists do when offered a chance to reinforce their stupid ideas about male supremacy. What these pirates would never know, assuming Theryssa played her role as helpless captive right, was that she was not just another reasonably pretty face. She was a trained expert in self-defense, with lethally registered skills. She also had those primale genes, a hundred percent on her father’s
side and half on her mother’s. That meant she had a fair share of her Dad’s augmented powers, including super hearing, ultra-range sight and a strength factor that ought to make her able to knock any dozen or so of these pirate morons back to whatever Dark Age they’d skulked out of.

  She would need the super senses pretty quickly to tell when they were coming up on her ship, too. Without her nav-com beacons, she was blind as a Corian bat fish out here.

  They couldn’t come a moment too soon at this point. As much as Theryssa didn’t look forward to being plucked up as “booty”, she was far more afraid of not being found. Sure, Guardian Command would institute a search if she failed to turn up in some shape or form within the next Solar, but they would have only an approximate idea of where to look for her. She had gone off the holo-trackers some time ago, so as not to scare the pirates away. This meant no visual tracking or any spacecraft to come to her rescue.

  If anyone else found her, they would never believe she was a Guardian. Not flying as she was, incognito, wearing an interstellar delivery uniform, her craft marked with the logo of an outfit which transported one of a kind items for people rich enough not to have to create simulations using their objectifiers.

  Theryssa would tell them she was lost, drifted off course. She sighed thinking of how she would be making a moron of herself, complete with batting eyelashes and looks of awe. What an acting job, complete with painful, bimbo-like slowness as she pretended to realize that her rescuers were not knights in shining space armor, but interstellar ne’er-do-wells. Please don’t hurt me with your mean old swords, Mr. Pirates, sirs. Back inside the ship at last, Theryssa occupied herself playing a game of groak against the ship’s computer. She noted the time. A minute since she checked last.