“I’m not saying I doubt you, Raiska, but hypothetically, what if you don’t catch me?”
“I will catch you.”
“What if you catch me, but I pull you off the cliff and we both fall?”
“Then the purple substrate will catch us both.”
He points as another climber across from us falls off. He’s caught at the bottom just like I saw the first time.
“On Earth we use ropes.”
“That sounds very boring and cumbersome. I am enjoying the feeling of my almost naked body up against the cliff. I am connecting to nature and using my warrior’s strength in a way I had never considered before. I enjoy this hobby immensely.”
“Okay. I’m going to start—”
My hand has been sweating so much that I slip. In a horrible panic I try to grasp for anything I can, but I’m already falling.
Despite the one single safety rule being to not close your eyes when you fall, I shut them tight.
I don’t really expect to splatter on the floor and die, but it feels possible enough that I am absolutely terrified.
Something grabs me though. A strong grip squeezes on my calf, and it tugs on me. Raiska’s grip slips down to my ankle, but he holds me tight. I’m still closing my eyes, but after I’ve hung motionless for a few moments, I risk opening them.
I’m hanging upside down. Raiska is holding me by the ankle like some kind of rabbit he just caught and is ready to stew. He’s gripping tightly to the rocks with his one free hand, and the muscles and veins on his forearm are bulging. He’s bracing his entire forearm against the rocks.
“I told you I’d catch you,” he says.
It takes a long time for us to both get down, mostly because I’m too afraid to climb anymore. Raiska puts up with me, carrying me down as if I were a baby or a small child unable to take care of itself.
Quite a few aliens stop and look up at us in confusion. I see one of the employees shrug and throw his hands up in the air.
“I’m from Earth!” I shout down at them. “I don’t trust the purple crap!”
“They don’t know where Earth is,” Raiska says. “Ignore them. What they think doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you are comfortable. We’ll take all the time we need to get you down in a way that you feel safe.”
I nod and just enjoy the feel of his hands on my body. My heart is beating fast, and the adrenaline is running through me. Then there’s Raiska’s warm and hard body, which I’m clinging onto. I’ve settled onto his back, with my legs wrapped around his muscular torso. I’m probably making the descent much harder for him by adding my weight onto him, but he doesn’t show any sign or indication of being tired or exhausted. As far as I can tell he hasn’t shed even a drop of sweat.
When we reach the ground, Raiska scowls at the aliens watching us, and they scatter.
“Let’s go,” he says.
I shake my head and point toward the scary murder mountain. “You wanted to climb that one.”
“It’s too dangerous for you.”
“It’s not a hard-and-fast rule that we have to literally all do the same things while on a date. It will be very enjoyable for me to sit on that bench over there and cheer you on from the safety of the ground.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, please. I want you to have fun, and you having fun is fun for me.”
“Almost like a bond,” he says.
I blush and smile. “If you want to think of it like that, sure.”
I sit down below the murder mountain. I don’t know what it’s really called, but if it were a mountain on Earth, I’m sure it would kill even a good percentage of the most experienced climbers.
Raiska is extremely strong and athletic, but I’m not sure that even he can climb this one. Especially because when you reach near the top, it starts coming inward, and he no longer will have to climb just straight up, but he’ll have to be hanging on at a reverse incline.
None of this seems to even slow him down. He skips the first several handholds by leaping up onto the wall. He starts climbing up at a breakneck speed. A few of the experienced climbers who aren’t already climbing walls themselves slowly start moving over toward the murder mountain to watch Raiska.
“Is he your mate?” a silver-skinned alien asks me.
“Not yet...I mean, no, he’s not. I’m here with him though.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I just wanted to say it’s impressive. Computer! What’s his time?’
A disembodied voice with a slightly robotic intonation chirps in. “RAISKA’S time is currently 43.4 seconds. He has scaled 28% of the peak. He is currently 2.1 seconds ahead of the record.”
They all let out astonished gasps, and suddenly everyone in the gym is crowding around. Even people who were climbing walls just jump off and let the scary purple stuff catch them.
Raiska looks down at me and shouts. He’s so high we can barely hear him. “What is happening, little human?”
The alien climbers all start shouting at him and waving their hands.
The silver-skinned one cups his hands over his mouth and shouts. “You’re breaking a record! Go! Go! Stop talking and climb!”
Raiska looks back up and climbs, even faster than before.
“Shit,” someone says, pointing up. “He’s not going to clear the jump.”
“Oh yeah?” The silver-skinned alien asks.
They all start placing bets as to whether Raiska will clear “the jump.”
I have no idea what they are talking about until Raiska suddenly stops climbing.
He looks up and down a few times, and then down at his feet. He looks up again, and suddenly he leaps. For a solid second, he has no hands or feet on the cliff face. He grabs hold of a tiny little jutting bolder, and his feet slip once, but he slides back up and digs his foot into a small recess.
The aliens start hooting, and a few flick little holograms back and forth at each other, which must be the bets being paid off.
“Bet you he smashes the record,” the silver-skinned aliens says.
“By how much?”
“Over three seconds.”
Three of them scoff, and the silver-skinned one grins wide at me as Raiska keeps climbing faster and faster.
He approaches the reverse incline. This is where I would just give up and call it a day. It’s not like I’d ever be able to climb to this point, but if I somehow managed to, the reverse incline would be my signal to call it a day.
Raiska doesn't even slow down though. He moves as if gravity weren’t suddenly working much harder against him, as if his muscles weren’t doing way more work on every single movement.
The aliens who were loud and talkative moments before have all gone utterly silent. They watch in awe as Raiska clears the last few hurdles, and then he touches the ceiling.
I expect him to hold on a while longer, and then maybe climb down. I don’t know why exactly I expect him to climb down, considering that no one other than me is afraid of falling. He’s clearly not, as he simply lets go of the cliff and plummets.
I close my eyes.
I don’t open them until I hear Raiska speaking. From the ground.
I look back up and see him almost on top of me. He wraps his arms around me and presses me tight against his body. I hug him back.
“You did it, Raiska. You made the leap thingy, and you…”
Did he actually break the record?
I look up at the silver-skinned alien, and from his smile and all the holograms being flicked at him, I realize that Raiska not only broke it, but he broke it by at least two seconds.
“You broke the record,” I say smiling up at him.
“What is a record?”
Everyone looks up at him.
One of the aliens who lost the bet stares at Raiska incredulously. “You didn’t even know there was a record, and you broke it? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“You climbed this mountain—one of the hardest mountains there is�
�faster than any humanoid in the galaxy, man!”
“I was this fast?” Raiska asks.
His cluelessness makes the silver-skinned alien laugh hard, and it pisses off the ones who lost the bet even more. They aren’t really mad at Raiska though, just at themselves for underestimating him.
“I mean,” I say, “not to diminish your accomplishment, but this is just one gym, right? Like, maybe the top climbers in the galaxy just never have come to this gym?”
A purple female alien shakes her head. “This wall has been replicated atom-by-atom thousands of times. The record is galaxy-wide. Your mate is a natural born climber. If he put his mind to it, he’d completely upset the entire sport.”
“I thought it was a hobby?” Raiska asks. “It’s a sport? Do I need to keep searching for a hobby then?”
I squeeze his hand. “A sport can be a hobby. There’s overlap.”
“Did this guy just get unthawed from cryosleep or something?”
“He had a sheltered upbringing,” I say, smiling.
It’s relatively odd to be more knowledgeable about basic things like this on an alien planet than my alien boyfriend, but Raiska’s unfortunate childhood and life up until now means that he knows a lot less and has less experience than me in certain areas. This helps me feel less like just a “little human” that is reliant on him for everything. It makes me feel like I’m not only forcing him to protect me while offering nothing back to him.
Raiska is soon surrounded by the other climbers, and he seems to have a lot of fun talking to them and explaining different strategies he used while climbing the murder mountain.
Even though he seems to be enjoying himself with them, he’s holding me tight against his body, and he keeps looking at me more and more.
Abruptly he cuts them off. “I will be back. I will break my own record next time. Thank you for sharing your sport-hobby hybrid with me.”
We leave the gym, and it’s already late afternoon. We stop at a place that has some incredibly creative food. It’s all synthesized, of course, but I quite honestly can’t tell the difference. Kula’s food tastes incredible...but so does this. Maybe I’ll have to eat a lot more on Lakria to really start being able to taste the difference from hand-cooked food, but I’m perfectly happy to eat fruits that are synthesized to be perfectly ripe, or meat that is marbled with just the right amount of fat and didn’t need an animal to die to enjoy it.
Raiska eats a lot. He didn’t seem especially tired from climbing, but it must have used up a good amount of energy.
I may not have climbed much, but I am a lot weaker than him, and I worked up quite an appetite too. We eat very well, and once our food is done, we stay and get some drinks.
I’m drinking this pale blue thing from a glass shaped like a beaker. It tastes divine. There are little pink crystals in it, and when they touch my tongue they pop, and a strong savory flavor sizzles all over my tongue in waves. After a few sips, I get a headrush.
“Is this...booze?”
“Booze?”
“Alcohol?”
Raiska shakes his head. “Alcohol is primitive. This is a synthesized creation. Only primitive societies still drink poisons like alcohol.”
“I see.”
I don’t like being called primitive, but I have to admit this seems head-and-shoulders better than any drink on Earth. Where alcohol burns, this gives that savory and satisfying sizzle on my tongue, and then where alcohol makes me feel sweaty and exhausted and like everything is spinning, this is warm and calm and energized.
“How bad is the hangover going to be?” I ask.
“The effects wear off quickly,” he says. “There are no side effects.”
I order us two more glasses.
By the end of my third glass, I’m completely giddy. I’m resting my head on Raiska’s shoulder and stroking his thigh. He’s letting out a low growl from deep in his throat, and those piercing turquoise eyes are not looking at my face.
I press my lips against his ear. They are wet, but I know Raiska will like that. I whisper seductively into his ear. “Are you trying to look down my shirt, big strong Valittu?”
“I’m not trying, little human,” he says, “I have already succeeded. Your nipples are hard.”
I press my hand against my shirt to cover myself, but I laugh into his ear, my lips still pressed against him.
He turns his face toward me, and he presses his mouth to mine. My mouth was open to laugh, but he quickly silences my laughter with his kiss.
We kiss long and deep. Even though we are in a relatively crowded restaurant, and the chatter of voices is loud around us, we lose ourselves in each other. For the moment I’m kissing Raiska, there is nothing but us. I know that the bond the Valittu form is one-sided, and that human women can’t feel it, but I feel so connected to Raiska after knowing him for such a short period of time, that I can’t help but wonder if I’m starting to feel something on the higher dimensions.
Or maybe all those gooey and lovey feelings that humans feel are always higher-dimensional, and we just don’t understand how or why yet.
Hs grabs my waist with a dominant and possessive grip as we kiss. Soon his hands are on my thighs, but when he touches my breasts, I giggle and pull away.
“Not here,” I hiss, looking around at the crowded restaurant.
“Not here?” he asks. “Does that mean I can touch you like this elsewhere?”
I bite my lip and nod.
I’ve been grappling with this idea of letting him get me pregnant. I know that it’s crazy in so many ways. Absolutely bonkers crazy. Still, it’s logically the responsible thing to do considering what could happen to me if I don’t. And illogically—in my emotional and “moody” female mind, as Raiska would put it—I want him to put a baby in me.
I don’t just mean that I want to have sex with him. I like the idea of him fucking me with the express goal of getting me pregnant. Something about that makes the whole prospect of sleeping with Raiska extra enticing, and I’ve finally reached the point where I can’t resist him a moment later.
I lean back into his ear and press my wet lips against him once again. “In the hotel,” I say, my voice heavy and breathy. “Once we’re there, you can do anything to me, and I won’t stop you.”
His whole body stiffens. His muscles tighten. I can feel them beneath my hand, which is gripping his bicep. From the look on his face, I get the feeling that his body is stiffening in a place I can’t quite see, at least not yet.
It doesn’t take long for us to reach the hotel. We take one of the flying cars. Raiska tries to get started early in the car, but I stop him. It’s not that I’m worried someone will see us while we’re in the car, but more that if we actually get started in there, I’m worried that when it lands and we have to switch from car to hotel, that I won’t be able to stop myself. I don’t want to rush things with him in a crowded little vehicle, I want to spend as much time as I can with him. I want to savor every moment. I want to remember the night that he puts our child inside of me.
Once we go through the main doors of the hotel, each inch we move closer to our bedroom becomes more and more unbearable. After we get out of the elevator and are on our actual floor, we’re kissing and groping each other the whole time we walk. Soon I’m pinned against the wall. There’s a frustrating—and exhilarating—tension between trying to have each other right now in this instant, and making progress toward the actual bed. When we’re just around the corner from our bedroom, he pins me against the wall again and cups my breast through my shirt. My nipple is completely hard and oversensitive, and I gasp as he touches me. His hand is so beautifully warm.
I whine and moan as he gropes me. His lips press to my neck, and I realize then just how wet I am between my legs.
“The bed is so close, Raiska,” I whisper. “We’re almost there. Let’s just turn the corner and get there.”
“One more minute,” he says, pressing his lips just beneath my jaw and running them up towa
rd the soft skin behind my ear.
I grab his wrist and pull him around the corner. We’re almost there, just a few more seconds, and—
A door swings open, and Kula bursts out.
“There you are,” he says, “my synthesizer is broken, brother, could you let me use yours?”
“No,” Raiska growls, pulling me by the hand toward the bedroom.
Kula gets in front of Raiska and blocks us. “It’s important, Raiska. I need to synthesize myself some hair gel.”
I can hear Raiska’s teeth grinding from well over two feet above my head. His hand is gripping me almost hard enough to hurt.
“Move aside, Kula!” Raiska says. “Don’t make me use my scythe!”
“Maybe you can just synthesize me a little bit of hair gel and—”
“Move aside!”
Kula looks down at me. My face is deep red. My lips are parted. My blouse is pulled down too, I notice with embarrassment and pull it up.
“Sorry, Kula,” I whisper.
“Oh!” Kula says. “Oh! You two are going to mate! You don’t want me in your room synthesizing hair gel because you are trying to make her your Muru? Is that it, brother?”
“Yes,” Raiska says. “Now if my blue balls get any bluer, brother, I will cut your head off with my scythe.”
“I’m cockblocking you, am I?”
“You will not touch my cock!” Raiska says, reaching out as if he really is going to pull his scythe.
“It’s an expression, Raiska!” I shout, “and Kula, please get the fuck out of the way so he can Muru or mate or breed me or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Please!”
Kula laughs and steps aside. We burst into the bedroom, barely managing to even shut the door behind us.
Raiska rips my shirt off before I can even turn back toward him. I look down in surprise at my bra.
“Why do human women wear those things?” he asks, shaking his head. “You should be proud of your nipples.”
The Breeding Prize: A Scifi Alien Romance (The Breeding Games Book 2) Page 8