by Sonia Nova
His hair felt coarse under her fingers and if she’d ever thought grabbing someone’s horns while kissing them was weird, she wasn’t feeling that now. Zeriq’s tongue was rough as it invaded her mouth. There were little nubs on its surface that seemed to massage her mouth as his tongue entwined with hers. She pushed her body closer against his in need, wanting more.
Zeriq groaned in response as she rubbed her body against his. When they finally parted, the force of the kiss had left her dizzy. Now, she wasn’t just warm all over, she was burning. The heat between her legs drove her insane, and judging by the firm length of Zeriq’s cock pressed against her side, he felt the same.
Zeriq stared down at her, his dark eyes now filled with lust, and Hazel wanted to kiss him again, to feel his body against her.
There were too many layers between them.
Hazel wanted to be closer to him. She wanted to feel his skin against hers without anything between them to dull sensation. She slipped her hands under his t-shirt, feeling the firm ripple of his muscles, and pulled the shirt up as she followed the shape of his toned chest.
Some part of her questioned how and why this was happening, but she dismissed the thoughts. All that mattered was that it was happening. She wanted him, and clearly, he wanted her.
Eagerly following her lead, Zeriq gathered the fabric of her sweater and shirt in his hands and yanked upward. The cold air of the shuttle made goosebumps rise on the skin of her abdomen and breasts as her body was exposed.
Soon, they were both completely shirtless, and Zeriq pulled her tight against his body. Skin pressed against skin from the waist up, and he placed hungry kisses on her mouth, neck, and collarbone…
Heat gathered on her skin everywhere he kissed, and soon, the chilliness of the shuttle was a distant memory. Her whole mind and body screamed for Zeriq to hurry up and take off her pants already, but he was taking his time, kissing down between her breasts.
He knelt so he could continue to brush his lips over her ribs and down her stomach. With one hand, he pulled down her jeans and panties and she kicked them off her feet.
Even though she was now completely naked in front of this near stranger, the thought barely entered her mind. She wasn’t self-conscious or embarrassed. Her usual anxieties were completely gone.
Following her instincts, she grabbed onto the base of his horns and pressed his head between her legs. He obliged, using one hand to part her flesh and his tongue to rub against her most sensitive part.
“Oh…” She shuddered at the warm pressure of his tongue. The little nubs on his tongue massaged her clit oh so pleasurably, and she bucked her hips upward, pressing his head closer against her heated flesh.
The sharpness of his teeth suddenly flashed into her memory and she was momentarily afraid – what if he accidentally hurt her? – but then she couldn’t think at all because his tongue was flicking against her at such a speed that she had to press her palms against the shuttle wall to steady herself.
Apparently satisfied that she was now ready for him, Zeriq stood and unzipped his pants. His expression was wild as he looked down at her and his nostrils flared. He took his massive cock in his hand and stroked his shaft a couple of times until he somehow grew even bigger. Harder.
Hazel swallowed at the sight, wondering if he was actually going to fit in her. She shifted her gaze back into his eyes, and they shared a glance. He raised a questioning eyebrow at her, and she knew what he was asking.
Are you sure?
But there was no question in her mind. She wanted him, more than she’d ever wanted any man, and they had already taken far too long to get to this point.
She answered by stepping toward him.
“Hold me,” she whispered, and he clearly understood. He grabbed her by the back of her thighs and pulled her up against him, holding her up in the air as if she weighed nothing. She straddled him, wrapping her legs around him and her arms around his shoulders.
His cock was hot and hard between her legs. It only took a slight shift of her hips to guide the head against her opening. He thrust upward – slowly, but with purpose, all the while looking at her expression carefully, as if making sure he wouldn’t hurt her.
The head of his cock slipped inside her, and Hazel’s breath caught in her throat. Zeriq continued pushing, inching into her slowly, and soon, he was completely inside her.
His cock stretched her to her limits. As wet as she was, his size was like nothing she had ever felt before. She gasped as he began to move within her. She tightened her hold around his neck and rested her head against his chest for support, the sensation overwhelming.
“Are you okay?” His voice was low in her ear.
“Mhm,” she moaned in answer. Very okay, she thought. More than okay.
He carried her over to the pile of cushions and blankets still in the aisle and laid her down, the whole time keeping their hips together and never moving from inside her.
“Good,” he growled back to her, his voice rough.
It seemed as if her confirmation was all that he needed. It was like a switch had been flipped inside him, and he began to thrust into her with a steady rhythm. Fast. Hard.
His strength shocked her. Every thrust was so powerful she thought she could feel the shuttle shift in the snow around them. He thrust in and out of her, his cock stroking her just right inside her.
Soon, she was crying out with her legs spread wide and her hands gripping at Zeriq’s back. His animalistic grunts mingled with her own moans, and it was like there were no brakes.
He thrust into her with purpose, and pleasure built inside her. Just as Hazel was creeping toward the edge, he slowed down, straightening himself. Hazel caught her breath for a moment.
He moved onto his knees, changing their position, and held her hips firmly against his while he started to thrust again. The new angle nearly made her eyes roll with pleasure.
This was so unlike her.
The moans and sighs... How she eagerly shoved her hips against his while he moved a thumb to her clit… She had never had sex like this – no, she decided, fucked like this – with such abandon.
He bent down over her, kissing her lips while roughly fingering her clit, never slowing the movements of his hips. Maybe he had been careful before, because now and then his sharp teeth grazed her bottom lip as they moved together, mouth on mouth.
The pain nearly felt good, but then again, every touch or even breath of air on her body felt good in that moment.
It was all so much, so quick. Only moments ago, hadn’t they just been talking over a handful of berries? And now…
His thumb pressed so hard against her clit she ached between her legs. The ache spread within her, until she couldn’t separate the sensation of Zeriq’s movements and her own pleasure.
“Zeriq–” she moaned, unable to craft a statement any more complicated than that.
But it seemed he understood just what she meant. He continued his movements using exactly the same angle and pressure and ground down at her as her gasps started to come faster.
His own breathing quickened as he moved within her. He stared down at her, his eyes filled with desire, never slowing down. Those intense black eyes were last thing Hazel saw before she threw her head back. Tingling nerve endings between her legs exploded with pleasure and she came harder than ever in her life.
Crying out, she held onto Zeriq as her hips shuddered involuntarily in pure bliss. He growled as well, his hips moving faster than ever, pounding into her. She felt him begin to pulse within her and–
Was he growing even more inside her?
It felt like his cock expanded, filling her to the extreme as it pulsed inside her.
He moaned her name as his own climax overtook him.
“Hazel…”
After that, Hazel saw only stars.
It took a while for her senses to return to her, but when they did, she noticed they were once more on the floor of the shuttle. They lay entangled in each othe
r, their skin slick with sweat, breathing heavily.
They stayed like that for a long moment, but once she caught her breath, Hazel rolled out from underneath him and looked up at the silver ceiling of the shuttle. She still ached between her legs with a dull pleasure.
Oh. Fuck.
What the hell had just happened?
CHAPTER 10
ZERIQ
Zeriq watched Hazel work through the cockpit doors. She was hunched over the comm, her curly hair braided and pulled back at her neck, completely focused on her task. In fact, she hadn’t said anything to him since the day before. Since they had…
He groaned at the memory that surfaced in his mind, turning away from the female to look at something else. Anything else.
He should have known better. Those fruits didn’t only come with the danger of poisoning or making them sick. Alien food could do anything, and in this case, it had made them fuck like the furry little creatures that had overtaken and spread all over the Ekrin moon.
And now Hazel wouldn’t even look at him.
The fact was like a sharp knife to his chest. If he was being honest with himself, he had wanted her since the moment he’d laid eyes on her in the café on the E’lania.
The sex they’d had the previous morning had been animalistic, urgent, and alien fruit-induced… but he would have been just as happy to lay her down and make love to her, discovering the small hollows of her body that made her shiver when he kissed them, gently caressing her until she climaxed again and again and was spent and exhausted beneath him…
He frowned at the thought.
As if that was even possible for someone like him.
Walking to the back of the shuttle, he tried to find something to busy himself with. He started to mindlessly rearrange the cushions and blankets in the aisle, but even then, he could detect the faint scent of their intermingled sweat from the previous morning, and it was a strong reminder of what exactly had gone wrong.
Last night, he had gotten the hint from Hazel when she hadn’t talked with the him the rest of the day, and had slept upright in one of the shuttle seats they hadn’t dismantled. He had taken the makeshift bed on the floor, and when he had awoken, she was already in the cockpit, working.
Why wouldn’t the damn female talk to him?
The ache in his chest intensified at the thought. He knew human females were known to be complicated and hard to read, but he was getting her message loud and clear. The previous morning had been a mistake and she wanted nothing more to do with him.
Not that he could’ve really expected anything else…
He grimaced at the thought. His kind were unnatural beasts. There was no reason a soft female like her would ever be interested in him. Not for real anyway.
But still… Somehow, for some reason, her silence made him hurt inside in a way he never had before. Since she wasn’t talking to him, he’d had plenty of time to think, and he had been trying to identify what it was that he was feeling inside. To no avail.
He had simply decided that there were no words. All he knew was that when he watched her work, completely ignoring him, the strange ache he felt moved down his throat and into his chest. He hadn’t been able to breathe completely comfortably since she had started to treat him like this. It was as if there was an invisible, heavy weight on his chest, and he could hardly bear it.
He rearranged the cushions faster, until a strange choking sound from the cockpit caught his attention. He dropped the blanket he had been folding and ran to the open cockpit doors. Hazel was on the ground between the seats and the control panels.
The weight on his chest got heavier as his mind began to race.
What had happened? Was she okay?
He crouched into the tiny cockpit and leaned over Hazel. She was curled on the floor with her face in her hands, sobbing, but she was breathing.
Should he leave her alone? She clearly wanted nothing to do with him, but…
He couldn’t stop himself. Carefully, he put a hand on her shoulder.
“I can’t do it,” she cried into her hands, not looking up at him. “I can’t. We’re never getting out of here.”
Glancing up, Zeriq saw the open communications panel. The emergency signal was transmitting, that much he could tell, but he wasn’t sure what the rest of the settings meant. Apparently, it wasn’t good.
He squeezed her shoulder. “You need to eat,” he said, his voice coming out rougher than he’d intended. He didn’t know how to comfort someone, how to encourage them and give them strength when they were down.
But he did know she needed to eat.
As many berries as Hazel had eaten the day before, she still hadn’t had a full meal in days. Even he was starting to feel the effects of the lack of nutrients and if he was, he could only imagine how a human like Hazel must feel.
She shook her head, not moving her hands from her face.
“I’m not eating anything else on this damn planet,” she muttered bitterly into her palms.
Zeriq didn’t know if the words were supposed to hurt him or not, but they felt like a phaser beam to the heart. He removed his hand from her shoulder and was about to leave and just search for food by himself, when she moved her hands from her face and looked up toward him.
“Wait,” she said, her voice suddenly steady.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks flushed, and her nose was running as she looked up at him. But even so, the sight of her made his chest tighten in a whole new way. Although her sadness pained Zeriq, she looked so beautiful to him, and he wanted nothing more than to make it all better for her.
An oddly determined expression took over her features as she spoke. “How many days have we been here again?”
Zeriq had to think for a moment. “Three,” he answered.
Hazel’s expression fell. “It’s Thanksgiving,” she breathed quietly.
“What?” Zeriq frowned, uncomprehending. The word meant nothing to him, but she ignored him. Instead of responding, she got on her hands and knees and started to search around the floor of cockpit.
“I know I left it in here…” she said softly, probably to herself.
“Your bag?” Zeriq guessed.
“Yes!” She sat up. “Have you seen it?”
“Under the co-pilot seat,” he said, and watched Hazel crawl halfway under the seat and pull out her bag.
Her eyes lit up in a way he hadn’t seen in days when she pulled her tablet out and turned it on with the touch of her thumb.
“It still has battery,” she said. “Of course, there’s no connection, but…”
He watched as she opened up the front-facing camera and wiped her eyes before pressing record.
“Mom, dad, Shea, Lila… Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I hope you aren’t worrying too much about me today, and that you’re all together sharing a delicious meal. I’m so thankful for all of you every day and I’m going to do everything I can to get home to you as soon as I possibly can.”
She paused and took a deep breath. Zeriq watched her eyes fill with tears again.
“I love you all.”
She ended the video and sighed, shutting her eyes.
Zeriq had so many questions, but he didn’t say anything. Whatever this “thanks-giving” was, it meant a lot to Hazel and had reminded her of her family.
Family.
That was something that Zeriq had never had. He had no parents, no true siblings, though many of the Ezak-X were genetically similar. He only had the Krezlians: creators who had designed him in a laboratory with a complete absence of love and care – only the greed of the universal dominance they could achieve through the power of an army of his race.
“Shea and Lila? They are also your family?” he asked, keeping his voice as gentle as he could. He didn’t know if asking would make her more upset, but she clearly loved her family so deeply, perhaps remembering them would give her the motivation to not give up – to keep working to get them off this planet.
&nb
sp; Hazel nodded. “My sister and her daughter, my niece,” she answered, the silent treatment between them apparently over – at least for the moment – and yet, Zeriq wasn’t sure how to respond. He wanted to know more, but he didn’t know what questions to even ask.
“Do you want to see them?” Hazel surprised him with the question, breaking the silence.
His brows rose in surprise. “Yes,” he answered, curious.
It seemed it had been the right thing to say, because Hazel’s expression brightened and she climbed into the co-pilot seat, holding the tablet where they could both see it. With a few swipes, she brought up a video and pressed play.
A small young human female started to talk. “Bye Auntie,” she said at the start the video. “I’m gonna miss you a lot.” Zeriq immediately noticed the little girl had the same brown skin, round cheeks, and curly hair as Hazel, pulled into two puffs at the nape of her neck.
He watched the video of the girl talking for a moment, but soon, his gaze strayed back to Hazel. Watching her smile down at the screen warmed his heart, and some of the residual tension in his chest melted away.
“That’s my sister, Shea,” she said with a small smile on her lips, and Zeriq looked back toward the screen. A woman that looked almost exactly like Hazel, but a few cycles older and with a slightly thinner face, sat down next to the little girl.
“Are you recording it already?” the woman asked the girl. “Aw, honey, I asked you to wait!”
Zeriq watched as the two females told Hazel their goodbyes and waved. The video ended and the screen went dark.
Hazel put the tablet back in her bag. “I don’t want to use too much of the battery,” she said, hiding her face, but Zeriq could tell fresh tears were flowing down her cheeks again.
Family was clearly important to her. And even though he had none of his own – and never had – he felt for her. His limited knowledge of human social norms told him that it would be appropriate to embrace her in this moment, but he wasn’t sure how Hazel would take it. Maybe he had completely misread her signals and still wanted nothing to do with him. It would be safer for him to just continue to give her space.