1
SHE NEEDED A MAN. But she sure as krek didn’t want one.
Dr. Alara Bazelle Calladar shoved aside her test samples and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Success had once again eluded her. Success would mean freedom from the Endekian biology that drove the females of her species to have sex—whether they wanted to or not—or face a painful death.
But, instead of answers, she was left with too many blasted urges.
She’d hoped to find a remedy soon. Too bad she wasn’t going to succeed today, not in time to prevent her own elevated hormone levels from driving her away from work and into the arms of a man, any man, to satisfy her biological compulsions.
Just once, she longed to give in to frustration and smash something. But the only items at hand were the DNA maturation receptacles that housed her experiments, materials too precious to sacrifice in a fit of temper.
“Alara.” Her assistant and good friend, Maki, interrupted her thoughts, the voice echoing through the com system. “You have a visitor.”
“I’m busy.” Busy was code for putting off whoever was interrupting her work until another day, a day when she wasn’t so frazzled. Under normal circumstances, her research was difficult, but during the beginnings of Boktai, Alara’s elevated hormone levels made unclouded reasoning as elusive as a Denvovian sandworm that’d grown wings. As if in anticipation of mating, the pathways that transmitted reflexes to her brain had fully engaged. Due to increased blood flow to her tissues, her lips already tingled, her breasts were tender.
“He’s . . . insistent.”
“He?” Alara snapped her head up from the array of test samples, too few of which showed any sign of promise. Science required patience, and normally she had plenty. But with her metabolic rate rising, just the mention of a man caused her heartbeat to escalate, her patience to dwindle.
“Oh, he’s one hundred and ten percent male,” Maki practically purred, and Alara imagined how the man would preen at Maki’s compliment. He’d no doubt entered the reception area puffed up with the confidence of a blowfish, certain he was wanted and worthy of female attention. Very likely, he wasn’t—though only a few of the women on her planet were enlightened enough to notice. Endekian men treated their women no better than their favorite canine, and they would never change—not until women no longer had to offer up their bodies to them on a regular basis in order to stay alive.
But while it took a lot of male muscles to impress Maki, she still wouldn’t have interrupted unless she believed the man important.
Alara swore under her breath, annoyed that in her current metabolic state, she would react to the unidentified male just like every other Endekian woman whose hormonal system demanded sex. After she lost control of her psi and failed to filter out his male scent, she’d inhale his pheromones, and she’d find him irresistible—even if he turned out to have no more charm than a sand flea, no more brain cells than a slime slug, no more sense of humor than a Terran terrorist. In the early phase of Boktai, her enhanced senses would enflame, deepening her desires, quickening her yearning, until she transformed into a rintha—an undiscriminating female who required sex with every needy cell in her body.
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