“He has no intention of taking you. He’s not bonded to his mate—it’s a long story—but he’s doing it just to get back at me. He’s trying to rub in that I asked him for help by acting like I couldn’t…”
He snarls, not at me, but toward the kitchen where Kula disappeared to.
Oh. He’s mad because he feels like Kula is trying to wingman for him? I reach out and put my hand on top of his. My hand is so tiny next to his—I’m really starting to understand why he calls me “little human” so much. He looks huge to me, but I must look impossibly tiny from his perspective.
“I...um...Kula doesn’t need to help, Raiska. I like you.”
He locks eyes with me. “So you’ll accept my seed?”
I cough. “Remember. Don’t say that. Why don’t we start with a date? That’s how we do things on Earth.”
“A mating ritual?”
“Don’t say that either. It means we go do something fun together. We spend time together and get to know each other. Then, we can—um—see where things go from there?”
“To see if things lead to the bedroom?” he asks. “I’m speaking metaphorically of copulation, if that wasn’t clear.”
“It was clear.”
Six
Raiska
We reach Kula’s home. It’s a three-story building covered in greenery. There’s gardens all around the home full of things that can be eaten. Things that could easily be synthesized for much less work, and much less wasted space and energy.
“You’ve gone fully primitive, brother,” I say, poking at one of the long, purple vegetables.
Kula stops at the door. “I haven’t told my Muru you are coming yet.”
Annabelle lets out a little laugh, but covers her mouth. “Sorry.”
Kula looks at us with a serious expression. “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
I’m almost more afraid to see Ellie, Kula’s Muru, than I was to see Kula. Shortly after Kula had bonded to her, I used my six-dimensional scythe to cut the bond between the two of them. They were able to forge a deep emotional connection between each other to make up for the lack of higher-dimensional bonding, but Kula is rightly angry at me for what I did.
In my defense, I was ordered to do so by the Ulkar, and if I’d refused, the intricate plans my brothers and I had worked tirelessly to lay in order to betray our father and masters would have all gone to waste.
Still, Ellie is very unlikely to be happy to see me.
I also mind controlled her best friend in order to threaten Kula. I’d almost forgotten about that part.
Kula takes in a deep breath and opens the door. “Muru! We have visitors.”
Ellie comes up to greet us. She’s wearing a local style outfit of synthesized smart fibers. Her dress stretches over her stomach, which is nearly ready to burst. The fabric of the dress shows the fetus in her womb in full color.
“Is that...Raiska?” Ellie asks, gaping up at me.
To my astonishment, Annabelle takes hold of my arm and presses her body against me. She leans her head into my arm, and the scent of her hair hits my nose. The proximity to her and her smell make my cock twitch and stiffen.
Annabelle grins sheepishly. “I’m from Earth! If you couldn’t already tell. That’s a cool dress. I know you’re never supposed to ask a woman how far along she is because she might not actually be pregnant, but Kula already told us that you’re pregnant, and there’s also the fact that you’re wearing some kind of futuristic x-ray dress that is literally showing me the fetus, so it’s probably okay to ask how far along you are.” She laughs nervously and gasps for breath. “Eight months? Or thereabouts?”
Ellie laughs and holds out her arms. “Come here, little human.”
“Oh God, you’re going to call me that too?”
Ellie wraps her arms around Annabelle. “It’s hard to hug with this baby in me. And I’m four months along, to answer your question.”
Annabelle looks down and gasps. “Four months? God, how are you going to get that thing out of you when it’s full size then? Is it going to be as big as Kula?”
She puts a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, sorry! I shouldn’t say that.”
“Aparan babies are ready faster,” Ellie says, smiling. “It doesn’t take nine months, only about five”
“Oh.”
I clear my throat. “Ellie. I am sorry about what happened on Earth.”
She looks up at me and smiles, but it’s nowhere near as warm as the smiles she showed to Annabelle. “I’m mostly mad about the mind control, to be honest.”
“I never laid a hand on her.”
“Are you mind controlling her?” Ellie points to me, and her smile is gone now.
I shake my head. “I couldn’t bring myself to, because…”
Because seeing her changed everything. Because I realized my life had been entirely empty before I saw Annabelle. I can’t say these things in front of her, let alone in front of everyone here. “I...I learned my lesson, and chose not to.”
Kula crosses his arms and smirks at me.
“Let’s all sit down and get something to drink,” Ellie says.
We sit down at a large table, and Ellie pours us cups of pink liquid. I take a sip of it and realize it’s the same drink we had at Kula’s restaurant.
“What is this stuff?” Annabelle asks.
Ellie takes a big sip. “I call it chill juice. I’m going to need a lot of it, I think. Fortunately it’s safe to drink while pregnant.”
“I apologize for the intrusion, Ellie. Annabelle has been selected by the Ulkar as the fertile prize in the Breeding Games—”
Ellie spits out her drink. “The what?”
“The Breeding Games,” I repeat. “Four of us were tasked with giving her our seed. Fortunately one of the competitors has already been slain. But two more yet live. Well, technically four, but I think three of them are a symbiotic orgasm with one consciousness. They are coming for Annabelle, and…”
A few hours later, we’re checking into a hotel.
“I have my own room,” Kula says.
“You don’t want to go back to your Muru?” Annabelle asks. “Maybe smooth things over with her?”
He shakes his head. “She didn’t like the idea of our home becoming a battleground in the Breeding Games. It’s best if I stay here until the danger has passed.”
I feel I should thank him, but our relationship is complicated, and I don’t want him to question my intentions. It seems easier to stay cold toward him than to risk reaching out. It’s a tactical decision rather than an emotional one.
We get into the hotel room, and Annabelle laughs nervously. “One bed?”
“It’s a large bed. I can sleep on the floor.”
“There’s a couch,” she says.
“That couch is meant for weak humanoids. It cannot support my size.”
“I guess I could take the couch.”
“No, little human. You are weaker than me and need the enhanced comfort a bed provides. A soft carpet is more luxurious sleep quarters than where I slept most of my life.”
“What was it like for you growing up?” she asks.
“We will save such interrogations for the date. I’m preparing a list of questions myself.”
She laughs, which makes me uneasy. Human females certainly love to laugh, even when nothing funny has happened at all.
“Sorry,” she says. “Maybe, just, um, don’t write your questions down—”
“I memorized them. Word-for-word.”
“Okay, maybe be a bit more...loose with them?”
“I don’t want you to think I’m unprepared.”
“A date is meant to be a bit more spontaneous and relaxed. We’re supposed to have fun.”
“It will be quite fun for me to learn about you, Annabelle. Detailed questions further that goal.”
“Okay,” she says. “As long as it’s fun for you.”
I get the feeling she isn’t interested in preparin
g questions for me, which has me worried that she’s not especially interested in me as a mate. I have many questions for her, burning questions, and I’m excited at the chance to be on a “date” setting, which as far as I understand it means she is required to answer all of my questions.
“Do you have an idea of where we should go?” she says, sitting on the bed and kicking her shoes off.
“You should synthesize some new clothes, little human. You’ve been through a lot in that outfit.”
“Synthesize?”
I point to the synthesizer. “This can make anything you need.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Anything?”
“Try it.”
“Do I…”
“Just tell it what you want.”
She shuffles her bare feet across the carpet. I watch her feet as she moves. I never thought feet could be an erotic part of a woman, but her feet as so tiny and fragile, and they connect directly to her legs, which are most certainly arousing by any definition of the word.
Annabelle stands at the synthesizer, which looks a lot like a refrigerator on Earth, except it’s full of a contained nanoswarm rather than spoiling food.
“Gucci handbag,” she says.
“You’d like a bag?” it asks.
“Yes,” Annabelle says. “A Gucci one.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that word,” it says.
“It won’t be familiar with very Earth-specific items.”
“You said anything.”
“Be logical, human.”
She rolls her eyes at me, which I’m beginning to suspect signals some form of exasperation or annoyance. Still, I rate that there is around a 20% chance that it means she’s turned on by the way I order her around.
“Okay, synthesizer,” she says, “give me a...an icecream cone.”
“Explain ice cream,” it says.
She explains in tedious detail what an ice cream is, but when she’s finished the synthesizer opens a door and presents a strange looking treat.
“Make two of them,” she says.
It shuts the door, hums for a few seconds, and opens again. There are two now.
“You’ve never had ice cream, Raiska?”
I shake my head. “I had Japanese food once. Butchered animals cooked on a hot metal surface and smothered in a sauce the color of blood from a stomach wound.”
“Raiska, if you describe food like that, it’s never going to sound good. Now, do you want some iced excretions from an Earth bovine?”
“What?”
“Ice cream.”
She holds the treat up to me. It’s on some kind of cone with a lattice shape. I take hold of the ice cream and bring the pointy end of the cone to my mouth. I bite off the tip.
Suddenly, the cream drops off and lands on my foot. I turn the thing back over in time to save some of it.
Annabelle laughs again. “God, you are such a goof, Raiska.”
“What is a goof?”
“A goof is a guy who eats an ice cream cone upside down.”
She grabs a towel from the counter, goes down onto her knees, and wipes off my boot.
My cock stiffens seeing her on her knees in front of me. It’s a very submissive pose, and it makes my mind race with images of things she could be doing to me while on her knees. I take a big bite out of the cream to try to take my mind off the thoughts of her lips wrapped tightly around my Valittu cock.
The cream is too cold, and it hurts my teeth.
She’s standing back up already, and she sighs at me. “Raiska, you don’t bite it, you lick it. Watch.”
Her lips and tongue soon become the only thing I see. She holds the iced cream up to her mouth, opens her mouth, and sticks her tongue out. She runs her tongue along the cream. It presses against the top of the cone, and her tongue shapes the cream, smoothing it as it moves. When she’s done, she pulls her tongue back in and swallows. There’s a white piece of it on her lip, and it begins melting from the heat of her skin. She sticks her tongue back out and runs it across her full lips.
I watch mesmerized and captivated. My cock is at full mast now, which reminds me why Valittu wear kilts. If I were wearing pants, they would be unable to contain my raging hardness.
“Do you see?” she asks.
I stare at her with my mouth hanging open.
“Use your tongue,” she says, taking another lick and smiling at me.
Is she trying to seduce me? Is this why she synthesized ice cream? There is no way that human women eat this frozen treat in public, is there? How can the men stand to see something like this without going into a frenzy?
I dig my nails into my palm, and I force myself to lick it. I close my eyes and imagine I’m licking something other than ice cream, but the taste hits me the right way this time. It’s cold, but it’s sweet. When I lick it rather than bite it, it’s not too cold either. It melts on my tongue rather than on my teeth, and it has a pleasant dairy taste to it.
I look down at the cone, and then back up at Annabelle.
“Well?” she asks.
“It’s good.”
She nods and takes another lick of her ice cream. “Wait until you get to the cone—well, I guess you already got to the cone, didn’t you?”
We finish eating our treats, and I have to agree with Annabelle, that biting into the hard cone was quite pleasant. It gave a texture to the otherwise soft cream, and it created new layers of taste and flavor.
“You’ll have to synthesize more things like this for us, little human.”
She laughs. “Finally a man who doesn’t expect me to cook! I just have to tell this refrigerator thing what we want to eat, and you give me the credit as if I actually cooked it? This must be too good to be true.”
“I wouldn’t have known how to synthesize that. You had to teach it how to make it, and your explanation was clear, concise, and logical, which surprised me.”
“Why did that surprise you?”
“Because you are usually highly illogical.”
“Excuse me?”
“Maybe I used the wrong word. You are moody. Yes, that is a more fitting word.”
“Moody?”
She’s angry. I’m not experienced with human women, but I’ve been around this one long enough that I can read her facial expressions, and the subtle—and not so subtle, in this case—shifts in the tone and timber of her voice. Perhaps I used the wrong word once again?
“You are…”
“Why don’t you stop digging deeper holes, Raiska?”
“What holes?”
“It’s an expression. Just...quit while you’re ahead. Not that you’re really ahead anymore.”
“I don’t understand.”
She smiles at me. It’s less exasperated than normal. “You were trying to give me a compliment, but you don’t understand our culture. At all. I will accept your compliment, and ignore the things you said afterward. Sound good?”
I nod. “You can explain to me later how I offended you. When you are less temperamental.”
Seven
Annabelle
He decides to take me into Thrace, which is the name of the city we are in. I don’t know if he has a specific destination in mind, but we end up just walking through the city as the sun is setting. Even with the sun below the horizon, the rings of the planet continue to reflect the sunlight, and that combined with the bright and colorful stars in the sky means that even night time feels relatively bright, almost like a permanent golden hour. Raiska’s cheekbones are sharp and chiseled, but in this soft light, all of his features look even more perfect than normal.
He takes me by the hand as we walk. I don’t fight him on that. He’s called me moody, temperamental, illogical, and all kinds of other things to dig his grave as deep as he could, but I decided to chalk all of those things up to the same thing that brought him to turn an ice cream cone upside down: complete and utter ignorance.
He’s an alien. He was rais
ed by some kind of fucking interdimensional demons. He was tasked to kill and capture and do God knows what to all kinds of alien species. He’s been forced to compete in the Breeding Games, just like I have—well not just like I have—and when I consider all of the extenuating circumstances that have been Raiska’s life and upbringing, it’s hard to be mad at him for using the wrong word in a given situation.
It’s honestly a complete miracle that he can be as chivalrous and good to me as he has been, considering how he grew up. I’m pretty sure that any lesser man—Valittu or human—who grew up in his situation would end up as some kind of deranged sociopath, not a man who swears his life to protect a woman he barely knows.
“So you think Kula will be okay?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“We kind of put him in the dog house.”
“No,” Raiska says. “He’s in a hotel room. Remember?”
“It’s another expression. It means his wife is mad at him.”
“Oh, yes. She is.”
“So I didn’t memorize a big list of questions like you did, but I definitely want to ask you some stuff. I don’t want to offend you by asking though.”
“I am not easily offended.”
“Okay, I will ask this open-ended, and you can give me as much or as little information as you’d like. But what exactly happened between you, Kula, and Ellie?”
He stops walking.
I look up at him and frown. “Sorry, was that too—”
“This is a date, and I must answer all of your questions. I used my scythe to cut the bond between Kula and Ellie. The Ulkar ordered me to do this, and my Valittu brothers and I had not yet openly rebelled against them.”
“So...what does that do? Cutting the bond thingy?”
“The bond is a higher-dimensional connection between two mates. It forms during copulation, when the seed is spilled into the female. It joins the mates together on the higher-dimensions. You cannot see the bond on the lower dimensions, but it means that the two beings are physically joined. It’s important for Aparans.”
“And you just...cut it? With your scythe?”
The Breeding Prize: A Scifi Alien Romance (The Breeding Games Book 2) Page 5