Her fingers hesitantly stroked through the strands of hair at his nape.
“Lerix… what’s going on?”
He pressed his lips together in a stubborn thin line and shook his head. He didn’t want her worrying about this. He would deal with it.
Her hand stilled and he mourned the absence of her touch as she withdrew it.
“You aren’t going to tell me?”
“It is nothing to worry about,” he whispered hoarsely.
She grunted low in her throat and stood back up again, stepping away from him.
“If you say so,” she muttered. “I think I’m done swimming. I’m heading back in.”
Lerix drifted in the water, morose as he watched her walk away. He wanted to chase after her but had a corpse to dispose of. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the body bob to the surface. As soon as he was certain she left, Lerix pulled the remains of the assassin out of the water with him. He adjusted the drape of the surutch around his hips, and carried his burden far into the brush.
Chapter 16
Cara was aware of Lerix following at a distance behind her as she returned to their bungalow. She didn’t care. A surprisingly snide part of her quipped that she was surprised that he didn’t conveniently disappear again. Cara ruthlessly quashed it. She wasn’t that kind of person.
Stopping long enough to pluck up the new clothes that Mahuura insisted on providing along with the bathing gown, Cara went directly to the bathing unit. Her lips quirked as she set the neatly folded clothing down on a small counter. According to Mahuura, females required no less than ten changes of clothes to provide for all situations. She was horrified to see three outfits stuffed in Cara’s pack and told her that it wouldn’t do for one who was her guest.
Cara fingered the fine-woven fabric of such quality and texture unlike anything found on earth. Something like pearls decorated the strappy tunic. Decent clothing was armor. It instilled confidence—and she was going to need every bit of hers for the confrontation with Lerix.
Touching a panel near the bathing stall, water jettisoned from hundreds of tiny nozzles in the wall as she stepped in, another panel sliding closed behind her. She could get used to touch-activated sensor technology. Her muscles relaxed under three-hundred and sixty degrees of full body cleansing tech. Not an inch of her had to chill outside the spray of warm water as was common with standard human showers.
Humans could learn a thing or two from aliens.
The cleaning cycle was automated and remarkably quick with this particular unit. There was no luxuriating unless she took the time to fiddle with the programming. Not that it mattered right then. She couldn’t put off talking to Lerix.
With the amount of blood she saw rising through the water, Cara knew that there was something going on that was far too dangerous for her to be kept in the dark about. Not knowing what was happening for those agonizing minutes had been torturous. An experience she refused to revisit. She also refused to waste her trust on another male who easily lied to her.
Clean and dry, Cara slipped on the yellow wrap skirt and interesting coral-peach strappy tunic and stepped out into the room. Lerix sat on a chair by the door, hunched over his knees. Bruises had begun to bloom on him, swelling tissue around the more delicate scales of his face and neck, making the scales look dull compared to the healthy luster of undamaged areas of his body.
Forcing a calm that she didn’t feel, Cara hooked her thumb toward the cleansing unit.
“Go ahead and get cleaned off so that the minerals of the hot springs don’t start irritating the flesh around your scales. If it irritates my skin, it must do something similar to you.”
Lerix nodded and stood.
“When you get out, we need to talk,” she said firmly, trying to ignore the way he winced at that pronouncement. Men, no matter the species it seemed, didn’t like to “talk.” Well, tough titty said the kitty, as her Grammy used to say.
Lerix emerged several minutes later looking as refreshed as he was going to get with all the bruising, but she was thankful to notice that none of that blood she’d seen in the water had come from him.
Cara sat on the bed and gestured toward the chair. Lerix lowered himself into it, watching her with an unnerving focus. For all that the planet was marketed for romance, there was no getting around the fact that the Kadesh were apex predators. As his focus narrowed fully on her, the slits of his yellow eyes expanded.
Ignoring her instinctual disquiet, Cara folded her hands in her lap and leveled him with her best stern look. After all, if nothing else years teaching unruly kindergarteners taught Cara how to adopt an expression of stern disapproval when necessary.
“All right, let me hear it.”
Lerix’s pupils immediately constricted and his eyes slid away. “It is nothing that you need to be worried about. I am handling it.”
She pinched her lips, her annoyance growing.
“I see. I may have been caught up in the drama going on in my life, but I’m not completely unobservant or stupid, nor do I appreciate being lied to. I’ve spent enough time in the company of a guy who sees fit to lie to me. Now, out with it.”
Lerix groaned and dropped his head, his hands scrubbing his face and sliding up to yank on his horns in frustration. Blowing out a huge breath, he met her eyes.
“Okay, it seems that I may have accidentally stolen a priceless necklace from my previous employer.”
“How do you accidentally steal something—you know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Continue.”
His tail twitched with agitation, but he held her gaze, his eyes sincere.
“I do occasionally steal when I see fit to do so. It is not like any of my targets suffer from losing one of hundreds of bits of jewelry that they don’t even remember day-to-day if they own. My employer tried to cheat me, so it seemed reasonable to take from her in turn. I did not realize at that time that it was part of the Korovik crown jewels—who wears crown jewels when vacationing offplanet?” he groused.
Cara had to give him that point. It seemed the height of absurdity and rather tasteless to flaunt crown jewels as if they were nothing more than a pretty bauble.
“So you have guys after you to get it back?”
“Worse. It is not merely someone coming to retrieve it. They have sent not only a member of their elite guard but are employing Korovik assassins.” He gave her a guilty look. “Unfortunately, being with me has included you in all this, which was not my intention.”
“And all those guys who’ve died… on the train, in the resort, and I’m assuming at the hot spring?”
“It was me. Them and then some. I killed them before they could kill either of us,” he stated without a trace of guilt or reluctance in his voice.
“Couldn’t you have incapacitated them long enough to give it back and let them go?”
Lerix gave her a strange look.
“Of course not. It would be foolish for me to allow someone who means to kill us to go free.”
“Yes,” she said with forced calm and worked to make her voice sweet and reasonable. “But then you wouldn’t have bodies piling up wherever you went.”
“It is but an annoyance.”
“Totally missing the point,” she said as she leaned forward to set her chin on her palm as she observed him.
Lerix frowned. “I do not understand your objection. They would have killed us if I didn’t act.”
“But you had options.”
“They are assassins,” he argued, adopting a consoling tone as if he were explaining the matter to a child.
“They were living beings.”
“They were assassins. They kill every day of their existence. They dared to attempt to harm us. They had it coming,” he snapped.
Worry crept into his eyes. “They would have terminated you. I can’t allow even that possibility. As long as they threaten you, I will continue to kill each and every one.”
Cara’s jaw dropped. It sounded terribly cold-bloode
d, yet part of her warmed at his protective instinct toward her. He snapped his tail and a long, sharp spike split the tip as it slid halfway out. Never had she seen anything like that before.
She blew out a pent up breath, forcing herself to remain calm.
“So you killed the assassin. Should we be concerned for others popping up?”
Lerix shook his head. “No. I haven’t caught sight of their elite guard controller. Plus, this one seemed to be alone. My guess is that he was a scout. We should be safe here for a while until someone decides to come and investigate. By then, we will be far from here. I will keep you safe.”
“You’re really doing this in part for me?”
“I would do anything for you,” he confessed so quietly she nearly didn’t hear it.
Cara paused in surprise. She must have misunderstood his meaning. Translators weren’t foolproof, and maybe that was an old saying. A dated idiom. Something. Or at last that is what she chose to believe.
“We should talk about what’s going on between us,” she began.
Lerix just gave her a small smile that she couldn’t read and shook his head. “I am sure you feel the attraction as strong as I do. It is a natural response between two healthy beings so you don’t need to feel too concerned about it. Unlike my brethren, I am not looking to trap a mate.”
Strangely, Cara felt her heart plummet. Of course. She wasn’t some gorgeous, exotic woman who would appeal to a strong male like Lerix. Ben was nowhere near Lerix’s league and he had no trouble setting her aside from another female… repeatedly. She pushed away the flash of disappointment and forced a wide smile.
“Well, good.” It must have been her imagination that he grimaced just then. “That settles that. We are, after all, healthy adults,” she agreed.
“I will be honest,” he whispered, an edge of vulnerability showing. “I want you more than I have ever wanted anyone or anything.”
She looked at Lerix beneath her eyelashes. She couldn’t deny that she had been feeling an attraction to him for a while. She’d ignored it when it seemed disloyal to Ben, but nothing was really stopping her now. She had no doubt that she’d experience pleasure with Lerix unlike any she’d known before.
If she let this moment pass her by, she might regret it for the rest of her life.
Cara licked her lips. For once she was going to go after what she wanted. .
“Lerix, I want you too. I know that there are no promises in life, but in this moment I want nothing more than to be with the one person who calls to me. Not because it is safe, or logical, or fulfils some other dream. I want you.”
A smile stretched across Lerix’s face, his tail, the blade once again safely sheathed in the tip, curling at his side. In his stillness, she became aware of his muscles tensing as his eyes filled with the heat of unrestrained desire.
Suddenly he was on her, sweeping her up into his embrace as he toppled her onto the bed. His mouth plundered hers, his thick tongue sweeping in an erotic dance with her own as he pulled her clothes from her body. Despite his eagerness, Cara was grateful that he did not shred them in his haste to bare her. Instead, they were gently dropped to the floor without even slowing his erotic assault on her flesh. The brush of scales against her pelvis, breast, and belly alone was enough to send pleasure shooting through her.
As soon as her arms were free, Cara wrapped them around his neck and arched into his embrace, her nerves dancing with the tingle of pleasure and her pussy flooding with wet heat. She knew the moment he caught scent of it because he groaned and held her tighter against him. Cara shivered when he released her mouth to lick and kiss along her jaw and down the length of her neck. He tasted every bit of her exposed skin as if he were a starving male and she was a feast laid out for him.
***
Lerix drew his nose and left olfactory ridge down her neck, inhaling the sweet musk of her skin. There was no smell like that of his mate. His heart beat at a rapid tempo in his chest as his tail slipped around her hips and glided up her back, the tip instinctively parting to make way for the point of the blade. His instinct urged him to mark her and claim her as his mate in the way of the Kadesh, but he drove that urge back down and made certain to keep the tip of his tail off the delicate skin of her back.
He wouldn’t break his word to Cara. He told her truthfully when he said that he didn’t wish to trap a mate in the customs of his kind. No, he desired her to be with him only when she wanted to be. If all he could get was this moment in time, he would settle for it and continue to work to prove himself to be the kind of male she wanted in her life. Until then, he would imprint on his memory every touch, taste, and smell of his female as if it were his last.
His hands slipped up from her waist to caress the soft mounds of her breasts, the nipples hardening into stiff peaks beneath his palms. A fresh, warm scent of arousal swept around him as she shivered.
Desire pulsed through him as he released her just long enough to shimmy out of his clothes, and his cock began to weep beads of fluid when it settled against her thigh. The morol sacks at the side and top of his cock were already inflated, ready to trigger his body to produce seed for his female upon stimulation by the grip of her cunt. Stimulation would also cause the sacks to secrete potent amounts of his pheromone into her body.
Any male who came near Cara would, for at least a few days if not renewed, notice his scent on her and know that she was under his protection. The very thought increased his arousal, but Lerix was in no hurry. He wanted to draw out their first time as long as he could.
Lerix swept his tongue down her navel, following the path over the swell of her belly into a nest of pale curls hiding her slit away from him. Relentlessly he burrowed his nose in the heavily perfumed hair, as his tongue ran over a hard nub of flesh that had Cara jerking her hips up on a gasp, before plunging into the warm nectar of her slit.
Cara cried out, writhing beneath him. He rested the blunt side of his claw against the bead of flesh that brought her such pleasure and worked it as he lapped up the fresh streams of slick. He wasn’t satisfied until he felt her cunt ripple around his long tongue and the rush of sweet moisture flow into his mouth.
The flavor sent need ripping through him. He couldn’t wait a moment more. He sat back against his heels and Cara whimpered, reaching for him. He looked deep into her green eyes, her eyes heated and glazed with lust, keeping her gaze locked with his.
He brushed his member over her slick folds repeatedly, coating himself in her wet essence before plunging deep within. Her channel welcomed him as it greedily sucked him in. Good gods, she was tight. He had to retreat and burrow within her three times before he was finally seated to the hilt, his firm, silky seed sack curving above his cock brushing against her clit.
The contact with the delicate scale-less skin there made him groan as he sank his nose once again in the warm crook of her neck where her scent was poignant. He could no longer even catch even the slightest scent of another male on her any longer. All he could smell was her sweet, clean scent.
He drew her up against him, grinding lightly against her, enjoying the feel of the mouth of her womb at the head of his cock and the drag of his seed sack against her flesh, before pulling back nearly to the tip. He thrust forward, burying himself to the hilt as Cara arched her hips beneath him. Their groans mingled. Her breathless pants left her in short, delectable moans that combined with the noise of his inescapable pleasure in the primal symphony orchestrated between them. A melody as old as the universe itself.
***
Cara had never felt so full. The experience was somewhere between alarming and blissful. She didn’t get a good look at his cock aside from that one brief moment at the hot spring, but there seemed to be stiff bulbs on his cock rubbing her insides in such a way that sent micro-orgasms rippling through her pussy with every thrust.
She cried out again as her body shuddered with pleasure and felt Lerix draw her pelvis up against him as he curved over her body. With his face in h
er neck, and the fine scales of his chest and the peculiar bony ridge that ran down the center of his pectorals rubbing against her breasts, his pace increased. Cara arched against him with every thrust, her body lost in the throes of pleasure.
His hips pounded against hers as his control seemed to evaporate, the silk knob at the base of his cock quivering as they rubbed delectably on her clit with every sharp thrust. Cara could feel something winding tighter and tighter within her belly. Her skin felt tight and tingly and her muscles stiffened. She knew without a doubt she was about to have the mother of all orgasms, and the intensity of it terrified her.
Cara gasped out a weak protest against the ensuing climax. Lerix responded with a rolling growl deep in his chest, vibrating into her body, spiking along her nerve endings as her body tightened further with pleasure.
With a cry, she sank her teeth into his pectoral as her orgasm broke over her and her body felt blasted apart from within. Above her, Lerix barked out a cry of pleasure as he dove deep within her body and held himself still. She felt his seed spray inside of her and the muscles of his body shook as if he was trying desperately to hold back. The gyration of the knob against clit increased with his orgasm sending another reckless orgasm through her.
Finally, his muscles relaxed, and he withdrew from the tight grip of her body, eliciting another groan from both of them. With a rumble of pleasure, he eased down beside her and pulled her body into the curve of his own as he curled around her. His long tail whipped up over her hip to lay along her belly, the tip nestling in the valley of her breasts.
She laid for a long moment there in his arms, basking in the rosy glow of their content.
Chapter 17
Cara woke to a sharp trilling. Groaning, she wiggled out from under Lerix’s heavy arm and kicked her leg free from his tail—a tail that had been resting against the crack of her ass. Lerix snorted groggily as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She sat there for less than a minute when his arm snaked out and dragged her beneath him. The trill sang out again from the entrance but Lerix ignored it as he rubbed his nose against her neck and down into her breasts.
A Kiss on Kaidava Page 12