He nods, and I can tell he feels guilty.
“It sounds like Kula and Ellie have gotten over it, as far as I can tell.”
“I don’t feel I deserve such forgiveness, Annabelle. I wanted them to be angrier with me.”
“I mean...Kula punched you right in the face. And Ellie kicked you out. What more did you want?”
“My half-brother didn’t even raise his axe, and Ellie didn’t even call me any bad names.”
“If it helps, she probably called you those names after she kicked you out.”
He smiles. “You are right.”
We find a little stream running through the city. It’s lined with beautiful alien trees of mostly teal and purple hues, and the grass is soft as a blanket. Many different types of aliens are sitting on the edge of the water and relaxing. A lot of couples are sitting together, they’re probably also on dates.
“You want to sit next to the water?” I ask, pointing toward another couple sitting there. The woman is resting her head on the man’s shoulder.
“If you’d like,” he says.
We sit down together. I scoot up next to him, but I don’t go as far as resting my head on his shoulder. Not yet at least.
“Have you finished your questions, Annabelle?”
“Do you have any hobbies?”
“What is a hobby?”
I try very hard not to laugh, because his question more or less answers mine. Still, I’m sensitive to how shitty his life has been. If Raiska is going to be a part of my life going forward, I should help him to find ways to live like a real person rather than some alien warrior.
“A hobby is something you do for fun. For example, on Earth, we all have to work. I work in the library, like you saw, as a librarian. I work forty hours per week, but each day when I get home—and on weekends—I have a good amount of hours free. What I do in my free time are my hobbies.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I like to read.”
“Fortunately you work in a library.”
I laugh. It might be the first joke he told, if it’s even meant to be a joke.
“Yes, that’s very lucky for me. I also like to watch movies, and draw, and take long walks.”
“I see,” he says.
“So...do you have any hobbies, Raiska?”
“I like to practice combat techniques.”
“I guess we could call that ‘working out’ or maybe ‘martial arts.’”
“Explain.”
I’d maybe expect it to be tedious to have to explain such basic concepts, but Raiska is so genuinely interested in learning about my world that he listens intently. He never is trying to talk over me or cut me off and start talking about himself. He listens as long as I speak for, and he never gives me the feeling that he wants me to stop talking, or that he’s bored and wishes I’d talk about something else. He’s a perfect listener.
When I’m finally done talking, he just nods.
“So human men move big pieces of metal around, just to have muscles to look good with, but not to use in combat?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Not everyone can have such big arms and cut abs from being an actual warrior. Maybe if you settle down and find a job like Kula, you’ll realize you have to do something like that to keep in shape?”
“I have sixteen questions prepared for you, Annabelle. Should I ask them in ascending or descending order of invasiveness?”
“Let’s go with ascending.”
“How many children do you want to have?”
“Didn’t I say ascending? That means you start with the least invasive question, right?”
He grins at me. God, this is the least invasive question?
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. I’d never used the word ‘fertile’ to describe myself. I still think the Ulkar might have made some kind of mistake by choosing me as the fertile prize.”
“At least two children?”
I bite my lip and blush. I didn’t take Raiska as the kind of man—or alien—who was gungho about being a father. I figured the whole “breed” and “seed” thing he’d been going on about was more about the act of doing it than the end results.
“Two would be good.”
“Excellent,” he says. “Next Question. Using standard Earth measurements, what is the circumference of your hips?”
“Uhh...I don’t think I’ve ever measured.”
“Preferred gender of future offspring? Assuming two children.”
“One of each.”
It feels a lot easier to just answer his highly invasive questions rapid-fire than to think too hard about it, or to feel embarrassed.
“How often do you ovulate per month, and when was your last ovulation?”
“Not answering that one.”
“This is a date, Annabelle. I answered your questions.”
“Look, Raiska, there is a thing called a line, and you crossed it a long time ago. I’m okay with you going a little bit over that line, but there are things I’m not going to talk to you about. Date or not. You’re not even halfway into the questions, and you’re already being too invasive, so you may want to save all sixteen questions for later.”
“Apologies,” he says. “This wasn’t one of my questions, and I’m nearly certain it’s not the case, but humans do not eat their young, correct?”
I burst out laughing. ‘My God, why would we ever do that.”
“Certain species do so. I also heard of humans eating placenta, so I thought it was possible that—at least in some cultures—you may consume your young.”
“Would you be okay with that?” I pray to God that he tells me he wouldn’t.
He shakes his head. “It would be unacceptable to me. I would have needed to insist that you didn’t eat our child.”
“You’re not going to eat our child—I mean—if we hypothetically had a child, you wouldn’t eat it, right?”
“Valittu will never eat children, or any humanoid species. I have more questions. I will try not to break eggs on you with them.”
“What?”
“It’s a human expression.”
I just smile and nod. “Okay, go ahead.”
“I remember reading articles about human mating customs and procedures—”
“Please don’t call them procedures.”
“I read a magazine for women, and it—”
“What? Were you just like, reading Teen Vogue in the grocery story or something?”
“I don’t remember the exact magazine, but women were discussing how and when they fake their orgasms. Are Earth men truly so inept that they cannot bring their mates to orgasm?”
I think back to a few of my ex-boyfriends. “Umm, yeah.”
He furrows his brows at me. “Do they not use their tongues, or are their penises simply too small?”
I avoid looking down at his legs as he asks me the question. I’ve been wondering if his dick is as big as the rest of him. If it is, I’m actually a little bit afraid.
“Well, Raiska, I feel a little bit awkward talking about this. I’ll just answer your question with ‘yes.’”
He shakes his head and mutters something to himself.
“Did you have more questions? That wasn’t sixteen.”
“The rest are most certainly over the line. I’ll hopefully find out the answers to them through personal experience.”
He puts a hand on my leg, just above the knee, and squeezes. His eyes meet mine, and a devilish smirk fills his face.
I smile like a giddy school girl and lick my lips. “That was actually really smooth, which surprises me, Raiska.”
He tilts his head at me. “Why does it surprise you?”
“Because you’re usually abrasive—no wait, maybe I used the wrong word. You’re usually obnoxious.”
He runs his hand further up my thigh. My skirt starts riding up my thigh. I look down and watch his blue hand on my soft white skin. Blood r
ushes warm up to my ears, and my chest tightens. I don’t dare breathe.
“Is this abrasive?” he asks, meeting my eyes. His fingers run along my inner thigh, and he squeezes. “Obnoxious?”
I shake my head and whisper a hoarse “no.”
“You’re just trying to get back at me for calling you ‘moody’ and ‘illogical’ are you not?”
I nod. “Yes, but you are abrasive, Raiska.”
“In a good way,” he says. “Men on Earth are inept and unable to please you, as you said yourself. They lack confidence. They spend their days sitting in little chairs and pressing buttons on primitive machines. They lift heavy weights to give the illusion of strength, but most have never fought a real battle in their lives.”
I put my hand on his and squeeze. I’m not sure if I’m trying to stop him from reaching further up my skirt, or if I’m going to urge him on.
“You really have made me feel safe,” I whisper. “Even if you are obnoxious about it.”
“Yes,” he says. “I’ve read your body language, human, you like it.”
He moves his hand up further. I feel his veins bulge as his hand moves possessively up my leg, and I tighten my grip, bracing for him touching the more sensitive skin of my upper thigh.
I close my eyes and just let myself feel him touch me.
“Your heart rate is elevated,” he says. “Your lips are parted, and your eyes are closed, but your eyelids are fluttering. Your body is tense and nervous, because you are unsure what I will do next.”
Is he really reading my body, and not just my mind?
“I may be abrasive and unaware of your customs,” he says. “I am not smooth at talking or verbal seduction, but I can read your body perfectly, little human, and I know what it craves.”
I pull his hand away, unable to bear him touching me any closer to my center, and I turn to face him. I lean forward with my lips parted. It’s not a subtle move or signal, and if he’s even half as good as he says at reading me, he’ll know exactly what to do next.
He takes charge and grabs hold of me. His fingers grip behind my neck, and he pulls me into him. Our lips press together. His lips are so much warmer than a human’s—he must run hot to be so strong—and his tongue slides between my eager and willing lips.
He kisses me with a fierce and hungry passion. I didn’t think I needed or craved him. I thought it was just my body giving me weird and baffling signals, but now that he’s kissing me like this, I realize that those signals were a lot more clear-cut than they had initially seemed.
He pins me onto the grass and kisses me while I lie on my back. My skirt is still hiked up, but when I try to pull it back down, he grabs me by the wrist. He growls as he kisses me, and I bring my knee up and press my bared inner-thigh against his torso. I can feel the hard and solid curves of his obliques warm against my soft flesh.
Raiska rolls onto his back and pulls me on top of him. Suddenly I’m straddling his abs as we kiss. His hands grab hold of my waist, and then they go down until they are on my ass. He squeezes me there, and I moan into him as his tongue massages mine.
He smells good too. Fresh and masculine, but with a certain extra dimension to his scent that is something truly alien. It’s a good smell though, one that I’m going to forever associate with this first kiss.
We kiss for a very long time, like two middle schoolers who just found out how good it can feel. He tries a few times to steal a few bases, but I stop him. We’re still in public, and even though Lakria feels like a more sexually liberated society than the United States, I’m not ready to fuck an alien in the middle of a park.
When we finally come up for air, he grins at me and strokes my hair. “You like it when I call you ‘little human,’ even though you pretend not to.”
I try to look annoyed, but I’m smiling too wide to be annoyed.
“You think I don’t understand things,” he says, “but I do. I am trained to be perceptive. With time, I will understand your culture and the things that are over the line, abrasive, or throwing egg shells. I can do them less in order to please you.”
I rest my head against his shoulder now, like I saw the woman doing when we first sat down, though I notice that couple has already gotten up and left.
“You don’t have to change who you are for me, Raiska,” I say. “Though maybe if you were like...20 percent less annoying it would be good.”
“Only 20 percent?”
“I like who you are.”
“My half-brothers understood your ways much better than the Valittu. Kula adapted to human culture much more easily than I have done. I admit I was jealous of him.”
“You don’t say?”
He glares at me.
“I can be perceptive too, Raiska. I can tell you looked up to Kula.”
“I am a stronger warrior than him, he should look up to me.”
“Maybe. He can look up to you as a stronger warrior or whatever, but you can look up at him in certain ways. It doesn’t have to be the case that one of you is far and away superior in every aspect.”
“In many civilizations, if there are disagreements such as this, two men will simply duel to the death to solve it. It’s easier to kill a man than to admit he’s better than you.”
“Hmm, I don’t think I agree with that logic.”
He puts his hand back on my thigh and squeezes. “I’m not sure what I agree with. I grew up without any real civilization. I only ever visited others, often as an invader or conquerer. You say you like me the way I am, but I don’t even know who I am, Annabelle.”
“I’ll help you figure it out then.”
I don’t sleep with him.
Well, I do, because there’s only one bed, and I am not so heartless as to make him sleep on the floor.
I’m scared though, because I very much want to sleep with him. If we were on Earth, and he were a guy that I liked this much, I would go ahead and do it. There’d be a condom, and we’d have fun, and we’d have the next several years to figure out if we wanted to have kids or not.
With Raiska I don’t have that luxury. We’re deep in the Breeding Games. The goblin aliens and Philos are coming for us, and “breeding” with Raiska is the most logical thing to do.
Like Raiska said though, I am highly illogical.
No, that’s not fair. I am being logical, because the idea of trying to get pregnant with an alien that I just met—just because we had an amazing makeout session and because I really like him—doesn’t mean that I’m in love with him and am ready to have one baby of each gender with him. I will logically think through this situation, and I know that I don’t have the luxury of spending a few years with him to make sure he is “the one,” but I should—at dead minimum—get at least a night or two to really think it over.
Oh, and the bonding thing? It’s not just having kids. Having kids would be a big enough commitment, but I also have to have some freaky extra-dimensional connection to him as well. So yes, at least one night to think things over.
He’s sleeping next to me though. He’s naked.
I had the synthesizer produce me some really baggy and unflattering pajamas. I wanted to make sure I was dressed in something that made it a lot harder to have sex. Not so much to prevent Raiska from making moves on me, but more to prevent myself from making a rash decision. If he were naked and I were almost naked, it would be all too easy to just throw a bare thigh over his body, and from there it might be impossible to go back.
I can’t sleep though, because all of these thoughts are racing through my head.
There’s one thing I want to check. One thing I have to see with my own eyes before I can actually close them and sleep for the night. I know it’s not really right for me to look without him knowing, but I have to know.
It’s dark, but because Lakria is never truly dark, there’s enough ambient light that I’m pretty certain I’ll be able to at least see the outline of it.
I lift the blanket up a few inches and look down. I can s
ee my body, but not his. I lift a little bit more, and those strange colors flash out from between Raiska’s legs.
What the fuck.
It’s definitely a dick—an absolutely huge one—but I thought it was going to be blue. It’s not blue, it’s all of those impossible colors. The colors of his scythe and the orb and the colors that the rapey aliens also had on them when they used their powers. I watch, transfixed, for several breaths as the colors shift and move, and when I’m convinced that I’m actually seeing what I’m seeing and not hallucinating, I let the blanket fall back down.
I roll over so my back is facing him, and I close my eyes.
Now I’m really not going to be able to get to sleep.
Eight
Raiska
I wake up with my cock harder than it’s ever been. My balls hurt. I had incredibly vivid dreams, and now that I’ve woken up, they do not seem to be fading.
I look over and see her sleeping softly. She’s facing me. She’s close, yet so far away.
She’s not ready yet for me to take her. I wasn’t lying to her when I told her I could read her. I also wasn’t lying when I told her I cannot take an unwilling mate.
Still, my Valittu cock is hard and leaking so much extra-dimensional light that it nearly blinds me to look at it. It’s craving a mate, and it’s ready to form a bond.
I’ll have to work hard to convince her that I am worthy to put my seed inside of her. She seems hesitant at the prospect of me being the father to her children. I need to show her that I am not only able to protect her and keep her safe, but that I would be the kind of father she wants for her children.
I should have asked her more questions about this on our date last night. I had them on my list, but the kiss happened, and I didn’t ask any questions after that.
Now we have to meet Kula and Ellie for breakfast.
Ellie contacted us while we were on our date, but I didn’t see the message until we got back.
She must feel guilty for kicking us out. Not guilty enough that she invited us to her home for breakfast. Instead we are meant to meet at Kula’s restaurant.
There’s a pounding on the door.
The Breeding Prize: A Scifi Alien Romance (The Breeding Games Book 2) Page 6